Insight Junction

By Kieran Kearey 31/12/25 6 min read

Welcome to business breakdown episode eight. This series is a longer version of my Instagram series “Business Breakdown In 60 Seconds”, where I provide information about a business, such as who their current CEO is, who founded the company, controversial news or general facts about the business, etc. But here on the blog, I will dive just a little bit deeper into each business.

As the title says, episode eight is about Tesco.

*This information is purely an objective view based on information taken from internet research*

Table Of Contents –

*Click on each heading to go to that section*

• What is Tesco?
• Current CEO
• Horse Meat Scandal
• Mistreatment and Modern Slavery in Thailand
• Mistreatment of workers in Spain
• Sources

What is Tesco?

Tesco is a retailer that primarily sells groceries and general merchandise. Tesco was founded in 1919 by Jack Cohen, who started out by selling “war-surplus groceries” at a market stall in London. The Tesco brand and name came about in 1924 and it derives from initials of Cohen’s supplier, “Thomas Edward Stockwell” and from the first two letters of Cohen’s surname, World Economic Forum, Wikipedia, EBSCO, Global Data and Business Insider. Statistics from Wikipedia and Global Data suggest that Tesco made a revenue of about £67 Billion, last year.

Current CEO

Tesco has several individuals labelled as “CEO”, but they all fall under one “Group CEO”, Ken Murphy, who joined Tesco on October 1st 2020, Champions 12.3 & The Grocer. The other CEO’s include: Geoff Byrne (Ireland & Northern Ireland), Jonny McQuarrie (Central Europe), Ashwin Prasad (UK) and Andrew Yaxley (Booker), Tesco PLC.

Horse Meat Scandal

In early 2013, Tesco was accused of mislabelling some of their products as “beef” when they contained horse DNA. It was in 2012 when products from numerous supermarkets were tested by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, and in this test one Tesco product was found to have contained “29% horse meat”. Furthermore the FSAI found that over a third of their tested products contained horse DNA, and 85% contained pig DNA, Ethical Reading, High Speed Training, GOV UK, The Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland and The Irish Times.

Information from High Speed Training said that a product tested from a French company, “Comigel” who supplied Tesco, was found to have had up to 100% horse meat, despite being labelled as “beef”. High Speed Training then talks about the negative impacts on consumers and how they had become victims due to eating meat different to what they thought it was and that they could have suffered psychologically due to people (in the United Kingdom) typically viewing horses as pets rather than food. Finally, High Speed Training suggested it was possible that some of the horse meat from this company contained “illegal pharmaceuticals, such as phenylbutazone”, which can be dangerous to humans. A document from The Center for Forensic Science Research & Education says “Phenylbutazone was largely discontinued from human use after reports of deaths caused by the medication.”. Furthermore, the CFSRE say “phenylbutazone has a range of adverse effects like: tinnitus, dizziness, headache, vomiting, diarrhoea, ulcers, bleeding” and more.

To put the mind at ease, I have dug further into information about phenylbutazone and have found a post from the Department of Health & Social Care in the UK Government that talks about how horsemeat containing the drug presents a “very low risk” to human health, and that somebody would have to eat anywhere from 500 to 600 burgers which are 100% horsemeat a day in order to consume a human’s daily dose.

Mistreatment and Modern Slavery in Thailand

In 2022, Tesco and Intertek was accused of mistreatment of employees and modern slavery in its supply chain. Specifically, the mistreatment claims come from around 130 employees/former employees of a factory (Mae Sot factory, V.K Garments) in Thailand that Tesco supposedly doesn’t own, but has F&F Jeans and other F&F products made there. According to Leigh Day, Tesco and Intertek conducted audits at the factory, but the issues that workers claimed to have happened were not identified/not reported or were not properly remediated. The Guardian claims that Tesco, who started using the factory in 2017, identified areas of non-compliance during its own initial inspection.

Some claims the workers made include:

• 99 Hour work weeks
• No complaining under threat of blacklisting, confiscation of bank cards, immigration documents and other documents, no sick pay, no days off, no overtime, etc)
• Being paid as little as £3 per day to work from 8am-11pm
• Having to work through the night for 24 hours at least once a month to fulfil large orders (with no breaks to eat or go to the toilet)
• Unsafe, unsecure and unsanitary factory accommodation
• Suffering various abuses
• Working 7 days a week
• Hazardous, unventilated and overcrowded conditions
• Threatened by managers and shouted at if they didn’t keep working overtime and meet targets
• Concrete floors to sleep on and dirty pond water in a bucket to wash with
• Most rooms had no door, just a curtain

A post from the Corporate Governance Institute suggests The Guardian claims to have interviewed workers who made the claims and have concluded that their allegations fit the description of modern slavery.

Other information includes:

• A seven year old child was raped by an employee of the factory. “the child was alone at the time of the incident because her mother who was an employee of the factory was forced to work overtime and could not leave to check on her child. She also could not afford childcare due to being paid illegally low wages.”, Leigh Day.
• Workers suffered personal injuries as a result of these unsafe conditions
• One specific worker had their arm sliced when they were moving heavy machinery to prepare for a planned audit, Leigh Day.
• Another worker was taken to hospital to be rehydrated by drip, Leigh Day.

All information from this section comes from the following sources: Corporate Governance Institute, The Guardian, Leigh Day, Labour Behind The Label, Peters & Peters, Reuters, Quartz and FundWeb.

Mistreatment of workers in Spain

Similarly to Thailand, workers on farms in Almeria and Huelva (Southern Spain) who supply Tesco (and other UK supermarkets) have supposedly been victim of having their basic rights abused for 20 years. Ethical Consumer, Ethical Consumer (again) and Business and Human Right Centre report that the following abuses are “common” in these areas of Southern Spain:

• Forced Labour
• Union Busting
• Unsafe working conditions
• Payment of less than minimum wage
• Excessive working hours
• Failure to provide regular employment
• Discrimination, including sexual harassment
• Harsh and inhumane treatment

Ethical Consumer have suggested that because Tesco have lots of buying power, they should push for genuine and meaningful change to ensure abuse stops across their entire supply chain. Adding to this, not only do Tesco have a legal obligation to ensure workers rights are being met, they also have a moral obligation.

Sources

https://www.weforum.org/organizations/tesco/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/business-and-management/tesco-plc
https://www.globaldata.com/company-profile/tesco-plc/
https://www.businessinsider.com/timeline-the-history-of-tesco-2014-10#tesco-started-as-a-market-stall-in-east-london-in-1919-1
https://champions123.org/person/ken-murphy
https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/interviews/how-has-tesco-changed-under-ken-murphy-in-the-past-five-years/707085.article
https://www.tescoplc.com/about/board-board-committees-and-executive-committee/executive-committee
https://www.ethicalreading.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ethical-Reading-Business-Ethics-Essay-Competition-Anna-Louise-Ralls-2024-winner.pdf
https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/horsemeat-scandal-facts-and-effects/
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/processed-beef-products-and-horse-meat
https://rehis.com/news/horse-meat-scandal-a-decade-on/
https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2023/01/07/a-decade-on-how-the-horsemeat-scandal-changed-the-way-the-world-thinks-of-food-safety/
https://www.cfsre.org/images/content/reports/public_alerts/Phenylbutazone_Public_Health_Alert_031323_final.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bute-in-horsemeat-statement-from-chief-medical-officer
https://www.leighday.co.uk/news/news/2022-news/tesco-and-intertek-face-claims-of-forced-labour-and-debt-bondage-at-ff-fashion-factory/
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/18/workers-in-thailand-who-made-ff-jeans-for-tesco-trapped-in-effective-forced-labour
https://www.thecorporategovernanceinstitute.com/insights/news-analysis/tesco-faces-modern-slavery-lawsuit/?srsltid=AfmBOorJqJcT6Ukd93HfQHVRgY1wTAWC9IGkBQQg65cT8utkE0cFSuEw
https://labourbehindthelabel.org/no-pride-in-forced-labour/
https://www.petersandpeters.com/case/tesco-sued-for-forced-labour-in-thai-factory/#
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/tesco-facing-legal-claim-over-worker-conditions-thai-clothing-factory-2022-12-19/
https://qz.com/did-weak-social-audits-fail-abused-workers-in-tescos-su-1849910018
https://fundweb.co.uk/tescos-unethical-labor-practices-under-scrutiny-brand-faces-lawsuit-for-exploitative-behavior/
https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/food-drink/horrific-conditions-workers-supplying-fruit-vegetables
https://research.ethicalconsumer.org/research-hub/spain-workers-exploitation
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/tesco-disclosure-re-poor-living-conditions-in-n%C3%ADjar/