Christmas may be the season of goodwill but for food suppliers in the developing world good cheer is in short supply this holiday season as supermarkets’ constant striving for cheaper groceries translates to dirt poor wages for those who produce and package food items, especially women

Poor countries will be denied up to UK£ 170 million this Christmas by supermarkets that fail to pay developing country suppliers a fair price for imported groceries, according to research by the international aid organisation ActionAid.

Western supermarkets’ constant drive for cheaper goods has pushed down wages to pre-industrial levels and left many women workers toiling in conditions akin to those prevalent in the Victorian age, the agency said ahead of the big holiday season in much of the western world.

Claire Melamed, head of trade and corporates policy at ActionAid said: "This is meant to be the season of goodwill, but that’s definitely not the case when it comes to the way supermarkets are treating their suppliers. If supermarkets are to live up to their ethical claims this Christmas they have to start paying fair prices to the people around the world who produce the goods we buy."

One-hundred-and-seventy million pounds is less than 1% of supermarket sales during the Christmas period. This amount could provide clean water to over 11 million people or allow 1.5 million people in Africa to buy a year’s worth of drugs to control HIV infection. It could also provide a weeks’ worth of meals for 17 million children in Africa over the festive season.

The Competition Commission recently reported that supermarkets are forcing ‘excessive costs and risks’ onto their suppliers, in the ‘provisional findings’ of its inquiry into supermarket power. ActionAid research shows how this leads to appalling working conditions for the women who pick, process and pack the food that is bought at supermarkets.

Over 32,000 people in the UK have joined ActionAid’s campaign calling for the government to establish a supermarkets’ regulator to ensure that the big retailers play fair when they do business in developing countries.

Source: www.actionaid.org/uk, December 19, 2007
             www.alertnet.org, December 19, 2007