A new voluntary Buyers' Charter between growers and supermarkets, designed to extend beyond fruit and vegetables to include flowers and plants and other food sectors, could be come a reality within a month.
This was the message from Richard Hirst, vice chairman of the NFU Horticultural Board, speaking at the UK Vegetable conference attended by 150 plus top growers and scientists at Peterborough last week.
It is designed to replace the OFT code of practise, which Hirst claimed "had failed" for a number of reasons. Apart from lack of definition of terms such as "reasonableness" when it came to trading relationships, it had been limited by only being applicable to Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda and Safeway (replaced by Morrisons), he said.
More significantly, Hirst claimed, it had not worked because growers were fearful that anyone who complained would finish up losing their business.
Subsequently, Robin Tapper, head of NFU Food and Farming told the Journal that the new concept was based on suppliers having bilateral trading agreements which could, if the occasion arose, be independently audited.
They would be lodged with an independently chaired body including representation from the trade associations.
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