Organic news

A sustainable global food system in the 21st Century needs to be built on a series of “new fundamentals”, according to a leading food expert. Professor Tim Lang, a member of the UK government’s newly formed Food Council, warned that the current system, designed in the 1940s, was showing “structural failures”, such as “astronomic” environmental costs. The new approach needed to address key fundamentals like biodiversity, energy, water and urbanisation, he added.

“Essentially, what we are dealing with at the moment is a food system that was laid down in the 1940s,” he told BBC News. “It followed on from the dust bowl in the US, the collapse of food production in Europe and starvation in Asia. At the time, there was clear evidence showing that there was a mismatch between producers and the need of consumers.”

Professor Lang, from City University, London, added that during the post-war period, food scientists and policymakers also thought increasing production would reduce the cost of food, while improving people’s diets and public health.

“But by the 1970s, evidence was beginning to emerge that the public health outcomes were not quite as expected,” he explained.

“Secondly, there were a whole new set of problems associated with the environment.”

Thirty years on and the world was now facing an even more complex situation, he added.

“The level of growth in food production per capita is dropping off, even dropping, and we have got huge problems ahead with an explosion in human population.”

Professor Lang lists a series of “new fundamentals”, which he outlined during a speech he made as the president-elect of charity Garden Organic, which will shape future food production, including:

* Oil and energy: “We have an entirely oil-based food economy, and yet oil is running out. The impact of that on agriculture is one of the drivers of the volatility in the world food commodity markets.”
* Water scarcity: “One of the key things that I have been pushing is to get the UK government to start auditing food by water,” Professor Lang said, adding that 50% of the UK’s vegetables are imported, many from water-stressed nations.
* Biodiversity: “Biodiversity must not just be protected, it must be replaced and enhanced; but that is going to require a very different way growing food and using the land.”
* Urbanisation: “Probably the most important thing within the social sphere. More people now live in towns than in the countryside. In which case, where do they get their food?”

Professor Lang said that in order to feed a projected nine billion people by 2050, policymakers and scientists face a fundamental challenge: how can food systems work with the planet and biodiversity, rather than raiding and pillaging it?

The UK’s Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, recently set up a Council of Food Policy Advisers in order to address the growing concern of food security and rising prices.

Mr Benn, speaking at the council’s launch, warned: “Global food production will need to double just to meet demand. We have the knowledge and the technology to do this, as things stand, but the perfect storm of climate change, environmental degradation and water and oil scarcity, threatens our ability to succeed.”

Professor Lang, who is a member of the council, offered a suggestion: “We are going to have to get biodiversity into gardens and fields, and then eat it. We have to do this rather than saying that biodiversity is what is on the edge of the field or just outside my garden.”

Michelin-starred chef and long-time food campaigner Raymond Blanc agrees with Professor Lang, adding that there is a need for people, especially in the UK, to reconnect with their food.

He is heading a campaign called Dig for Your Dinner, which he hopes will help people reconnect with their food and how, where and when it is grown.

“Food culture is a whole series of steps,” he told BBC News.

“Whatever amount of space you have in your backyard, it is possible to create a fantastic little garden that will allow you to reconnect with the real value of gardening, which is knowing how to grow food.

“And once you know how to grow food, it would be very nice to be able to cook it. If you are growing food, then it only makes sense that you know how to cook it as well.

“And cooking food will introduce you to the basic knowledge of nutrition. So you can see how this can slowly reintroduce food back into our culture.”

Mr Blanc warned that food prices were likely to continue to rise in the future, which was likely to prompt more people to start growing their own food. He was also hopeful that the food sector would become less wasteful.

“We all know that waste is everywhere; it is immoral what is happening in the world of food. In Europe, 30% of the food grown did not appear on the shelves of the retailers because it was a funny shape or odd colour. At least the amendment to European rules means that we can now have some odd-shaped carrots on our shelves. This is fantastic news, but why was it not done before?”

He suggested that the problem was down to people choosing food based on sight alone, not smell and touch.

“The way that seeds are selected is about immunity to any known disease; they have also got to grow big and fast, and have a fantastic shelf life. Never mind taste, texture or nutrition, it is all about how it looks. The consumer today has got to understand that when they make a choice, let’s say an apple - either Chinese, French or English one - they are making a political choice, a socio-economic choice, as well as an environmental one. They are making a statement about what sort of society and farming they are supporting.”

The latest estimates from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that another 40 million people have been pushed into hunger in 2008 as a result of higher food prices.

This brings the overall number of undernourished people in the world to 963 million, compared to 923 million in 2007.

The FAO warned that the ongoing financial and economic crisis could tip even more people into hunger and poverty.

“World food prices have dropped since early 2008, but lower prices have not ended the food crisis in many poor countries,” said FAO assistant director-general Hafez Ghanem at the launch of the agency’s State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008 report.

“The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices remain a dire reality,” he added.

Professor Lang outlined the challenges facing the global food supply system: “The 21st Century is going to have to produce a new diet for people, more sustainably, and in a way that feeds more people more equitably using less land.”

By Mark Kinver for BBC News

Last summer, for reasons that needn’t bother us here, I had to make a shirt the old-fashioned way , with fabric and a pattern and a sewing machine. The only person I knew who could help was my wife’s 97-year-old great-aunt, Peggy Parker.

Peggy is a brilliant and witty woman, but in the past few years her clothes-making know-how has been completely neglected. What a waste! Because from the moment she scented the fabric and the needles, Peggy was a woman possessed. She barked instructions and capered about snipping this, threading that and knotting the other, till I felt slightly dizzy.

And it suddenly dawned on me, dull-brained oaf that I am, that Britain’s elders have a lot to offer. With Christmas upon us, and the generations being thrown together for days on end, I daresay that many other people my age will shortly come to the same conclusion, if they haven’t already.

Because it seems that the combination of credit crunch and environmental concern is driving us to seek out the wisdom of other ages — wisdom that for too many years has been brushed off shamefully as the chuntering of old codgers too eager to talk about the privations of war and rationing.

One of the most remarkable exemplars of this new cross-generational trend is British charity Oxfam’s “Green Granny” service. The charity has recruited a crack team from a less wasteful generation to offer advice on things such as fixing a button on a shirt, darning socks and making delicious food from leftovers.

One green granny is Barbara Walmsley, a 71-year-old from Cookham in Berkshire, UK, who provides advice on YouTube and also answers queries submitted to “Ask a Granny” on the charity’s website.

“Every granny has her own tricks for saving money,” says Walmsley, “and I’m really glad to have the chance to share them with younger people.”

Oxfam’s Rose Marsh, who is younger than the grannies themselves, came up with the idea. “The main thrust of our campaign was to make people be greener but we thought: how do you do that in the credit crunch? And then we realised that the two things are the same — because if you live more cheaply it’s more green. And that’s when we thought about talking to our grandparents’ generation.”

The older generation have all the answers, she concluded, but for years we’ve ignored that: “There are all these skills that people are discovering today and treating them as if they’re miracles — like how to get rid of a stain. If I see that on YouTube I think it’s magic, but if I ask my grandma she knows all about it. This is knowledge that we’ve all lost.”

For Walmsley, the new-found status of guru is both welcome and unexpected. Her generation drew the short straw, she believes: “When we were young we were daunted by our elders and now we have to avoid saying the wrong thing with younger people. A few years ago, for instance, you would not have had any compunction about asking your children when they were going to start a family. Today you wouldn’t dream of doing that.

“I’m very fortunate. I don’t think I’ve ever been treated disrespectfully by family and friends. But in society generally the respect given to elders has slipped away. In the past, younger people would go to older people for advice. I don’t think that happens now. They talk to their contemporaries instead.”

What caused that to change? “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s something to do with families being so dispersed. They’re not popping into each other’s houses all the time.”

The environmentalist Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Town movement, is, like Marsh, convinced that the elderly have much to teach about living sustainably and he has actively harvested their wisdom for some time.

“To go to the elders and ask for their input is something that in many cultures would be instinctive,” Hopkins says. “But in ours it has been sidelined. One interesting thing when you do an interview with the elderly is that they always start by saying, ‘I don’t know why you want to talk to me; I’m sure I have nothing interesting to say to you . . .’ and then go on to tell you all this fascinating stuff.”

All the same, he recommends interviewing them one at a time. “I went to do one with a lady who had fascinating stories to tell about being a Land Girl on Devon farms during the war, but she said, ‘My dear, I have nothing interesting to tell you at all, so I invited my friend to come along as well’. A few minutes later he arrives and I start talking with the two of them.

“The problem is that one will say, ‘And down by the quay there was that shop, what was it called?’ The other will reply ‘Jameson’s’, to which the first will say, ‘Oh yes, Jameson’s . . . now they had three sons didn’t they?’ ‘Oh yes, Jason, he’s in Australia now. . .’ and so on. It was very hard to get any useful information.”

Alas, not everybody is quite so avid to share the insights of the elderly. They will do it, but only if they are paid first.

In April, a British pensioner named Jack Hammond hit the headlines after his son Michael placed an advertisement in the local post office offering £7 (about US$10.50) an hour for someone to keep Jack company in the pub.

The 88-year-old from Hampshire, UK, a retired electrical engineer, used to drink with a neighbour four times a week, but had recently moved into a nursing home to be closer to his family; his son, a chef, was concerned that he was isolated.

Hammond Jr had previously sought volunteers to accompany his father, but to no avail; the offer of cash made all the difference. He said he was “absolutely staggered” by the warm response to his advertisement.

A similar social need, and incentive structure, is addressed by Eldertainment, set up by brothers William and Heneage Stevenson, aimed at bringing students from top universities together with older people and, according to the promotional material, “encourage knowledge transfer and interaction between the generations”.

Meetings are relaxed and informal and the participants decide whether to make idle conversation, conduct fearsome political debate or tackle household tasks such as shopping and gardening. Each meeting is different. Many of the older generation have enjoyed being read to out loud. One insists on a highly competitive weekly game of Scrabble.

Everything comes at a price, of course. For the high-class companionship of students from top universities, the elderly — or their guilt-ridden relatives — must pay rather more for Eldertainment than Jack Hammond’s son pays for trips to the pub: individual meetings cost £30 (about US$45) an hour, although there is a special introductory offer of four one-hour meetings for £100 (about US$150).

Such intergenerational enterprise doesn’t always have to be one way, however. One thing the elderly have to offer — space — is brilliantly harnessed by Homeshare, a charitable scheme operating in several areas across the country.

A homeshare involves putting two people with different needs together. They also have something to offer one another: on the one hand somebody with a home who could do with help and a watchful eye, and on the other, a person who needs accommodation and is willing to give support in return.

Both the householder and the homesharer gain from the arrangement and feel valued and respected for their own contribution, allowing them both to enter into it with dignity and enthusiasm. Additionally, the costs to families and the wider community are low. But what’s it like in practice?

One couple who have benefited from this are Ruby Martin, 92, and Rita Northcote, a medical student from New Zealand who shares Martin’s home in northwest London, where the homeshare scheme is run by Vitalise.

Martin’s daughter set up the arrangement some years ago. “She didn’t want me to be on my own,” says Martin. “I have heart problems and if I had an attack and there was no one here . . .”

Did she have reservations about sharing her home with a stranger? “Not at all. I looked on it more as an adventure. I thought, ah, a new opening. What’s going to happen now?”

Northcote is Martin’s sixth homesharer. She’s had people from all round the world, including one man.

“Charles was a very interesting person from South Africa,” says Martin. “But they’ve all been very good. We have conversations and I ask about their country and where they live and I can explain to them what it was like in my day and the countries I’ve been to and what I’ve seen. Modesty aside, I think they do learn a lot from me.”

Northcote knows the scheme’s restrictions would be off-putting for many, especially people of her generation: homesharers are allowed just one weekend away from the home each month and must do at least 10 hours of companionship and help a week. Indeed, she wouldn’t put up with it herself — she says when I meet them together — if Martin were less congenial: “But we get on so well, despite the difference in our ages. We eat similar food and notice similar things and laugh at the same jokes. And Ruby is so positive.”

It’s a testament to their closeness that, by way of shorthand, Northcote calls Martin “granny” when talking about her with friends.

As a result of her homeshare, Martin has had much greater exposure to younger people than most of her contemporaries: “I couldn’t do without it. People of my age who don’t have that, I feel for them. It’s important to keep the generations talking to each other. It makes the world go round.”

Like Walmsley, Martin is unsure why that has fizzled out in recent years: “It was a different world when everybody in the street knew everyone else. You looked out for everyone else. In the war, the first thing you did in the morning was ask your neighbour if everybody was all right. I wish that kind of thing could come back without a war, but it has to be something very big to bring people together like that.”

Or does it? Since my shirt-making session with great-aunt Peggy, I have started to wonder if there might be some way to harness the skills and free time of other elderly people — for my own purposes and theirs.

With that in mind, I popped into the neighboring care home to ask if any of the residents would be prepared to teach knitting and crochet to me and my five-year-old daughter. Several hands shot up. Lessons start in January: perhaps we will film them and post them on YouTube.

by John-Paul Flintoff for The London Times, December 21 2008

Eurpoean Union proposals which will potentially ban the use of carcinogenic, mutagenic, neurotoxic and reprotoxic substances will be voted on by members of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee on Wednesday November 5th.

As neurotoxins, the group of substances known as neonicotinoids could be banned in the European Union. These substances have been shown to have a devastating impact on honey bees across the world, and a number of European countries have subsequently banned their use. We are urging the UK to do the same by supporting the new legislation.

As Hiltrud Breyer, the MEP overseeing the legislation explains, the new rules ‘will create a win-win situation for all – for consumers’ health, for the protection of the environment, but also for Europe’s farming industry’. The UK government is almost alone in opposing adequate safeguards.

The chemical industry has been making very misleading claims about loss of production from non-organic farming in the UK if these additional, and we think modest, safeguards are agreed by the EU.

Some of the claims are ridiculous; for example, an article in the UK farming press claimed that the UK would lose 100% of our carrot crop! Organic farmers grow carrots, along with many other crops, successfully in the UK, and yields are not much below, or are similar to non-organic farms. We hope that MEPs on the Committee will treat some of the claims they are being presented with from the UK with a healthy scepticism.

Peter Melchett, policy director of the UK’s largest organic food charity the Soil Association said:
“Other European Countries have recognized the devastating impact which these chemicals have had on the British honey bee population. The UK government should follow suit and support the EU proposals to ban these dangerous chemicals. The government should be acting to protect public safety and wildlife, not merely a small sector of the chemical industry”.

The vast majority of consumers believe cloned animals and their offspring should not be farmed for food, according to an EU study. Currently, there is no law to stop meat and milk from these animals getting into the food chain. Nor is there any requirement to label food from clone offspring. The EU and Britain’s Food Standards Agency are in the throes of deciding how clone farming should be policed. A survey of 25,000 European consumers yesterday made clear that families are unhappy at ‘Frankenstein Food’ farming.

Sean Poulter, Daily Mail, UK

ONCE you become accustomed to gas at $4 a gallon, brace yourself for the next shocking retail threshold: bananas reaching $1 a pound. At that price, Americans may stop thinking of bananas as a cheap staple, and then a strategy that has served the big banana companies for more than a century — enabling them to turn an exotic, tropical fruit into an everyday favorite — will begin to unravel.

The immediate reasons for the price increase are the rising cost of oil and reduced supply caused by floods in Ecuador, the world’s biggest banana exporter. But something larger is going on that will affect prices for years to come.

That bananas have long been the cheapest fruit at the grocery store is astonishing. They’re grown thousands of miles away, they must be transported in cooled containers and even then they survive no more than two weeks after they’re cut off the tree. Apples, in contrast, are typically grown within a few hundred miles of the store and keep for months in a basket out in the garage. Yet apples traditionally have cost at least twice as much per pound as bananas.

Americans eat as many bananas as apples and oranges combined, which is especially amazing when you consider that not so long ago, bananas were virtually unknown here. They became a staple only after the men who in the late 19th century founded the United Fruit Company (today’s Chiquita) figured out how to get bananas to American tables quickly — by clearing rainforest in Latin America, building railroads and communication networks and inventing refrigeration techniques to control ripening. The banana barons also marketed their product in ways that had never occurred to farmers or grocers before, by offering discount coupons, writing jingles and placing bananas in schoolbooks and on picture postcards. They even hired doctors to convince mothers that bananas were good for children.

Once bananas had become widely popular, the companies kept costs low by exercising iron-fisted control over the Latin American countries where the fruit was grown. Workers could not be allowed such basic rights as health care, decent wages or the right to congregate. (In 1929, Colombian troops shot down banana workers and their families who were gathered in a town square after church.) Governments could not be anything but utterly pliable. Over and over, banana companies, aided by the American military, intervened whenever there was a chance that any “banana republic” might end its cooperation. (In 1954, United Fruit helped arrange the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Guatemala.) Labor is still cheap in these countries, and growers still resort to heavy-handed tactics.

The final piece of the banana pricing equation is genetics. Unlike apple and orange growers, banana importers sell only a single variety of their fruit, the Cavendish. There are more than 1,000 varieties of bananas — most of them in Africa and Asia — but except for an occasional exotic, the Cavendish is the only banana we see in our markets. It is the only kind that is shipped and eaten everywhere from Beijing to Berlin, Moscow to Minneapolis.

By sticking to this single variety, the banana industry ensures that all the bananas in a shipment ripen at the same rate, creating huge economies of scale. The Cavendish is the fruit equivalent of a fast-food hamburger: efficient to produce, uniform in quality and universally affordable.

But there’s a difference between a banana and a Big Mac: The banana is a living organism. It can get sick, and since bananas all come from the same gene pool, a virulent enough malady could wipe out the world’s commercial banana crop in a matter of years.

This has happened before. Our great-grandparents grew up eating not the Cavendish but the Gros Michel banana, a variety that everyone agreed was tastier. But starting in the early 1900s, banana plantations were invaded by a fungus called Panama disease and vanished one by one. Forest would be cleared for new banana fields, and healthy fruit would grow there for a while, but eventually succumb.

By 1960, the Gros Michel was essentially extinct and the banana industry nearly bankrupt. It was saved at the last minute by the Cavendish, a Chinese variety that had been considered something close to junk: inferior in taste, easy to bruise (and therefore hard to ship) and too small to appeal to consumers. But it did resist the blight.

Over the past decade, however, a new, more virulent strain of Panama disease has begun to spread across the world, and this time the Cavendish is not immune. The fungus is expected to reach Latin America in 5 to 10 years, maybe 20. The big banana companies have been slow to finance efforts to find either a cure for the fungus or a banana that resists it. Nor has enough been done to aid efforts to diversify the world’s banana crop by preserving little-known varieties of the fruit that grow in Africa and Asia.

In recent years, American consumers have begun seeing the benefits — to health, to the economy and to the environment — of buying foods that are grown close to our homes. Getting used to life without bananas will take some adjustment. What other fruit can you slice onto your breakfast cereal?

But bananas have always been an emblem of a long-distance food chain. Perhaps it’s time we recognize bananas for what they are: an exotic fruit that, some day soon, may slip beyond our reach.

By DAN KOEPPEL,
June 18, 2008, NY Times

Dan Koeppel is the author of “Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World.”

This is an extract of an interview with Californian organic restauranteur Alice Waters, published April 29, 2008.

What’s in your kitchen?

A fireplace that I can cook in and big windows that look out to my garden. There is no equipment, as such; certainly not machines. I have lots of pestles and mortars, a rather small stove, a big table to eat at and a big table to cook on.

I mostly buy food at the market and use it pretty much right away. My refrigerator has a lot of condiments, jams and jellies. I also keep pasta, grains and couscous.

I grow mostly herbs in my garden, as well as some salad and radishes and citrus fruits. There’s also lots of mint and lemon verbena. I love making fresh mint tea. We serve it after meals at the restaurant.

Local produce pioneers

California has set a lot of trends among foodies in the western world, and buying from home is just one of them

How would you sum up your food philosophy?

Pretty simply that I want to buy food that’s locally grown, sustainably farmed, seasonably ripe, and then I want to cook pretty simply. I really love having the fireplace going. I cook eggs and toast in the fire; that’s my specialty, if you can call it one.

How have our attitudes to food changed?

I think there has been a reaction to the manipulation of our food system and I think we’re finally coming back to our senses. We’re just realising that we need to eat real food, food that’s grown for our good health, and we need to eat a variety of foods.

I think the most exciting thing is the biodiversity that’s coming back to gardens. We’re not just getting five kinds of lettuce now, we’re getting 25.

What is Britain’s best-kept food secret?

After mad cow, I think you had a kind of wake-up call and people just started paying attention in a way that they hadn’t before. There’s an awareness in England about where food comes from that doesn’t really exist anywhere else I know about. You have the horticultural roots that will make it possible to really change the food system. And you have an enlightened Prince of Wales who is aware of the food system.

Do you prefer eating in or eating out?

I always like to eat at home, but being the restaurantrice that I am, I also like to eat out. I go to the places where I know the owner because I like to get their advice. I love salads and pasta. I’m less of a dessert person and like savoury foods.

What is the next big (real) food trend?

I don’t like to think of it (food) as a trend, but around the world there is more focus on food. If you can call seasonal food in the garden a trend, then I think it’s coming back.

The way that we’re ultimately going to save ourselves and this planet is if we educate ourselves and our children about where our food comes from. I think the work that Jamie Oliver and the Soil Association are doing in England is radical and vital.

US farmers have been given the green light to produce cloned meat for the human food chain. In a report billed as a “final risk assessment” of the technology, the US Food and Drug Administration has concluded that healthy cloned animals and products from them such as milk are safe for consumers.

The announcement follows the launch of a public consultation on the issue by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Its “draft opinion” on the technology gave provisional backing on the grounds that there was no evidence for food safety or environmental concerns.

Joyce D’Silva, of Compassion in World Farming describes it as “…a technology that has arisen out of a huge burden of animal suffering and that is still going on.” She said even if the embryo loss rates were brought down to acceptable levels, the technology would be detrimental to animal welfare. “It looks like it is going to be used to produce the most highly productive animals… These are the high-producing animals that have the most endemic welfare problems anyway.”

The UK National Farmers’ Union has adopted a wait-and-see attitude to the technology. Helen Ferrier, the NFU’s food science adviser said, “Generally our views on the safety or the acceptability etc are really based on the opinions of independent scientific experts.” If cloning is adopted she said the NFU did not favor labeling cloned meat.

“If the product is absolutely the same as its equivalent but using a different system, it’s not necessarily very useful to label it, because it’s misleading to the consumer and it’s impossible to enforce.”

OrganicFoodee.com thinks otherwise. Consumers want the facts about what they are eating. It’s our basic right to have cloned meat clearly labeled so we can choose to buy it or not to buy it. Until cloned meat is labeled, the only way to avoid eating it is to buy organic meat, as organic meat by law cannot be cloned.

British shoppers were warned yesterday that there could be a shortage of organic turkeys at supermarkets this Christmas. The recent bird flu outbreak in East Anglia, which resulted in tens of thousands of premium birds being culled, is posing major problems for suppliers and retailers with less than three weeks to go. Industry experts predict that customers may find it harder to buy a fresh turkey, which will push up prices.

The extent of the looming problem was underlined by a major quality supermarket chain, Waitrose, which said yesterday that it would have no organic turkeys to sell this Christmas. The store had planned to source its entire stock of 18,000 birds from two UK farms on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk. However, they were all slaughtered when the premises became infected with avian flu.

In the past year, the UK organic turkey market has increased by almost 50 per cent as British shoppers spend more for top-quality, traceable produce.

Each growing season, like many other sugar beet farmers bedeviled by weeds, Robert Green repeatedly and painstakingly applies herbicides in a process he compares to treating cancer with chemotherapy.

In his right hand, Duane Grant holds a genetically engineered sugar beet, next to a conventional beet. Once refined, the sugar from each would be the same, sucrose.

“You give small doses of products that might harm the crop, but it harms the weeds a little more,” said Mr. Green, who plants about 900 acres in beets in St. Thomas, N.D.

But next spring, for the first time, Mr. Green intends to plant beets genetically engineered to withstand Monsanto’s powerful Roundup herbicide. The Roundup will destroy the weeds but leave his crop unscathed, potentially saving him thousands of dollars in tractor fuel and labor.

For Mr. Green and many other beet farmers, it is technology too long delayed. And the engineered beets could pave the way for the eventual planting of other biotech crops like wheat, rice and potatoes, which were also stalled on the launching pad.

Seven years ago, beet breeders were on the verge of introducing Roundup-resistant seeds. But they had to pull back after sugar-using food companies like Hershey and Mars, fearing consumer resistance, balked at the idea of biotech beets. Now, though, sensing that those concerns have subsided, many processors have cleared their growers to plant the Roundup-resistant beets next spring.

It would be the first new type of genetically engineered food crop widely grown since the 1990s, when biotech soybeans, corn and a few other crops entered the market.

“Basically, we have not run into resistance,” said David Berg, president of American Crystal Sugar, the nation’s largest sugar beet processor. “We really think that consumer attitudes have come to accept food from biotechnology.”

A Kellogg spokeswoman, Kris Charles, said her company “would not have any issues” buying such sugar for products sold in the United States, where she said “most consumers are not concerned about biotech.”

If some other big food companies are now open to genetically modified sugar, though, they are not talking about it. Both Hershey and Mars declined to comment. “There’s just nothing we have to say on the topic,” a Mars spokeswoman said.

Many sugar refiners and seed developers also refused to comment, hewing to an industrywide plan to coordinate the introduction of the genetically engineered beets and carefully control what is said about them.

When it comes to genetically modified crops, there is a reason to keep one’s corporate head low — to avoid protests. Some opponents of biotechnology are only now getting wind that the sugar beets have been resurrected.

“When I first saw this I said, ‘No, it can’t be,’” said Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association. “I thought we had already dealt with this.”

His organization issued a call to arms and thousands of identical e-mail messages were sent to Mr. Berg at American Crystal Sugar warning that “profit margins of your company and its supporting farmers” would be hurt by consumer resistance.

Mr. Berg said he received 681 messages in a 24-hour period before having the e-mail blocked. He said he still believed that most consumers would accept biotech crops. Mr. Cummins, however, said he would next try to persuade consumers to pressure food companies to boycott the sugar. “I don’t think companies like Hershey are going to want any more hassles than they already have,” he said, referring to recent earnings pressure and management turmoil at the chocolate company.

About 10,000 American farmers grow sugar beets on about 1.3 million acres, mainly in Northern states from Oregon to Michigan. That makes the beets a minor crop compared with corn, at about 90 million acres, and soybeans, at almost 70 million.

And yet beets account for about half the nation’s sugar supply, with the rest coming from sugar cane. The sugar from beets and cane, generally considered interchangeable, is used in candies, cereals, cakes and numerous other products, although some food manufacturers have switched to high-fructose corn syrup, which is cheaper.

When genetically engineered versions of soybeans and corn — as well as cotton and canola — were introduced in the mid-1990s, farmers quickly adopted them. But opposition to genetically engineered crops then took hold, particularly in Europe. Food companies, fearing protests or loss of customers, pressured farmers not to grow the crops.

Sugar was not the only crop affected. Insect-resistant potatoes developed by Monsanto were withdrawn from the market in 2001 after fast-food companies resisted them. Monsanto gave up on developing Roundup-resistant wheat in 2004, in part because American wheat farmers feared losing exports. The rice industry, also heavily dependent on exports, has never grown herbicide-tolerant varieties.

Even if the situation has now changed for sugar, however, other crops might still meet resistance. For one thing, sugar is a refined product that contains no DNA or proteins, just the chemical sucrose. “While the sugar beet is genetically different, the sugar is the same,” said Luther Markwart, executive vice president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association and co-chairman of the Sugar Industry Biotech Council.

By contrast, the foreign DNA and proteins in genetically modified wheat, rice or potatoes can be eaten by consumers, which at least theoretically raises food safety questions.

Moreover, only about 3 percent of American sugar is exported, Mr. Markwart said, compared with about half of wheat and rice.

The sugar industry’s organizational structure also helps. Virtually all sugar processors — the companies that buy the beets from farmers and then extract the sugar and sell it — are owned by the farmers themselves. That makes them more likely to accept the biotech crops than an independent processor might be.

Among farmers, demand for the Roundup Ready beets, as they are known, is expected to be strong. “The sugar beet growers are going to adopt this technology immediately,” said Alan G. Dexter, the extension sugar beet specialist at North Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota. In a survey he conducted, 57 percent of beet growers cited weeds as their biggest problem, with diseases the distant runner-up at 16 percent.

The seeds will be most attractive to those with the biggest weed problems. With a technology fee of a little more than $100 per 100,000 seeds paid to Monsanto, the genetically engineered seeds will cost at least twice as much as conventional seeds. That translates to about $50 to $65 in extra seed costs per acre.

But Duane Grant, who grows about 5,000 acres of sugar beets in Rupert, Idaho, said the extra seed outlays would be offset by other savings. He said his annual herbicide costs would drop to $35 an acre, from $70, and he would no longer have to hire migrant workers to pull weeds by hand, at a cost of $35 to $150 an acre.

Mr. Grant, who was designated by the national beet growers’ association as its spokesman on this issue, also said Roundup would have to be sprayed only two or three times during the spring-to-fall growing season, while the existing herbicides must be sprayed five times or more. The existing herbicides are decades old and some weeds have developed resistance to them, Mr. Grant said.

Some weed experts say there are also some weeds resistant to Roundup and its generic equivalent, glyphosate, as a consequence of the heavy use of the herbicide spurred by the proliferation of Roundup Ready crops. But such weeds are not found in beet fields, Mr. Grant said.

He said that with conventional beets, Roundup can be used only before the seedlings emerge from the ground, because after that the Roundup would kill them.

Bringing back the biotech beets took a long, coordinated effort involving Monsanto, seed companies, growers, processors and trade groups under the auspices of the Sugar Industry Biotech Council.

Rival seed companies all agreed to use seeds descended from a single genetic transformation done by Monsanto and KWS, a German seed company. That meant the industry had to win federal approval only once. The new genetically engineered sugar beet was reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration in 2004 and approved for unrestricted growing by the Agriculture Department in early 2005.

And before planting the beets, farmers have waited for approvals in other important markets. Just last month Europe approved the beets for food and feed use, although not for planting.

Because such foods would have to be labeled in Europe as containing genetically engineered ingredients, some American food companies might use cane sugar, which is not genetically modified, for products they export to Europe. But in the United States, foods containing sugar made from biotech beets would not have to be labeled.

The sugar beet industry conducted field trials in Idaho last year and Michigan this year. Mr. Grant, who was part of the Idaho test, said the biotech seeds actually had slightly higher yields and sugar output than very similar conventional varieties.

Some environmentalists say the use of Roundup on sugar beets could contribute to the growing problem of Roundup-resistant weeds. But the Agriculture Department said it expected little, if any, environmental effect from growing the beets.

One factor that could help keep the trait from spreading is that beets produce seeds only in their second year, after passing through a winter. So beets grown in most parts of the country never produce seeds, because farmers harvest beets every fall and plant new seeds the next spring.

But in California, beets stay in the ground through the winter and there are weeds that can mate with sugar beets. So growers there may be more cautious about the Roundup revolution.

“We have to make sure we don’t cause ourselves more problems than we’re curing,” said Ben Goodwin, executive manager of the California Beet Growers Association.

Story written by Andrew Pollack for the New York Times

A new organic food store has opened in London’s trendy Clerkenwell district where everything for sale is sold without packaging - Unpackaged.

Shoppers are invited to bring their own containers to fill with everything from fresh organic produce to organic rice, organic dried fruits, organic oils and even eco washing powder. The store does offer reusable containers if needed, but is heavily promoting their customers to bring their own by offering a discount of 50 pence per kilo (about US$1 every 2 lbs).

It’s an old-fashioned concept. This is the way most stores operated a hundred years ago, from the old Wild West trading posts of California to the village delicatessens of the Swiss Alps. But the difference with this new store is that it’s modern and fun, with a deep political motivation to spread an eco-message while passing on the price benefits of lower packaging.

A newly published scientific study shows that infants who eat organic dairy products, and whose mothers also consumed organic dairy products when they were pregnant, are 36% less likely to suffer from eczema than children who consume conventional dairy products.

Whilst there is a significant body of evidence showing that organic food contains higher levels of beneficial nutrients than non-organic foods, this is the first example of a definite specific health impact of organic food consumption being published in a peer reviewed journal.

Currently one-third of the children in Western societies show symptoms of allergies including eczema, hayfever and asthma.

Whilst the study confirms organic dairy consumption protects against the development of eczema, the scientists could only hypothesise why organic dairy foods deliver this protection. Their hypothesis follows the established facts of increased levels of the beneficial conjugated linoleic acid isomers (CLA) found in milk from organically managed cows. A separate recent study confirms that higher levels of conjugated linoleic acids are not only found in cows’ milk but also in the breast milk of women consuming organic milk. This therefore underpins the hypothesis that the higher levels of CLAs in the breast milk of organic milk drinking mothers are a key mechanism in reducing eczema, as well as the organic dairy diet of the infants themselves.

CLA’s are currently receiving much attention in nutritional research, as experimental evidence suggests these fatty acids might have anti-carcinogenic, anti-atherosclerotic, anti-diabetic and immune-modulating effects, as well as a favorable influence on the proportion of fat tissue to muscle mass in the body.

Peter Melchett, Soil Association policy director said:
“The first peer reviewed scientific paper showing a significant health benefit from eating organic food is a major landmark. But the scientists’ findings of over a third fewer cases of eczema among children fits in with the experience of many people who eat organic food. Given the strong evidence that organic has more beneficial nutrients, and the absence of harmful additives, common sense suggests that organic food is better for your health. It’s good to see this starting to be confirmed by scientific research. These studies add to the body of evidence showing that the UK Food Standards Agency’s stance on organic food is out of date.”

The research was carried out by the Louis Bolk Institute and the Department of Epidemiology, Care and Public Health Research Institute (Caphri), Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands in association with a number of other medical schools:; Respiratory Epidemiology and Public Health Group, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, London, UK; Department of Epidemiology, Nutrition and Toxicology Research Institute Maastricht (NUTRIM), Maastricht University, PO Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, the Netherlands, Department of Medical Microbiology, University Hospital of Maastricht, Maastricht, the Netherlands; Department of Experimental Immunology, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

VARGINHA, Brazil — Rafael de Paiva was skeptical at first. If he wanted a “fair trade” certification for his coffee crop, the Brazilian farmer would have to adhere to a long list of rules on pesticides, farming techniques, recycling and other matters. He even had to show that his children were enrolled in school.

“I thought, ‘This is difficult,’” recalled the humble farmer. But the 20 percent premium he recently received for his first fair trade harvest made the effort worthwhile, Mr. Paiva said, adding, it “helped us create a decent living.”

More farmers are likely to receive such offers, as importers and retailers rush to meet a growing demand from consumers and activists to adhere to stricter environmental and social standards.

Mr. Paiva’s beans will be in the store-brand coffee sold by Sam’s Club, the warehouse chain of Wal-Mart Stores. Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s and Starbucks already sell some fair trade coffee.

“We see a real momentum now with big companies and institutions switching to fair trade,” said Paul Rice, president and chief executive of TransFair USA, the only independent fair trade certifier in the United States.

The International Fair Trade Association, an umbrella group of organizations in more than 70 countries, defines fair trade as reflecting “concern for the social, economic and environmental well-being of marginalized small producers” and does “not maximize profit at their expense.”

According to Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, a group of fair trade certifiers, consumers spent approximately $2.2 billion on certified products in 2006, a 42 percent increase over the previous year, benefiting over seven million people in developing countries.

Like consumer awareness of organic products a decade ago, fair trade awareness is growing. In 2006, 27 percent of Americans said they were aware of the certification, up from 12 percent in 2004, according to a study by the New-York based National Coffee Association.

Fair trade products that have experienced the biggest jump in demand include coffee, cocoa and cotton, according to the Fairtrade Labelling Organizations.

Dozens of other products, including tea, pineapples, wine and flowers, are certified by organizations that visit farmers to verify that they are meeting the many criteria that bar, among other things, the use of child labor and harmful chemicals.

There is no governmental standard for fair trade certification, the same situation as with “organic” until a few years ago. Some fair trade produce also carries the organic label, but most does not. One important difference is the focus of the labels: organic refers to how food is cultivated, while fair trade is primarily concerned with the condition of the farmer and his laborers.

Big chains are marketing fair trade coffee to varying degrees. All the espresso served at the 5,400 Dunkin’ Donuts stores in the United States, for example, is fair trade. All McDonald’s stores in New England sell only fair trade coffee. And in 2006, Starbucks bought 50 percent more fair trade coffee than in 2005.

Fair trade produce remains a minuscule percentage of world trade, but it is growing. Only 3.3 percent of coffee sold in the United States in 2006 was certified fair trade, but that was more than eight times the level in 2001, according to TransFair USA.

Although Sam’s Club already sells seven fair trade imports, including coffee, this will be the first time it has put its Member’s Mark label on a fair trade product, which Mr. Rice of TransFair called “a statement of their commitment to fair trade.”

He added, “The impact in terms of volume and the impact in terms of the farmers and their families is quite dramatic.”

Michael Ellgass, the director of house brands for Sam’s Club, said the company could afford to pay fair trade’s premium because it has reduced the number of middlemen.

Coffee usually passes from farmers through roasters, packers, traders, shippers and warehouses before arriving in stores. But Sam’s Club will buy shelf-ready merchandise directly from Café Bom Dia, the roaster here in Brazil’s lush coffee country.

“We are cutting a number of steps out of the process by working directly with the farmer,” Mr. Ellgass said.

Some critics of fair trade say that working with thousands of small farmers makes strict adherence to fair trade rules difficult.

Others argue that fair trade coffee is as exploitive as the conventional kind, especially in countries that produce the highest-quality beans — like Colombia, Ethiopia and Guatemala. Fair trade farmers there are barely paid more than their counterparts in Brazil, though their crops become gourmet brands, selling for a hefty markup, said Geoff Watts, vice president for coffee at Chicago’s Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea, a coffee importer.

But in Brazil, a nation with little top-grade coffee, the partnership between small producers and big retailers is a better blend, Mr. Watts said.

Fair trade coffee farmers in Brazil are paid at least $1.29 a pound, compared with the current market rate of roughly $1.05 per pound, said Sydney Marques de Paiva, president of Café Bom Dia.

Most coffee farmers are organized into cooperatives, and some of that premium finances community projects like schools or potable water.

Like most of his cooperative’s 3,000-odd members — and three-quarters of coffee growers worldwide — Mr. Paiva, the coffee farmer (no relation to Mr. Marques de Paiva), farms less than 25 acres of land. He produces around 200 132-pound sacks for the co-op, with 70 percent of that sold as fair trade to Café Bom Dia.

The company would buy more if there were more of a market for fair trade coffee, it said.

The fair trade crop brought Mr. Paiva about 258 reais ($139) a sack, compared with about 230 reais for the sacks that were not fair trade. For the latest crop, that meant an additional 3,920 reais ($2,116) for him, a huge sum here in the impoverished mountains of Minas.

“It’s been great for us,” Mr. Paiva said with a huge, toothless grin. “I call the people from the co-op my family now.”

Mr. Ellgass, the Sam’s Club executive, said the chain hoped to expand its fair trade goods.

So do Brazil’s farmers. “Everybody is doing their best to come up to standard so we can sell our coffee as fair trade,” said Conceição Peres da Costa, one of the co-op’s growers. “Everybody wants to earn as much as he can.”

By Andrew Downie for the New York Times

The indiscriminate use of toxic pesticides on banana plantations in the French Caribbean has left much of the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe poisoned for a century to come, a report to the French parliament warned yesterday. The two islands and their 800,000 inhabitants faced a “health disaster”, with soaring rates of cancer and infertility, said Professor Dominique Belpomme, a French cancer specialist.

Based on present trends, half the men of Martinique and Guadeloupe were likely to develop prostate cancer at some point in their lives, Professor Belpomme said. Birth defects in children were also becoming far more common, he warned.

Tests have shown that every child born in Guadeloupe is contaminated with chlordecone, a highly toxic pesticide also known as kepone, which was banned in many countries in 1979. It was used legally in France until 1990 and in the French Caribbean until 1993. But it was used illegally to kill weevils in Martinique and Guadeloupe until 2002, often sprayed by airplanes.

Professor Belpomme said: “The situation is extremely serious. The tests we carried out on pesticides show there is a health disaster in the Caribbean. The word is not too strong. Martinique and Guadeloupe have literally been poisoned.”

“The poisoning affects both land and water. Chlordecone establishes itself in the clay and stays there for up to a century. As a result, the food chain is contaminated, especially water. In Martinique, most water sources are polluted.”

Politicians from the islands, which are overseas departments of France, were torn between accusing the professor of “alarmism” and calling for a full inquiry.

“This must not be covered up by a conspiracy of silence,” said Victorin Lurel, the socialist leader of the Guadeloupe regional council. Christian Estrosi, the French minister for overseas territories, cast some doubts on the scientific basis of the report but said he was “wholly favorable” to an official commission.

Martinique and Guadeloupe produce more than 260,000 tonnes of bananas a year, worth US$300m. The industry, which employs 15,000 people, also receives £90m (US$180m) in EU aid. The islands, which are relatively poor compared with the French mainland, are already struggling to recover from Hurricane Dean, which devastated every banana plantation in Martinique and half of those in Guadeloupe last month. Many growers may find their soils and water tables so contaminated they will never be allowed to re-plant their crops, Professor Belpomme said. Although the banana fruit itself is not affected by chlordecone, the toxin can remain in soil for 100 years and is absorbed by humans through the skin and respiratory tract. Exposure to the powder can cause tremors, headaches, slurred speech, dizziness, memory loss, weight loss and sterility and raise the risk of developing cancer.

In early August, Guadeloupe’s appeal court accepted a complaint against “persons unknown” for “poisoning” the island with pesticides. This opens up the possibility of a criminal investigation into the responsibility of successive French governments in failing to ban, or monitor, the illegal use of the chemicals.

According to Professor Belpomme, the impact on health in the islands will be more serious than the “tainted blood” scandal of the 1980s, in which 4,000 French people were infected by blood contaminated with the HIV virus .

“In this case, it is a whole population which has been poisoned,” he told MPs. “Those people who are alive today but also future generations.

“The rate of prostate cancer is major. The French Caribbean is second in the world ranking. The rate of congenital malformation is increasing and women are having fewer children than 15 years ago. The standard theory is that this is because of the Pill, but I think it is linked to pesticides.”

But Christian Choupin, head of the Martinique and Guadeloupe banana growers’ association, insisted chlordecone was no longer used and claimed Professor Belpomme’s report had “no proper scientific basis”. “He is giving the impression that people are dropping like flies, which is not at all the case,” M. Chupin said.

By John Lichfield in Paris for The Independent UK

A new American scientific study clearly links exposure to commonly used pesticides increases the risk of asthma. Over 23 million Americans suffer from asthma, of which almost 9 million are minors.

The new scientific study of nearly 20,000 American farmers was presented on Sunday to the European Respiratory Society Annual Congress in Stockholm, Denmark. It was carried out by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

Of the 19,704 farmers included in the study, 127 had doctor diagnosed allergic asthma and 314 had non-allergic asthma.

The study concludes that a history of high pesticide exposure shows a doubling of asthma risk. The link remained statistically significant after adjusting for a variety of potentially confounding factors including age, smoking, body weight, and state of residence.

During the study, 452 farmers aged 30 and over developed asthma. Farmers in Iowa and North Carolina, who used around 16 chemical sprays, were found to be most at risk.

Overall, 16 of the pesticides studied were associated with asthma: 12 with the allergic variety of asthma and 4 with the non-allergic type. Coumaphos, EPTC, lindane, parathion, heptachlor, and 2,4,5-TP were most strongly linked to allergic asthma. For non-allergic asthma, DDT, malathion, and phorate had the strongest effect.

“This is the first study with sufficient power to evaluate individual pesticides and adult asthma among individuals who routinely apply pesticides. Moreover, this is the only study to date to do this for allergic and non-allergic asthma separately,” a spokesman for the researchers said.

“The possible scope of the link between pesticides and adult-onset asthma raises a problem of broader interest, given the considerable quantities of pesticides used in the domestic and urban environments. Their impact on a population which, while less exposed, has a greater risk of allergies and a higher prevalence of asthma, remains to be determined.”

It is more than 30 years since an American scientist, Ben Feingold, first suggested that artificial food colors and other additives caused overactive, impulsive and inattentive behavior in children; this sort of hyperactivity is known to be a marker for later educational difficulties, especially problems with reading, and antisocial behavior.

Feingold’s work and subsequent studies, however, were dismissed as flawed or inconclusive.

Today’s UK government-commissioned research confirming that food additives commonly found in non-organic children’s food have a detrimental effect on their behavior is the largest trial of its kind. But its findings come as no surprise to campaign groups such as the Hyperactive Children’s Support Group, who have long argued that eliminating junk food can dramatically improve the behavior of some children.

One of the things that makes the latest findings so significant is that the research by the University of Southampton has been so thoroughly conducted and reviewed and cannot be argued away; it is published in medical journal The Lancet today. The study also found there was increased hyperactivity in children with no history of problems.

The leader of the research, Professor Jim Stevenson, said it provided a clear demonstration that changes in behavior could be detected in three-year-old and eight-year-old children who consumed a mix of additives. Researchers at the same department found similar effects in a study seven years ago.

The additives tested were designed to match what a child would be exposed to in a normal diet. The mixes tested included artificial colors used for decades in many products aimed at children and the widely used preservative sodium benzoate. All of the food additives in the test are banned from organic food, so choosing organic soft food, candy, cakes and ice cream means avoiding these food additives.

Since Feingold’s original work, behavioral problems among schoolchildren have risen, as have diagnoses of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Estimates of numbers of children suffering from full ADHD vary: one UK survey estimates that 2.5% of British schoolchildren are affected, and international studies put the figure at 5-10%.

The UK Government’ Food Standards Agency (FSA), which commissioned the study, was taking a cautious line yesterday. Professor Ieuan Hughes, the chairman of its expert committee on the toxicity of chemicals in food (CoT), said that since some children in the study reacted significantly to the additives but others did not, it was not possible to draw conclusions about the effect on the general population. Nor was it possible, he said, to extrapolate from these particular additives to other additives.

The FSA revised its official advice, but only to suggest that parents who think their children show signs of hyperactive behavior should avoid foods containing artificial colors and the preservative sodium benzoate by checking labels. In fact, many of the products which contain these additives - sweets, cakes, ice cream and drinks - are sold without labels.

The FSA has also not issued advice to schools on whether the additives should be banned from school food but advised concerned parents to ask head teachers.

Experts were asking yesterday why it had taken the authorities so long to act and why they had not gone further to remove the additives from food. Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London’s City University, said:

“The first calls to investigate these additives were made 30 years ago. Good for the FSA for finally doing this research but why did it take so long? The FSA must take a tougher pro-child position.”

Since EU legislation regulates the use of additives, the agency has referred the findings to the European Food Safety Authority, which has begun a review of all additives. It recently withdrew approval for one of the first colors it re-examined, Red 2G, which has been used for cosmetic purposes for decades in meat products.

Erik Millstone, professor of science policy at University of Sussex, who has studied the additives industry for many years, criticized the CoT and the FSA response as wholly inadequate. “Stevenson’s team has robustly shown that food additives do adversely affect the behavior, not only of children diagnosed as hyperactive, but normal healthy children too. The CoT pretends that these results have no implications for the general population or for food additives as a whole … The complacency of the CoT and FSA officials must now cease,” he said.

Although the FSA and the food industry stressed that the additives had been assessed for safety by the EC, some of the colors have been banned at various times in Scandinavian countries and the US. Also, some were approved many years ago when safety testing did not consider the effect on behavior. Until now, safety testing has looked at individual additives in isolation not in the cocktails in which they are consumed in the diet.

The FSA has been considering the safety of these additives since 2000, when it received the results of a study conducted by the same researchers, known as the Isle of Wight study. That research concluded that significant improvements in children’s behavior could be produced by the removing of colorings and sodium benzoate from their diet. CoT decided that this study was inconclusive, however. The purpose of the latest FSA study was to provide conclusive evidence.

Head teachers who have worked to remove additives from school meals said the research vindicated their efforts. Alan Coode, former head of a primary school in Merton, said: “We knew this all along. When we changed our school meals and removed additives there was a new calmness to the school. The science has just caught up.”

The food industry said it was already removing many artificial colorings. It argues that avoiding sodium benzoate is more difficult because it stops drinks that may have a shelf life of several years going off. The preservative is still very widely used, particularly by soft drinks manufacturers.

PepsiCo said no decision would be taken about its use of additives until it had seen the research. Coca-Cola, GlaxoSmith Kline, which makes energy drinks, and Unilever referred us to the industry’s Food and Drink Federation. Its director of communications, Julian Hunt, said: “It is important to reassure consumers that the Southampton study does not suggest there is a safety issue with the use of these additives. In addition, the way in which the additives were tested as a mixture is not how they are used in everyday products.” He said the industry would continue to reduce the use of additives.

The global additives market is worth more than $25bn (£12.4bn) a year. It grew by 2.4% a year between 2001 and 2004, when the food industry says it was transforming itself, and is growing rapidly.

Article by Felicity Lawrence for The Guardian, UK

Organic food and drink sales in the UK nudged the £2 billion (US$4 billion) mark for the first time in 2006, with a sustained market growth rate of 22 per cent throughout the year.

Launched to coincide with the start of the UK’s Organic Fortnight 2007, the Soil Association’s definitive annual Organic Market Report shows continued strong growth and dynamic public support for organic food, drink, textiles and health and beauty products.

Retail sales of organic products through organic delivery and mail order schemes and other direct routes increased from £95 million in 2005 to £146 million in 2006 - a staggering 53 per cent growth, more than double that experienced by the major supermarkets.

Organic textiles and the booming organic health and beauty sector are experiencing particularly strong growth. 2006 saw a 30 per cent increase in the number of health and beauty products licensed with the Soil Association. At current growth rates, the UK market for organic cotton products is estimated to be worth £107 million by 2008.

The report includes consumer research by Mintel which shows that more than half of those surveyed had purchased organic fruit and vegetables within the previous 12 months; one in four consumers had bought organic meat or dairy products; and one in six had purchased packaged organic goods.

Other key figures from the report reveal:

* Sales of free-range and organic outstripping eggs from caged birds for the first time. Consumer concerns over animal welfare appear to be driving changes in the poultry sector.
* An average of £37 million (US$74 million) is spent each week on organic produce in the UK with consumers living in London, the Southeast, the Southwest and Wales most likely to buy organic food.
* Households with children under the age of 15 tend to buy a wider range of organic foods than those with no children.
* Organic farmers are three times as likely to market their products locally or directly as non-organic farmers in the UK.

Despite the steady growth in demand for organic food over the past decade, some key sectors are still failing to meet demand. Organic livestock sectors are dependent on supplies of organic feed, but UK self-sufficiency in organic cereals fell below 50 per cent, during 2006, increasing our reliance on imported organic grains. The cost of livestock feed, whether for organic or non organic farmers, is rising as a result of recent poor global harvests, increasing diversion of cereals into biofuel production and rapidly rising demand particularly from China and India.

Helen Browning, Soil Association Director of Food and Farming said:
“These figures are extremely encouraging, the year on year growth in sales not just in food and drink, but also the newer booming clothing and health and beauty sectors confirm organic has moved well beyond a mere fad or niche.”

“The staggering 53 per cent growth in sales through home delivery schemes and other direct routes confirms strong public support for local, seasonal and organic food that provides a fair return to farmers and growers, boosts the local economy, and also reduces your carbon footprint – consumers are increasingly linking everyday food choice to environmental action.”

“While this year’s report confirms a positive future for organic food and farming, the organic movement faces challenges in the long-term from climate change and rising oil prices, as do all farmers and growers. Rises in feed and fuel prices will need to be reflected in food prices at the check-out that enable farmers to get a fair return on their production costs. It’s fantastic to have such strong public support for and understanding of the benefits provided by organic farming, but that must urgently extend to more widespread acceptance, by retailers as well as consumers, of the true costs of producing staple foods like eggs, milk, meat , and bread sustainably.”

“The significant short-fall in UK grown organic cereals is a major concern, forcing greater reliance on imports for livestock feed - but of course, it is also a major opportunity for current non-organic cereal farmers to convert and supply a guaranteed and growing market.”

“With the government’s own studies confirming that organic farming typically uses 30 per cent less energy than non-organic farming, it’s not surprising more and more people are choosing to purchase planet-friendly, organic food. This is confirmed by an independent poll commissioned by the Soil Association from Mumsnet, which found that 84 per cent of mums believe that organic is better for their family and 90 per cent for the planet. We’ll be using that endorsement from the nation’s mums to get Gordon Brown to wake up to the planet-friendly benefits of organic food and farming.”

The Chinese government yesterday launched a counter-offensive on product quality controls, threatening a ban on imports of US pork and calling for a worldwide drive to improve health and safety standards. This is because US pork products may contain ractopamine, a growth hormone that is banned in China but not in the US.

Chinese officials are to send two separate delegations to the US to discuss mounting concerns about safety controls following a series of scares over food, drugs and toys exported from the country. The scandals culminated this week in the US company Mattel’s decision to recall 18 million toys made in China and sold worldwide following warnings they may contain faulty magnets on which children could choke.

The first of the Chinese delegations will arrive in Washington this month to meet the US Food and Drug Administration, Zhao Baoqing, a spokesman for the country’s American embassy said, to be followed by a second round of talks in September with the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

However, Mr Zhao warned the Chinese government would not accept suggestions that lower production standards in Asia are the only problem area that such talks should cover. “I would like to say that the question of food safety and quality is a question for all the countries in the world,” he said. “It is not just a question for individual countries.”

Chinese officials are desperate to prevent a global backlash against exports from the country and have already introduced a series of measures designed to reassure trade partners.

In particular, the Chinese exports department has begun random testing of goods from industries including food and electronics, and also begun relaxing restrictions on journalists seeking to report on the manufacturing sector.

Last month, the former head of the Chinese food and drug safety agency was executed following a corruption scandal and officials have also launched a campaign urging manufacturers to more closely scrutinise the activities of sub-contractors.

Nevertheless, the scandals have encouraged some Western politicians to step up calls for much tighter controls on imports from China.

Christopher Dodd, the Democrat senator from Connecticut, who is seeking his party’s presidential nomination, even called for a ban on Chinese imports yesterday. “Parents should be confident that the toys and food they give their children have been inspected and are safe,” he said. “I am calling on the President to use his authority to immediately suspend all imports of toys and food from China.”

Meglena Juneva, the European Union’s Consumer Protection Commissioner, also called for greater vigilance on export standards. The EU already has a system through which each member state is required to notify the Commission of product recalls so that other countries can consider whether to follow suit. The Commission also has powers to ban products sourced from countries or firms implicated in several scandals.

However, widescale bans on imports from China would almost certainly provoke a trade war with the West, with serious consequences for both sides. Trade between China and the US alone is expected to be worth $500bn (£252bn) a year by 2010.

China has already warned it is considering a ban on pork imports from America, on the grounds that some products may contain ractopamine, a growth hormone that is banned in China but not in the US. A similar ban could be imposed on chicken feet and other agricultural produce.

The pork sector could be the first flashpoint in escalating trade disputes between China and the West. China’s concerns about US hormone treatments are mirrored by increasing anxiety among Western producers about an outbreak of the potentially fatal blue ear disease in Asia. Though Chinese officials say the outbreak is under control, the authorities have had to cull tens of thousands of pigs.

By David Prosser, Deputy Business Editor, The Independent UK, 17 August 2007

Somewhere in America, word gets out that the country’s top natural foods grocer is setting up shop. Soon property prices start to rocket. Once it’s built, the Croc-wearing, Audi-driving “soccer moms” arrive, happy to pay over the odds for organically produced food.

It’s a fair bet that many of the customers are also Democrat supporters, the sort of Americans who want to do something positive for the environment. We know this because John Mackey, the chief executive of the world’s largest natural food chain, puts enormous effort into understanding what motivates the people who buy his organic carrots. And Whole Food stores, found in such Democratic bastions as Austin, Berkeley, Boston, New York and Washington DC, are all extremely profitable.

But the company is also at the receiving end of what many see as a politically motivated investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, which is trying to halt Whole Foods’ proposed purchase of a loss-making competitor, Wild Oats.

The commission revealed this week that Mr Mackey has been posting “voluminously” in online market discussion forums under the pseudonym Rahodeb, which is an anagram of his wife’s first name, Deborah.

So far there is no allegation of wrongdoing on Mr. Mackey’s part, and it is widely assumed that the chief executive of a publicly traded company would not be stupid enough to leak insider information on a stock discussion board, or make statements to pump up Whole Foods stock price.

But the commission is eager to show that Whole Foods is anti-competitive, and allowing it to buy out a rival health food chain would lead to monopolistic practices. The blocking of the merger with Wild Oats comes as Wal-Mart begins to move into the organic food business, sensing the enormous profits to be made. Wal-Mart, the number one grocer in the US, could quickly come to dominate the small organic food sector.

Mr Mackey’s anonymous blogging is but the latest of his eccentricities. He is a vegan, a libertarian and a fiercely successful capitalist who hates trade unions. He is worth an estimated $40m and, unlike so many of America’s mega-wealthy, thinks that’s enough. Last November, he slashed his salary from $1m to $1.

He dropped out of university in 1978 aged 25, to co-found his first vegetarian establishment in Austin, Texas, a vegetarian wholefood store with the ironic name Safer Way. Soon he was living in the store, using the commercial-sized dishwasher as a shower. When the store was flooded, loyal customers helped to clean up.

The company quickly expanded, becoming what the Financial Times called “the fastest-growing mass retailer in the US”. Last year, Whole Foods’ total revenue was more than $5bn and its gross profit was more than $1.6bn. The company has 181 supermarkets. It has also arrived in the UK, opening the world’s largest Whole Foods store in the centre of town.

Mr Mackey remains the driving force behind Whole Foods, and unlike other companies such as Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, which sold out to a corporation, he shows no signs of selling up. Instead he is increasingly focused on animal welfare. He has banned the sale of live lobsters in most of his stores and has developed a five-star rating for all meats sold.

“What he’s doing is educating Americans about food and sustainability,” said Bryan Meehan, who sold his company Fresh and Wild to Whole Foods. “He is intensely competitive in a positive way, but also deeply caring about the world.”

by Leonard Doyle in Washington, DC for The Independent, UK

A food additive used to make commercial sausages and burgers pink may cause cancer. Scientific studies suggest Red 2G, (also known as E128), causes tumours in rats and mice and might have the same effect on people. After reviewing the experiments, the European Food Safety Agency (Efsa) said it could set no safe limit for the additive.

The European Commission is expected to ban its use within a fortnight, but products containing the additive on the shelves are not likely to be withdrawn in Europe. In America, there are currently no plans to limit the use of Red 2G.

Efsa has been reviewing the safety of colourings, many of which were approved for use 30 years ago. In a statement yesterday, the agency said its scientific panel on food additives, flavourings, processing aids and materials had reviewed several evaluations of Red 2G since 1999. It found the additive, one of a band of controversial “azo-dye” colourings, converted in the body into a substance called aniline.

“Based on animal studies the panel concluded that aniline should be considered as a carcinogen,” Efsa said, adding that it was not possible to state that the cancer had developed because of the genetic structure of the animal cells.

“It is therefore not possible to determine a level of intake for aniline which may be regarded as safe for humans,” it added. “The panel therefore decided that Red 2G should be regarded as being of safety concern.”

The European Commission is “reflecting” on the assessment and is expected to act at a meeting with member states on 20 July. A spokesman said Red G was used in Britain and Ireland but was not used in Scandinavia.

Ian Tokelove, of the pressure group the Food Commission, said there had been concerns about Red 2G going back decades and it was suspected of being a carcinogen in the 1980s. “Our general view is that additives are totally unnecessary,” he added. “We don’t need them in our food. They’re there to disguise the quality of the food and in this case to make meat products look fresher and meatier than they are.”

Red 2G is permitted for use in breakfast sausages with a minimum cereal content of 6 per cent and in burgers with 4 per cent of vegetables or cereals. It gives meat a reddish-pink appearance that turns brown on contact with heat.

Feature by Martin Hickman for The Independent, UK. July 10, 2007

The fast food chain McDonalds announced that all milk for its tea and coffee sold in the 1,200 outlets in the UK will come from organic British cows, starting the end of July. So far, 500,000 liters are sold in children’s Happy Meals. After the end of July, the company will need 8.6 million liters each year - a share of 5 % of all organic milk sales in the UK. This will make the company one of the biggest buyers for this product.

OrganicFoodee.com hopes the company’s food sourcing continues to improve in the UK and around the world. It would be a huge achievement if McDonalds decided to introduce organic milk into its restaurants across the USA, creating better opportunities for American organic farmers and providing healthier options for American McDonalds customers.