FareShare, a charity which redistributes surplus supermarket food to homeless people, is taking part in a trial with Tesco's manufacturers. Alex Green, the charity's marketing and fund raising manager, said that Tesco did not generate a lot of surplus stock because much of the food remained at the point of manufacture.
FareShare distribute 1,500 tonnes of surplus food a year and want to double that by 2006. The charity already works with the Co-op, Sainsbury and Marks and Spencer, and are in talks to get Asda on board.
Morrisons have been cleared to buy Safeway, providing they sell 53 of its stores. Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt blocked bids by Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury.
Philip Green, the owner of British Home Stores, has already been cleared to put his bid in.
Six weeks of debate and 675 public meetings have resulted in a massive negative response to the growing of genetically modified crops on British soil. In 1998 the major supermarkets removed GM ingredients from own label products, and since then many fast food outlets and other food producers have followed suit.
The "GM Nation" public debates were endorsed and funded by the government. This unanimous hostility to GM will therefore be politically hard for the government to ignore. However the basic decision to authorise the crops is taken at a European level and only new evidence of harm to human health can be used to prevent their authorisation. The Farm Scale Evaluations (FSEs), published on the 16th October, will present crucial evidence as to whether Britain becomes a GM nation.
