Media Release

February 5, 2004, immediate use RSPCA Rattled by Tesco Cruelty Claim Following an undercover exposé of conditions on a pig farm which supplies Tesco, the giant supermarket has dismissed accusations of cruelty by claiming the RSPCA has investigated and 'found no animal welfare problems on the farm'. Viva!, the campaign group responsible for the original exposé, has accused Tesco of being cynically misleading and has issued the following statement from the RSPCA refuting the supermarket's claim: "None of our inspectors is authorised to make such a statement. [T]he statement made by Tesco …. that the RSPCA found no animal welfare problems on the pig farm in question was false." The Society's statement was made in a letter to Viva! by the RSPCA's legal department. The row follows recent nationwide protests by Viva! supporters outside 180 Tesco stores all over Britain and the supermarket's statement has been quoted in numerous local press reports about the protests. The original investigation was given coverage in The Observer last October. It revealed dead and sickly piglets, animals with severe lesions and infections, maggots swarming over a piglet's corpse, an aborted foetus hanging from a sow's vagina and sows confined in restrictive metal farrowing crates. The RSPCA's letter continues: "[T]he RSPCA is seriously concerned about the welfare problems associated with conventional farrowing crate systems . . . and would not have said there were no welfare problems on the farm." Viva! campaigner Alistair Currie says: "Tesco's response to our investigation and the protests we organised has been astonishingly cynical. We informed their chief executive, Sir Terry Leahy, at the end of last year that his company's claims about the RSPCA were untrue. Despite this, Tesco - which uses claims of high animal welfare standards as part of its sales pitch - is still issuing this entirely false claim and it has appeared in local news reports nationwide. We can only assume it is a cynical attempt to defuse criticism of the way it treats animals and is a blatant decision to try and disguise the truth." For further information contact Alistair Currie on 0117 944 1000 Notes for Editors Copies of all correspondence, local press articles containing Tesco's claims and video and still images of the investigation are available in most formats. - Ends -