23 January 2007 - Green Party Euro-MP Caroline Lucas has hit out at supermarkets’ negative impact on local economies and the environment in the wake of a Competition Commission inquiry into the sector, which published its preliminary findings today.

Dr Lucas, a member of the European Parliament’s influential Environment Committee, said their massive scale and reliance on practices which depend on fossil fuels for transport, fertilisers and packaging meant the ‘supermarket model’ of food retailing was ‘inherently unsustainable’. A fifth of all car journeys in the UK are either to or from a supermarket, and this would remain unchanged regardless of how they produce the foods on their shelves.

She called on the Government to establish a separate Royal Commission on Food Security to propose ways of boosting local producers and suppliers – and the growing organic sector.

She said: “Today’s report by the Competition Commission has simply failed to address the fact that the ‘supermarket model’ of food retailing is inherently unsustainable, and that we must shift to more local and organic production if we are to break the growing dependence of supermarkets on dwindling fossil fuels and avoid nasty food shocks in the future.”

ENDS