In an unprecedented move, Waitrose has extended its partnership with Linking the Environment and Farming (LEAF) to cover all its conventional fresh produce as well as flowers, and prepared and frozen produce by 2010.
“LEAF is well established for UK produce but applying it to lines such as bananas and citrus is what makes this project so exciting,” said Mary Bosley, agriculture manager for fruit, vegetables and horticulture at Waitrose. “What we have been doing is making sure the LEAF standard is understandable to all our suppliers worldwide and making it applicable to them without diluting it in any way.”
Waitrose has been running pilots with LEAF since the end of last year with suppliers of apples in France, bananas in Costa Rica and pineapples in Ghana. “We chose these to challenge the LEAF standard and it is our view that it should be able to be applied to almost all our overseas suppliers,” said Bosley.
She also confirms that it will be entirely complementary to Waitrose’s Fairtrade offer and that where appropriate, both the LEAF marque and Fairtrade logo will appear together on packaging.
The retailer’s increased involvement and the international nature of the expansion is a huge step for LEAF. “It has always been our intention to go global and we have been working on internationalisation since last year,” said LEAF’s commercial manager Jeremy Boxall.
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