Barry Sheerman, Labour MP for Huddersfield, said Premier Foods was acting like “food mafia”, while other commentators called for a boycott of the manufacturer’s products.
Food commentator Jay Rayner described Premier Foods’s demands for investment payments as “brutal” and said the firm came across as “a bunch of shysters”.
‘Mr Kipling takes exceedingly large bribes’
Displaying a little more humour, Bob Hawkins tweeted: “Mr Kipling takes exceedingly large bribes”.
Dan Crossley of the Food Ethics Council said the story revealed why Britain needed a Food Power Adjudicator.
The comments followed a BBC TV Newsnight investigation about the firm’s supplier investment strategy. One contributor said the manufacturer’s action was like having “a gun held to your head”.
But a Premier Foods spokeswoman told FoodManufacture.co.uk the company had done nothing wrong.