Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

British Supermarket Won’t Buy From Settlements

The United Kingdom’s fifth largest food retailer has ended trade with suppliers who export produce grown in West Bank settlements.

The British Co-operative Group is the first major European supermarket group to cut ties “with any supplier of produce known to be sourcing from the Israeli settlements,” the British newspaper The Guardian reported Sunday.

The decision immediately affects four companies and contracts worth about $566,000. The suppliers are: Agrexco, Arava Export Growers, Adafresh and Mehadrin, Israel’s largest agricultural export company.

The Co-op told The Guardian that it will transfer its contracts to other companies inside Israel that can guarantee they don’t export produce from West Bank settlements. The move is an extension of the company’s policy not to sell produce grown in West Bank settlements.

The company said it would also work to increase trade links with Palestinian companies in the West Bank, according to the French news agency AFP.

Meanwhile, Britain’s Parliament’s House of Commons voted last week to block a bill that would require any meat ritually killed according to Jewish or Islamic law to be labeled “‘killed without stunning.”

The Food Labeling (Halal and Kosher Meat) Bill was defeated by a vote of 73 to 70.

Conservative lawmaker Philip Davies, who authored the bill, said he thought UK consumers should be fully informed and make their own choices about the meat they buy. Davies reportedly said that saying that an estimated 70 percent of kosher meat was not consumed by the Jewish community, and that 25 percent of all meat sold was slaughtered according to Islamic law.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.