Greenpeace Taiwan yesterday released its comparative guide to pesticide control at the nation’s six major hypermarket and supermarket chains, giving Wellcome supermarket the highest score.
The organization said it conducted a survey on pesticide control at more than 150 branches of the Wellcome, Matsusei Supermarket, A.mart, RT-mart, Carrefour Taiwan and Pxmart chains, grading them on practical pesticide-reduction measures, pesticide control policies, information transparency and consumers’ perception.
Nearly 1,000 consumers shopping at these markets were asked to grade the grocery stores according to their satisfaction with product labeling and pesticide control, it added.
The results of the survey were divided into two parts — execution performance and consumers’ perception.
Wellcome received the highest score for its execution, followed by Carrefour Taiwan, and with Pxmart receiving the lowest score because it would not reveal information on its pesticide control. Mastusei topped the list in consumers’ perception, followed by Carrefour Taiwan, while Pxmart again received the lowest score.
“The results showed a big contrast between the actual execution and consumers’ perceptions,” Greenpeace Taiwan agriculture project manager Tsai Szu-ting (蔡絲婷) said. “Wellcome has the best execution performance, but this was not recognized by the consumers. While many consumers gave Mastusei high scores, it is actually rather conservative in its performance, only slightly better than Pxmart.”
The organization said that Wellcome was the first to sell “vegetables with identification labels,” starting this month, at 265 branches across the nation, and plans to sell only vegetables with traceability information by 2016.
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