Woolworths taken to task for ‘new’ baby spinach, punnet labelling

Whistle-blower refuses to ‘leaf’ matter alone

SAME difference. After much to-ing and fro-ing this year, Topic – a consumer activist body that verifies product labels – is still not convinced.

In October, I wrote about Woolworths being called out by Peter Becker from Topic – Testing of Products Initiated by Consumers – for claiming that its baby spinach was organic.

Topic has in recent years tested for pesticide residue levels at the Cape Town Fresh Produce Market in Epping – a major bulk supplier to all retailers and restaurants in the city – where it found worrisome levels, three times over the acceptable safety levels, and that government departments hasn’t routinely tested for safety in more than five years.

Those test results brought into question what was happening at fresh produce markets elsewhere in the country: with government departments passing the buck on who is responsible for testing and the only certainty being that fresh produce destined for the export market are being tested, local consumers are at the mercy of farmers, who may or may not be ethical, or cut corners.

Topic previously also blew the whistle on Freedom Bakery’s fraudulent “gluten-free” and “sugar-free” claims, and outed Wakaberry for its “organic milk” claims.

Earlier this year, the activist group tested organic sweet potatoes and baby spinach from Woolworths for pesticide residue.

It found no residue on the sweet potatoes but detected low levels of four pesticides on the organic spinach samples.

Three of those are allowed for use in organic farming, but one, fluopyram, is a “highly persistent phenylamide fungicide”, which is not allowed.

It is usually found on berries, fruit and tomatoes, but not spinach. Made by Bayer

(which produces Roundup), fluopyram is used on mildew and considered hazardous to aquatic environments.

Woolworths questioned those results and initially suggested it might have been caused by “contamination drift from a nearby field or during harvesting and processing”.

It sent the product for its own tests, which apparently showed nothing.

Then samples were sent for further testing. Woolworths committed to sharing the results with Topic, but didn’t, says the group.

Becker then made a Promotion of Access to Information Act application to force the retailer to reveal those results, but Woolworths declined the request.

It said he hadn’t described in detail which laws had been contravened, that it is no longer in the public interest because the product was withdrawn from circulation on September 11, 2018, and that he was welcome to take the matter to court, if he so wished.

He has now raised two additional issues: that the baby spinach (not organic) looks, is packaged and costs the same as the withdrawn organic baby spinach.

Also, that the punnets that they’re sold in have confusing recycling labels. His point: If it looks like a duck…

When contacted about the issues, Woolworths said: “Our unwashed baby spinach in the punnet has been available for a few years and comes from the same supplier that used to also supply our organic spinach that has since been discontinued. The supplier is part of our ‘Farming for the Future’ initiative which is our sustainable farming programme.

“Recently though the label was changed as the product is part of our ‘solo’ range of leaf and now has the same look and feel as the solo leaf pillow packs, hence the potential confusion of it being a ‘new’ product.”

Woolworths said its organic pricing does fluctuate due to availability. Where there’s oversupply, the benefit is passed on to the customer. “We had a good growing season on the previous organic crop and for some time the line remained aligned to our conventional product on price.”

It said that its punnets are made from polyester, abbreviated as PET, and identified by a triangle with the number 1 inside.

PET plastic is commonly used in packaging for bottles and light-weight punnets and cups.

“Woolworths was the first retailer to introduce recycled content into its packaging and it has committed to increase this recyclable content to reduce plastic pollution and support recycling.

“The baby spinach punnet is made with 50% recycled PET content. It is important to note that the recycled content in the punnet is from recycled PET bottles and not other punnets.

“Unfortunately punnets, trays, cups, etc, packaging, although made from PET, (are) not currently being recycled in South Africa. Some of the reasons for this include a lack of established collection infrastructure and additives in the PET for this packaging format.”

The retailers said it had commissioned trials to recycle lightweight PET packaging with additives, which were successful, so they’re working with the industry to set up infrastructure to support, collect and recycle this packaging at the largest PET recycler in South Africa.

“Our timeline is mid-2019 to have the support infrastructure which includes buy-back centres bedded down and then we can go out to the recyclers and general public to announce PET punnets as being recycled as well. Hopefully those ‘non-recyclable’ labels will change in the next year and more plastic pollution will be reduced.”

That’s great news for consumers who are concerned about plastic waste. While many of us might have been diligently separating our waste for recycling, adding those thin PET punnets and cups to our plastic recycling is a wasted exercise. As Becker observed: it’s all just ending up in landfills. Time to hold our retailers to higher standards. And do we really need to “bag” everything in store?