If Sainsbury's £100m price cuts announced last week are trumped by retaliatory price slashing from the competition, suppliers will not be able to foot the bill, warned the Food and Drink Federation. A spokeswoman said: "If retailers are looking to food manufacturers to find the savings, they will find there's no more fat to trim." Sainsbury chief executive Sir Peter Davis announced the company would be introducing £100m of price cuts on 5,000 lines. A Sainsbury spokesman added the cuts brought it within 1.5-2% of Tesco prices on the 10,000 lines on which it was possible to make a fair comparison. Tesco maintained it was on average, 8% cheaper than Sainsbury. Tesco said: "It is interesting to note that the Sainsbury cuts include a lot of bogofs. Ours are EDLP cuts across the board demonstrating the clear gap that has emerged between us on price." Asda said it was consistently cheaper than the multiple competition as demonstrated by its supremacy in The Grocer 33 weekly shopping basket survey. Safeway boss Carlos Criado-Perez said the chain's high:low pricing strategy was more effective than EDLP: "We do not have the same scale as some of our competitors so we have to work at price from a different angle." The Association of Convenience Stores said multiple price wars were bad news for the convenience sector but stressed c-stores could still pick up a lot of the multiples' trade in purchases under £10. Analysts felt Sainsbury had been forced to act by its competitors. Schroder Salomon Smith Barney analyst Dave McCarthy said Sainsbury had "no option" but to follow suit after Tesco and Asda threw down the gauntlet earlier in the year. West LB Panmure analyst Philip Dorgan said Sainsbury was "caught between the devil and the deep blue sea" as it attempted to improve its operational efficiency and boost margins as the sector faced a consumer downturn. "You get the feeling that whatever happens, Tesco will perform well. In a difficult environment the frailty of the weak is exposed and the strong just get stronger." {{NEWS }}

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