You would think that with all that’s going on from farmwashing to unfairness in supply chains that the grocery sector in Britain is wholly unregulated. But there is a regulator – the Groceries Code Adjudicator or GCA for short. The code aims to ensure that the 14 largest grocery retailers from Tesco to Lidl, Aldi to Amazon, treat the thousands of suppliers they deal with fairly.
It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that within the food and farming sector there’s a rapidly growing concern that the GCA is not fit for purpose. A recent parliamentary debate highlighted that suppliers are afraid to report unfairness, fearing they’ll be punished by supermarkets or delisted (i.e. have their contracts cancelled). All the risk, said one speaker, is “sitting on the shoulders of producers and growers.” Another debate said “more needs to be done to improve confidence in the system” and producers were regularly “bullied” by the supermarkets.
“It’s remit is too narrow. It’s time for a new groceries code regulatory authority, with powers to introduce price floors and ceilings, ensuring fair prices for suppliers and consumers,” said MP, Rachel Gilmour, in the latest deliberation in Westminster this June.
And while the machinations of grocery regulators rarely make the headlines or capture public interest, the human stories of pricing pressure in the food supply chain and the disastrous impact it’s having on British farming does matter (a lot) to the British public – 77% believe supporting British farmers is important.
The problem is that many farmers who’ve been treated poorly by the supermarkets remain tight lipped – so putting the onus on them to report issues to the GCA is unrealistic when most British farmers have few viable alternative routes to market other than through 12 retail giants, which account for 95% of all food consumed in the UK. The only realistic option to action change must be to drill down on supermarket regulation.
Producers going under
When supply chains have persistent power imbalances and where producers are forced to accept the (often loss-making) prices set by the retailers, or go out of business altogether, a lot needs to change. The BBC’s Tom Heap described the GCA as an “impotent umpire” with “a prevailing culture of fear between supermarkets and their suppliers”. Others have said that the GCA is essential, it’s just not doing enough.
Lawyers for Aldi and the regulator have been battling over whether the GCA should be able intervene in a landmark High Court hearing over the retail giant’s delisting of a producer – where the last remaining brassica farm in Yorkshire was forced to cease trading when the retailer terminated their contract, even though the crop of sprouts had already been planted out.
“If the GCA cannot investigate and robustly intervene to protect suppliers, producers and consumers when it is clear that the pricing structure of a supermarket is putting the short-term interests of shareholders above the wider public interest…what’s the point of the GCA?” asks MP Rebecca Long Bailey.
After four months of dispute, the High Court judge has now just permitted the GCA to submit evidence. This landmark ruling will set a precedent for future legal cases brought by farmers against supermarkets, states SUSTAIN.
Then there are those who argue that the GCA still does an important job in keeping retailers in check.“The GCA is a good thing. It certainly should not be abolished or merged with the Competition and Markets Authority. But it should be much fiercer and do its own analysis, where there’s clearly a problem around pricing,” states Vicki Hird, Strategic Lead on Agriculture at the Wildlife Trusts who was involved with the adjudicators founding, over a decade ago.
More than a handful of people in power in the halls of Westminster aren’t happy about the lack of oversight in the grocery sector. In recent years, the regulator has come under increasing criticism due to its limited scope, lack of resources, and challenges over enforcement. There have only been two formal investigations and 13 arbitrations since the GCA was founded in 2013.
“It’s not the watchdog we’re looking for at the moment, because it hasn’t applied its fining powers. As we know, abuse still happens. There needs to be more clear water between the GCA and the retailers’ compliance officers if it’s to be completely impartial,” says Hird.
SUSTAIN, which heads up the Groceries Code Action Network, has found significant gaps and inefficiencies in the GCA’s work. They’ve said that the vulnerable end of the food supply chain – those who are responsible for protecting nature, livestock, ecosystems and workers – are not adequately protected.
“Is the GCA providing fairness in food supply chains? No – we’ve still got deeply unfair practices throughout different parts of the supply chain. But I do think it has had an overall positive effect since it was brought in,” states Dan Crossley, Executive Director of the Food Ethics Council.
Remit needs expanding
It doesn’t help that the GCA’s remit only applies to retailers and their direct suppliers. It’s also, problematically, funded by a £2 million levy on retailers. Most farmers and other producers in the food supply chain can still be squeezed with unfair pricing without coming under the radar of the GCA, the Groceries Supply Code of Practice (GSCOP) and its golden rules since they supply to wholesalers.
This is where another government body, the Agricultural Supply Chain Adjudicator now comes in, but it only covers dairy and pork at the moment, although it will eventually be extended to horticulture, but no date is set.
“We now need the scope and the enforcement of the GCA expanded for the whole of the food and agricultural supply chain, where a similar code is applied to all within the remit of a single regulator. But at the moment in 2025, we’re still having to fight for upstream fairness for growers and producers,” explains Fiona Gooch, Senior Policy Adviser at Transform Trade, which campaigns for fairer trade in the UK and globally.
“The issue is that everyone is afraid of being delisted by the big retailers. It is the big thing. But it is also the number one objective of the GCA to ensure that any delisting process is done fairly. Let’s not forget the adjudicator does have a big stick and can levy a fine to the retailer of one percent of annual turnover, and that is what currently commands some respect.”
A regulator with more resources and more teeth, who enforces their ability to fine those who are not playing by the rules, and a regulator that covers every part of the agri-food supply chain from retailer to grower is something that advocacy groups are now calling for – so that no business fall between the gaps and where fair market practices are enforced at every point of sale to prevent any abuses in power.
“There’s a strong need to get behind a new expanded version of the Groceries Code Adjudicator in a rapidly changing world. It could be much more effective. It would also be easier from a government perspective to have one regulator. So there is a positive opportunity here. This needs to happen now and not in many years’ time,” details Crossley from the Food Ethics Council.
“Such a regulator must go hand in hand with promoting different ways of doing things with our food system. This includes promoting direct selling by producers, boosting regional infrastructure such as local abattoirs and local food and distribution hubs. It will be interesting to see how much of this makes its way into the new food strategy that’s being proposed by the Labour government, including fairness in the supply chain.”
At the moment government regulators are under the spotlight – we’ve had massive unrest and disquiet over the UK’s water industry and its lax oversight is firmly in the crosshairs, with questions being raised over high costs, big payouts to shareholders, environmental disaster, and bad practice. Could food and farming and its regulation be the next sector under scrutiny? Time will tell.
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