About our products

Product provenance and integrity

In addition to rigorous sourcing policies, we adhere to a growing number of certification, verification and farm assurance schemes throughout our supply chain.

To raise consumer awareness of the facts surrounding sourcing issues, we train our Partners carefully, label our products honestly and make information easy to find both in our stores and online. We produce leaflets and factsheets covering issues such as animal welfare, farming practices, food intolerances and allergies, sustainable timber, product recycling and energy efficiency. Read more about sustainable products.

The Waitrose website (www.waitrose.com) hosts a range of microsites, each dedicated to a category of food. Here customers can find out where Waitrose fish comes from and how it is caught, or trace potatoes bought from a Waitrose shop to the farmer who grew them. We also offer our customers a full health and nutrition advice service, with all questions answered by qualified nutritionists.

With a growing number of own-brand products in both Waitrose and John Lewis, product integrity is an important focus of our buying approach. We have therefore developed policies to address the social, ethical and environmental product issues in our supply chain. Find out more in Our Views.

For more information on Responsible Sourcing, see Our suppliers.

Product safety 

To offer our customers the best quality products, we have to be absolutely sure that our products are safe.

John Lewis' dedicated Merchandise Standards department works with buying teams to make sure that the products we sell are safe to use, and that all our own-brand and exclusive products comply with relevant consumer legislation and safety standards.

In Waitrose, our Food Technologists look after the safety, legality and quality of the food we sell. For the risk assessment standards required by food hygiene regulations, we operate the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) system to spot where food safety hazards could occur at any stage from production to point of sale, and how to control them.

On the rare occasion that our products fall below our high standards, our technologists manage the company's product withdrawal and investigation procedure and issue a recall notice where necessary.