The country's leading supermarkets are being accused of misleading claims and breaches of consumer protection regulations over the marketing of their bakery products.
Real Bread Campaign, run by the group Sustain, which campaigns for a better system of food, farming and fishing, has claimed that supermarkets appear to be suggesting bread in their in-store bakeries is baked from scratch from ingredients when instead they are re-baking bread made elsewhere.
The Real Bread Campaign has submitted a trading standards complaint over how Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Lidl and the Co-op are marketing their bakery products, The Guardian stated on Tuesday (11).
Of Sainsbury’s, the group said that its bakery section products use claims including “freshly made every day” and “freshly baked bread”, which the campaign group stated that “claims are increasingly unrepresentative of the company’s in-store bakeries in general”.
On Monday (10), the campaign group submitted a complaint to Oxfordshire county council trading standards about Sainsbury's.
It has made similar complaints about Tesco, with the group accusing the supermarket of misleading claims including saying “expertly baked in store since 1968”, and “baking fresh from our ovens every day” on packaging, store displays and its website.
The Real Bread Campaign claims Tesco uses such marketing at stores where no bread is freshly baked from scratch on-site, at which baking expertise is not required, and in ones that did not exist in 1968.
Tesco bakeries have products made from scratch in 400 out of almost 3,000 UK stores.
A Tesco spokesperson said, “In some stores where we don’t have the space to bake everything from scratch, we work closely with our bakery suppliers who prepare dough for us that trained colleagues bake every day in store.
“The signage we use in each individual store reflects the different ways we prepare bread, and our approach has been agreed with our trading standards primary authority.”
The campaign also challenged Lidl’s use of claims including “our fresh in-store bakery” and “baked for you throughout the day” despite not baking any bread fresh from scratch at any of its UK stores. Instead, pre-made products are put into ovens to be baked for a second time for a browner, crisper crust, the group said.
A complaint was also submitted at Manchester city council about how the Co-op labelled and marketed its “freshly prepared”, “sourdough” baguette, which the campaign understood was manufactured and baked by a third party and then baked again in Co-op stores.
Four months later, the Real Bread Campaign claims it is still chasing a resolution from Manchester city council, the company’s primary authority for trading standards.