Safeway has taken steps to help customers reduce the salt in their daily diets with a new range of products. The "Eat Smart" range has been developed to provide a wide range of products for people wishing to lose weight. In addition to limiting levels of fat and calories products in this range are formulated to contain limited salt to help customers keep within the recommended daily limit of 6g salt per day, whilst still maintaining taste and quality.
Products in Safeway's new children's range have been carefully developed to ensure a lower salt content. This embraces the recommendations from the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) to minimise salt in children's diets, together with lower levels of fat and sugar, in order to provide nutritional balance.
The Welsh Assembly is set to back British farms by urging public sector bodies to buy local food. An assembly debate in Cardiff on November 10th heard how the sector provides 90 million meals a year, worth £60 million, but only 20% of ingredients come from Wales. Next March the Assembly is to provide guidance notes on how local authorities and the Welsh NHS could restructure buying arrangements to benefit the economy within EU rules.
Tesco is to introduce degradable carrier bags in all of its stores from next year, the first UK retail group to take such a move. From 2004, all of its carrier bags will be made using a new additive called TDPA, developed by EPI Environmental Products, which means that the bags will start to break down in as little as 60 days, leaving no harmful residues. Once degraded, biomass, carbon dioxide, water and a small amount of mineral matter is all that is left.
Lucy Neville-Rolfe, group corporate affairs director at Tesco, said that the move had come in response to customers' desire to do more for the environment. "It is also a huge boost for the environment and will help to keep our streets tidy," she added.
"Unlike many other 'green' carrier bags, the new Tesco bag will break down quickly even if inadvertently discarded outdoors - although we would never encourage people to dispose of them in this way."
Reports in the Sunday newspapers suggest that Morrisons has drawn up contingency plans to sell 140 of Safeways smaller stores in the UK for around £250 million (USD402.5 million). It is understood that the stores (below 1,390 square metres) will not be kept if they detract from the larger outlets that can most effectively improve performance and sales. Potential buyers for the smaller stores are thought to include the Big Food Group, Somerfield and the discounters Netto and Aldi.
A more profitable, diverse, competitive and environmentally sensitive farming and food industry is taking shape after a year of solid progress in implementing the government's strategy for a sustainable future. The year ahead must turn that progress into real results, Food and Farming Minister Lord Whitty and Strategy Implementation Group chair Sir Don Curry said.
