The fresh produce trade in the UK believes overwhelmingly that it has to deal with too much paperwork.

According to the respondents in last week’s freshinfo poll, 70 per cent believe that the trade has too much paperwork to do.

One respondent said: “With a lot of the fruit coming into the UK these days, the paperwork is the most important issue and the fruit [is] secondary. Maybe with job cuts expected, this will change.”

At least one of the pollsters believes that this is already changing. He said: “We spend fortunes on various accreditations, now when the markets are under pressure they go out of the window. What a waste of time and paper.”

Another agrees: “For example, all Tesco suppliers say they can only take Tesco Nature’s Choice (TNC)-approved produce, but I know a number of people who supply Tesco and the fruit is not TNC approved.

“It is a waste of time, but it makes jobs for people when the economy is good and I guess when times are hard like now, those pen-pushers will be on the streets.”

Others lamented the “irrelevance” and “waste” of such standards.

Another respondent asked: “Why should a business have to be audited against the Tesco standard, Field to Fork for Marks & Spencer [and] several customer audits at the expense of the supplier? All these are duplicated and a waste of limited resources.”

Another trader made the point that the prevalence of technical standards and paperwork has shifted the balance in the buyer-technician relationship. He said: “The worst thing about all these standards is that the buyers, who no longer have any idea what is going on and only know how to use spreadsheets and calculate margin and profit, are no longer in charge. The technical departments can stop buyers taking fruit just because there is a piece of paper missing. Today, the technical manager who has been in the department five minutes can block everything.

“In times when we need to find the extra penny to survive, please water down the standards and sell the perfectly good fruit they say they cannot take, which is being smuggled in or bought knowing it is not TNC or Field to Fork approved.”

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