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hi all

if you have been following what I have come to refer to as The Woolworths Saga over the last few months, you will know that i have been trying (albeit in vain) to find out from WW who their “independent auditors” are who allegedly audit all their “free range” products. there is no certification process required in SA at the moment if a retailer or producer wants to put “free range” on a product. (although apparently some laws may be about to be passed – i have been in contact with the SA Poultry Association – just waiting to hear back from them, they sent me some info on these proposed laws). the lack of certification requirement means that just about anyone can say something is “free range” and us consumers would be none the wiser…

if you buy something from WW which claims to be “free range”, you will see a little logo which says it has been certified as free range by “independent auditors”. i decided i wanted to speak to these auditors to find out more about free range etc. so i emailed WW to ask them…. and WW told me that they were “restricted by company policy not to divulge this information”.

alarm bell!!!

so i emailed them back and said this:

I am not satisified with the response that you are not allowed to give me the details of your Auditors. I cannot understand why Woolworths would want to do so – I can find the name of your financial auditors on your annual financial statements, so what reason is there for keeping the name of your free range auditors secret? If you can give me a reason which seems legitimate, maybe that will satisfy me, but at the moment this smacks of a lack of transparency. Are you telling me I must just ‘trust’ Woolworths – and believe that any kind of auditing actually occurs? If this were organic certification, I wouldn’t just believe Woolworths if they told me produce had been certified. The produce would have an organic certification number on it and I could actually check with the certification body themselves that the farm meets the organic standards.

today, i got this very unhelpful reply:

Thank you for your email. Please accept our sincere apologies for the delay on replying to you.

You are correct in saying that on organic certified products, you can check who certified the product, but as free range is not regulated in the same way as organic this does not apply.

Huh? That doesn’t answer my question, not even nearly! I am starting to get rather hacked off actually… so i sent them this reply mere moments ago:

I received your email of today, but it did not answer my question at all.

I said I wanted a legitimate reason why Woolworths won’t divulge the name of their “independent auditor” for their free range products. You replied:You are correct in saying that on organic certified products, you can check who certified the product, but as free range is not regulated in the same way as organic this does not apply.

I totally understand that free range is not regulated in the same way as organic products, and while Woolworths may not be under any LEGAL obligation to divulge this information to me, surely they have an ethical or at least a customer service obligation to do so? I pay good money for these products, and I feel I have a right to know exactly where they come from and who checks that they really are free range. I want to speak to these auditors to learn more about what they do. Surely that can’t be threatening to Woolworths in any way? Please respond and tell me who these auditors are. I am starting to find this a little annoying really.

so, what started out as me wanting to be an informed consumer has turned into a very interesting exercise. i hope others find this interesting too. and maybe agree with me that we as consumers have a right to question claims made about products and find out ALL the information we want to about how they were produced, where they come from, who checks that they meet certain standards etc?

am i a lone voice in the wilderness? i doubt it.

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