Shock horror UK supermarkets caught selling poor quality food.

In the UK the only thing 99% of consumers are interested in is the price (the lower the better) and the ease with which they can covert their food into a form ready to eat.

That's why over 50% of food is imported from the cheapest possible source. And an alarmingly high proportion of food actually eaten is factory processed cr*p.

Local nutritious food? No chance - it costs too much and takes too long to prepare into a meal. Better to ship stuff halfway round the world from some sweat farm in Africa.

You are what you eat - no wonder the UK is full of overweight fatties waddling about all over the place. Every time I visit these days it's like going to America in the 90's.

And no wonder supermarkets have been getting away with over-labelling for so long. After all, if the consumer is used to rubbish ....

Jon Leigh, Southern, France

Tesco is a good basic superstore and its vast wharehouses in Extra size not designed to suit the Waitrose shopper but rather the one stop shopper who wants light bulbs, cornflakes, something from the deli, crips, sweets, and a household electric iron, a lampshade and some sheets. Whole street full of shops under one roof. Please don't criticise Tesco from the vantage point of the Finest Customer with money enough to be picky, as the trade says.

jane fleming, Whittlesey, cambs

A mistake? I wonder how the chickens managed to get their yellow corn-fed appearance?

Ads, Nottingham,

You get what you pay for. Why should one be surprised that cut price supermarkets who often sell leading products at a loss are cheating us in this way? I notice that Waitrose and M&S have not figured in any of these food scandals. I wonder why not? Perhaps because their prices reflect the true cost of the food they sell. Also they pay their staff better wages and offer a better working environment and so attract a more dedicated and helpful workforce. At the risk of sounding like a supermarket snob, I have never shopped at Tesco's or Sainsbury and now feel vindicated in this stance

John Dixon, London, UK

After the programme the other evening showing TESCO staff, allegedly, shaving bad meat and kicking around poultry before serving it and others using knives for the fish counter to open dirty grid coverings I will now change my buying habits. It was bad enough when the Bernard Matthews debacle proved that many turkeys are not raised and slaughtered here but shipped back and forth across the continent, but cheating with the quality of chickens in their finest or supreme ranges is the last straw. Greed and stupidity now come before providing a good service to customers with quality products. It is back to the good old-fashioned butcher and fishmonger in future.

Kenneth Armitage, Suffolk, England

Inadvertently is not a word complying with due diligence issues when a huge retailer like Tesco is invoved in such incidences and how this could affect peoples confidence in the big food retailers?Or is it only the price commanding our food buyals therefore we are equally responsible for supporting the added value products especially when they claim extra nutritious benefits?
Quality over price an issue under long debate..

Mina, Leeds,

I'm surprised this has not happened sooner seeing as organic food looks exactly the same as unorganic (if there is such a word).
Shoppers have to trust the retailer to label the chickens correctly.
I notice the mistakes are always in the stores favour - has there ever been a case of organic meat being sold too cheaply?

G J BUNTON, SLOUGH, BERKSHIRE

As a sometimes visitor back to the land of my birth I am always struck by the speed with which general conversation gets around to how to circumvent some regulation or other.
On the face of it its all very amusing particulary if the expert's comments are also totally negative about the Euro, France , the Germans or anything else that can be pilloried in the name of freedom to engage in whatever bit of self interest is on todays agenda.

Did you ever hear anyone say anything negative about the butchers shop on the corner? Or complain about the local greengrocer?
Or nag about the service at the local sub post office?
Of course not. There would be howls of protest.

Fine! So where are they and why?

Once upon a time someone said that we get the policemen and politicians we deserve. I find myself wondering if that was perhaps a message to us all saying Don't Cheat it will eventually back fire and come to include the food we eat and more subtle things yet to go past fail safe!

Kevin Sheridan, Cape Town,

seems funny to me that after the event everone is wise. Of course Tesco knew what was going on. A company of that size employs people to know such things.

victor arram, westclff on sea, uk

This does not surprise me. I stopped shopping at Tesco's a long time ago: ditto Sainsbury's as they have also 'gone downhill'. I do not trust the labels on their food, and prefer to shop at Waitrose where both service and products are excellent.
If customers voted with their feet, then perhaps Tesco's would be forced to review their dodgy practices. Hitting them in the 'wallet' will be the only tactic that will get results.

MAXINE BLISS, Leigh on Sea, UK

Since this and BBC's expose of supermarkets I have decided to become vegetarian and meat and especially chicken or eggs will pass my lips again.

Mario, Maidenhead, Berkshire

I was talking to my butcher yesterday. He has been to Tesco and looked at their lamb chops. Tesco had added £5 per kilo to their price. If people think they are getting a bargain quite obvioulsy they are not, the price you pay bears no resemblance to the price the producer pays, which is why producers go out of business and Tesco profits soar. I have no doubt that it is the same for other supermarkets, but Tesco is by far the biggest and has the biggest impact.

David Leslie, Perth, Scotland

Amazing what people are going to fall for.
We had one of those 'corn fed' chickens when our local supplier was shut - it was expensive, tasteless and very tough.
We usually shop at our 'local corner shop' - Lidl.
It used to surprise us when we first saw the car park - full of late model 'quality' cars alongside beat up old wrecks.
The only class missing are the 'upwardly mobile' who wouldn't be seen dead in the place. Gawds how do they think those who have keep it, by shopping in Sainsbury's? - no chance!
BTW - non-corn fed chicken 'Medium' (about 1.6Kg) £1.47 a Kilo.
Does anyone feel a little silly?
Their Fair Trade coffee and brown sugar are very good and economical - it's obvious that the extra is added in the country of origin and not here for the label.

J D S, Cardiff, Wales UK

The farmer 'inadvertently' fed his chicks with the wrong food did he! How convenient for him! That accident would have increased his profits, till the gaffe was rumbled.

Barbara Garner , Bramhall, Cheshire,

"Inadvertently fed " - "short time" - what an unlucky coincidence that it was one of those chickens that was tested. The excuse also sounds completely unacceptable to me.

Barrie, Brussels,

I expect they could find a lot more Tesco products could be wrongly lablled. I also hate the way they sell a product of an independant brand which is good then you go back the next week and you can't find it, what you do find is a copy of it with tesco on it. Which is not nearly as good.

Alex Hoyland, York, north yorkshire

The food industry is good at misleading, and how can the consumer know weather 'organic ' ' healthy option' 'free range' is in fact what it says.
I would suggest dont buy packaged goods.
Buy local, use butchers, greengrocers, and keep shops going, and towns alive.

Mike Jeffert, Romsey, UK

“We conducted an immediate investigation and we have already determined that for a short time the farmer concerned inadvertently fed standard free-rage feed ...."

Is this the start of mad chicken disease?

Foghorn Leghorn, Rhode Island,

Who out there is stupid enough to believe Tesco, it is the same story (excuse) used on the BBC expose' on health.
Try your local butcher and you will be surprised at what you have missed. I have no vested interest.

Dave Madley, Alicante, Spain

Another reason not to shop at Tesco. Maybe people will utilise local shops and Tesco's rapid expansion to eat Britain is slowed down. They are sucessful but I would never shop with them- ever. I encourage my friends and family to follow suit, it may sound strange but it really isnt!

Tom, Hexham, Northumberland,

Could we start to reintroduce a standardised terminology for a few words that really annoy me, these words are 'spin' and 'mis-sold'. I propose that we go back to the more traditional, descriptive (and slightly harsher) words - lying and cheating.

Daniel, London,

DOES ANY BODY KNOW THAT TESCO IS LISTED AS
THE GREENEST COMPANY IN THE UK,HONEST.
perhaps just a mistake made ,there's some dodgy farmers
out there, perhaps they didnt read the labels on-the corn.

george william taylor, hull, uk

Well done for revealing this. Week by week, or so it seems, the products being sold by supermarkets are revealed to be not what they seem (free range eggs from battery farms, organic British chickens that come from factories in Eastern Europe, dodgy petrol, and so on).

After recent revelations about frozon food being left by supermarkets to defrost before being re-frozen and sold, I've stopped buying any meat or fish from the local supermarket, much to the delight of the local butcher and fishmonger. Surely, this can only be part of a growing trend?

Michael, Bookham, Surrey,

Well so much for freedomof speech in Britain's press eh? Where is my comment?
I guess that you understood the gist of what I was saying - how can this be today's headline? I mentioned it to three of my colleagues and funnily enough, they all had the same response as me. Perhaps you have misjudged the mood of the nation on this one - or is it a campaign against big bad Tesco?

Graham Sheedy, Kinmuck, Scotland

Find a good, honest local butcher that sources meat and poultry from local farms. For how much longer are the generic public going to be surprised when tthey're lied to regarding the authenticity of 'designer' food? Eat fresh, eat local, stop complaining when supermarkets swindle the truth.

Shaun, North Yorks,

Yet another reason NOT to shop with Tesco's when are they going to invest serious money in getting their products right, this is another classic example of "it's not our fault! It was the farmers!", well why not check your product by the looks of it the other supermarkets listed above bothered to take the time

Mark Westley, luton,

We still have the power to force supermarkets to give us what we want.
The way to do that is to take our money elsewhere, as I have done. I
spent a significant amount of time finding the food that I am happy with. I may pay more for certain things, like the chickens from Lowther in Penrith. But we eat less
and don't have them so often. I have done the same with every ingredient.
When more people take this attitude and shop elsewhere then this punishment will hurt but for the time being supermarkets are giving us what we want because we don't care. We are happy with the convenience of one stop shopping and put no time into researching where our food actually comes from.

Chandos Elletson, Garstang, Lancashire

The response of major supermarkets, especially Tesco, to investigations which confirm the lies behind the food and food standards they claim ti adhere to have the same credibility as Blair/Bush weapons of mass distruction.

I can only hope that this increasing wave of highly negative exposes results in a public reaction and move away from Supermarket usage.

mark, london,

My own conclusion on cutting open 'fresh' Sainsbury chicken thighs right through the bone and finding a musty smell, which remained after cooking, is that they had been frozen somewhere along the line. It was an old geriatric bird and may have remained frozen for a very long time.
The failure is in environmental health checks and the capture of public regulatory bodies by supermarkets. Governments are in cahoots with these immensely powerful economic interests that have such an overwhelming impact on the lives of people. Basically, you can't win and will only get spin rather than the rule of law from both. Credibility is at a nadir.

Gautam Sen, London, UK

You are joking! Well that is my day ruined!

Graham Sheedy, Kinmuck, Scotland

I'm sure Tesco did not diliberately buy an underfed chicken, they may have pushed down the price the supplier receives to the extent that the farmer tried cutting costs by not feeding to specification. If it is now possible to check for food content of the 13c the stores will make use of this facility to the further chagrin of the farmer! Retailers don't welcome faults of this type being revealed.

Russell Taylor, Bonar Bridge, Highland

So are we to expect a fine equal to the excess profits they have made? Don't hold your breath.

jj, Cambs, UK

Is it really a surprise that the major supermarket is lying to us? Why do we trust the big blue retail machine? Is it the low rices, the variety of choice or even the ethical principals that they market that makes us shop there? No, Tesco has stolen the lead with the number of sites the land they own and therefore the market they hold. they have done well but it will not be my shop of choice!

Andrew Whitehead, notts,