I'm not here to cause argument, just to pass on some news which I feel is relevant to us all in Europe.
This morning I received a letter from the Soil Association (own own organic watchdog) and went to their web site to find the press release (link below).
The UK governments' 3 year GM trialing is up this year. Next year we could be seeing GM crops growing in our fields. We should have all the GM products labelled by the time they get to the shop shelves so for most people, it won't be a big concern. (Apart from the cross pollination, escapes from cultivation, health concerns etc) However, the US Government and Biotech companies are now lobbying the World Trade Organisation to ban ALL labelling of GM products.
The UK Government (I'm not singling out anyone or any party) is, in the main, pro-GM. The Public of the UK and other EU countries are not. I'm now concerned that the lobbying will be sucessful despite all our protests.
IF the lobbying is successful it could mean the end of the organic produce safety net as well as losing the choice to remain GM free in our own larders. If GM crops contaminate an organic farm (feed for livestock, crop seed etc) the farmer will face losing their organic status, they could also be unwittingly releasing GM contaminated products into the organic market.
http://www.soilassociation.org/sa/saweb.nsf/7bf3d2dffe2556d580256a680039de19/62b3b08dfb6cdaea80256a9500473789?OpenDocument
GM products concern
Baa, your concern, typical of the British awareness of freedom of choice, and far too advanced a point of view for people in my country, I am afraid your concern is true.
I feel very pessimistic about it. Because the industry has always found a way to masquerade products in order to sell them (think about it, the Consummers Association has not been able to force the producers (e.g. restaurants) to declare what ingredients they use) so finally you will not know what is GM and what is not. To look back, can you tell me if you know how the F1 hybrids are made? are all these methods totally innocent??
Foir once more, we will all be carried away - people, crowds that are unable to resist their masters (or, if you want, the social driving forces) and hope for the best - after all, we have more and more cancer deaths, and higher survival rates as well, with these mad cow animal foods, hormones in everything we eat, monocultures, antibiotics, insecticides etc. etc. Are you going to be affected only with longevity or also with malignancy ?? You can't choose.
God with us all - and I am happy to know you Brits put up a fight for these issues, Here nobody stirs in their sleep.
Dimitri
Dimitri
As ever, you speak wise and true words!
Baa
I wish you all the best in fighting this ridiculous "GM" is safe" policy. I'm not anti GM per se; I just think it needs far more research and far more testing - and not in places where pollen can blow onto non-GM areas. Companies and govermments are rushing into something they don't thoroughly understand - even magazines like the New Scientist are in favour of a much more moderate (and scientific, not business) approach.
People here in Switzerland, as all over Europe, are worried about GM. It's long-term research we need , not the general Monsanto rush we see nowadays.
Have they learnt nothing from the thalidomide scandal?
Whatever happened to scientific research and peer review?
Gerddi
I said the exact same thing about thalidomide to my Mom last Saturday!
I'm really hoping the EU will take a stand on this. I agree that we need much more independant research first, if it comes out safe then I'll be happy enough but I think that's why the Biotechs may be trying to push for the non labelling ... they know something we don't?
Considering the food scares we've had in the UK over the past 20 years I keep my mouth shut on peer review and scientific research now, it's not worth the hassle I get publically and privately. Needless to say, I no longer trust it to the degree I once did.
Baa
I have been amazed at what has been going on in the UK since I left (1986). Every time you pick up a paper or magazine it's some food item and I'm surprised you aren't all suffering from malnutrition! I come back at least once a year and eat and see no signs of salmonella in eggs and chicken, listeria in cheese, BSE in meat, swine fever in pork, foot and mouth, pesticides in fruit and veg, etc, etc.
Do you think the press is a bit hysterical or are all the food producers just plain greedy and stupid to boot?
Not accepting GM food until it has been scientifically proven safe is sensible so why does the govermment try and force it through?.
Here there are no battery eggs, no gm and all meat is clearly labelled regarding (traceable) origin. Why can't the UK do the same?
I think global marketing has a lot to answer far - it could be so good for us all but in the hands of the wrong people, it's a nightmare!
A return to local food production with a link between consumer and producer would be a very good thing - until then we all have to grow our own!
growing our own is not the answer - at least everybody's answer. It is very romantic to think that you have 20 chicken and you take them food leftovers from home and then start picking the eggs, but you need to buy animal food (is that clearly labelled and safe ??) and give them medicine when they all suddenly go sick and start cleaning their excrete which smells bad in the summer, while the animal food invites rats etc . Of couurse it can be done and many people do it, but it is a lot of hassle if you are not a farmer to start with. With these thoughts in mind I wrote the comment higher up in this thread.
Dimitri
Gerddi
It does seems that way.
Beef and pork produced in the UK is fully traceable and has been for some years. The sheep and chicken industries are a different kettle of fish although things are being put together to enable full tracability of sheep meat products.
The listeria scare was from French cheeses, not British, although it seems that was in fairly small print LOL.
Battery systems are being phased out. This is the last year anyone can set up a battery hen operation. By 2012 the EU will have banned all battery systems, Hurrah! Unfortunately, you want to see what they have decided is a good idea instead. Makes a big mockery of the whole ban! More info if you so desire.
The salmonella scare was caused by a silly and untrue, but public remark made by the 'Woman With Egg On Her Face' Edwina Currie. Who has since lived to regret it since she never did get to roost in Number 10! The British egg industry has never fully recovered from that remark and neither has she.
Pesticides ... the UK has a longer no spray period before harvest than other EU countries and has done for many years.
The recent F&M outbreak was an unmittigated disaster from start to finish. Firstly, the chap who had it on his farm first had been given the all clear for Swine Fever just a week or two prior to the F&M outbreak, by MAFF staff. He was already known as a bad farmer and should have been shut down at the outbreak of the Swine Fever. Secondly, all the precautions set out in a report after the 1967 outbreak were ignored. The movement of livestock should have been stopped the moment that F&M was confirmed. It took two weeks for officials to shake a leg and shut it down. The Army should have been brought in on the first week to handle the operation, they weren't. Burning carcasses in the fields is well known to spread the diease further ... ignored. The man who was brought in as an expert on disease spread was, in fact, a man who specialises in the spread of Human STDs NOT the experts on F&M spread who also tendered for the job. Sheer incompetance spread F&M just as much as the wind borne virus.
BSE ... the particular strain is a varient of the already notifiable disease BSE. There is still no proven link to eating beef and vCJD. The amount of cattle reported to have had the disease was greatly inflated ... again another small print paragraph in the media. Beef sales actually went up for the first time in years in 1996 when the beef price plummeted due to more media scares.
As for the media, it's the old story ... people would rather believe the first thing they are told than to view the full facts before making an informed opinion. (wanted to add I don't mean you, but the general public who don't give a second thought to the food on their table) The farming industry closes in on itself to it's own detriment during these times.
Local food production is something I'm a big advocate of but it does mean changing our attitudes to food and shopping for it.
I agree entirely with Dimitri on growing your own food. It's not for everyone so those that grow would sell their food to those that don't but this time without the official legislation that goes with farming and market gardening.
We are in the hands of the wrong people, food wise. The farming vote counts for nothing in this country now. Maybe that's a good thing in some ways but in others the lack of agricultural intelligence in the powers that be is destroying confidence and creating incompetance in the basis of our economy.
This message was edited Friday, Jul 26th 6:17 PM
I agree with you both - my comment on growing your own was meant for us gardeners, not the population in general.
That most people don't care about the food on their plates is obvious when you look in people's shopping trolleys in the supermarket queue. Until more people are more vocal about what they eat, the situation won't change and big business, which puts profits first and healthy food second, will continue to hold sway.
Here the nutritionists are worried about a forthcoming problem; so many young people eat nothing but pre-prepared food and we are heading for a generation that can't cook nor even knows where the food comes from. They are getting too much fat and too much salt and sugar in these foods, not to mention pesticides and herbicides, and are smoking heavily as well and it is thought there will be big health problems in the future. Fortunately not all young people are like this but it is a frighteningly large proportion (more than 50%).
As long as we are in the hands of the profit-first people, nothing's going to change.
Dimitri - it isn't just the Brits, it's all over the world. People are beginning to ask questions but they are very small voices. Let's be optimistic and hope that someone listens!
I agree Gerddi
The same is happening here with the kids. We are becoming an obese, unhealthy nation.
Gerddi, they listen - and they do not react. My impression, from food scandals in the past, is that in the end we all eat the forbidden material, finally. They keep it in ships, change nationality, wait until the noise is gone and then serve it. I was in Brussels in June 2000, when a dioxine scare regarding food from Belgium was heavily publicised in Greece, targeting mainly chocolates from Belgium. I heard nothing there, even bought several boxes and gave them around when I came back, and I am quite sure most of them were thrown away. In the end, nothing happened.
How can I be sure I was not exposed to chemicals that will trigger a cancer a few years later ?? I can't. I have to adopt a kishmet attitude, which may extend too long in the production and process of what I eat and drink, in a country where we bury oranges by the ton because we can't get good prices, and then we import orange juice from wherever.
Dimitri
Dimitri
Produce as much as you can yourself and buy organic what you can't, it's the only way. And what we've already consumed in the past - hope for the best. It's all we can do.
I try to grow all my own vegetables and some fruit and we are lucky to have an organic butcher's in this village, owned jointly by the local organic farms - if they sell to the supermarkets the mark up is so high that their produce doesn't sell. I pay a going rate, which is more than "factory" farms but a lot less than organics in the supermarket. The shop also sells vegetables and frozen food from organic sources (all with the Swiss organic label).
I hope there are similar organisations in the UK, Baa, as we will be coming home in about four years. It would be nice I could continue life without gm, hormones and pesticides. I see adverts for such food in the HDRA journal but wonder if there are actual shops, in small towns and villages, where we can shop safely? The one we have here is the first one in Switzerland so we still have a long way to go! Are we doomed to do a lot of our shopping by post?
By the way - the UK's
Dimitri
That thing about Belgium and the Dioxine is rather worrying!
It grieves me (as I'm sure it does many people) that the EU have gone about many things, certainly food wise, completely the wrong way. In being a Common Market we have to make room on the shelves for everyones produce. The orange farmers in Crete should be able to sell their produce first, to have to waste such a wonderful crop in this way must be heartbreaking to many.
Gerddi
Did you miss out the last sentance ;)
You will be happy to know we do have organic co-ops and box schemes here. The weekly farmers markets move about in their own counties but many organic farmers sell their produce at these places and from their own farms. Farm Shops here in the south have taken off very well. Organic butcher shops are a world away as yet as many organic meat products are sold on farm (or at the markets). We still import 75% of organic produce because conversion is difficult due to a lack of skilled labour and money difficulties during the 2 year transition period. However, we have many schemes where the crop is carefully monitored by some organisation like the RSPCA and are labelled, environment organisations do a similar thing.
If the supermarkets were to support British organic farming more then I'm sure many other conventional farmers will make the change over. There is a lot of interest into going organic among the farmers (cetainly in the south) but many are put off by the lack of market. Even with a 75% short fall, organic produce still doesn't have an effective marketer in this country and it's left up to the farmers to find the shelves for their produce. OK it might seem lazy but they are farmers and in the main good at producing crops ... marketing the product is a different matter and not easy to do without a lot of help and time in the beginning.
Maybe in the next 4 years, something along this line will be sorted out.
Baa, there is only one compass in trading: profit.
Although the eulogies re. EU products is full power noise, the Israeli citrus fruits are on every shelf in the UK yes??
D
Dimitri
Indeed they are!
Sorry for that broken sentence - I think it went on to say that the UK's got lots of farmers markets and that's great to see. It's also got a lot of caring people and we need for them to have a louder voice. (as here).
What we need is for big business to move into the organic way of thinking:) That is, of course, a joke. The idea of a manpower-heavy way of farming is foreign to big business - they don't see it as giving work to people, just as a waste of possible profits.
I hate to see all those cottages being gobbled up by townies for second homes because the farm workers have had to move away, having been replaced by pesticides, herbicides, machines and computers. The farming family my husband comes from has very few farmers left.
Subsisides were removed from moorland sheep farming and now there are villages in the Yorkshire Dales with hardly any locals left and a lot of the houses empty for a large part of the year.
I think a move to organic farming could change all this, but where oh where is the money going to come from?
Why no Cretan oranges Dimitri? It's criminal to import from Israel when you are having to throw fruit away. The EU should concentrate on local food and the colder countries should import their more tropical fruits (like citrus fruits) from the warmer ones - it makes sense.
Gerddi
I'm not a big advocate of organic farming. I agree with many principles of organic/holistic farming but I also know that in todays world it isn't entirely feisable and I'm not overly keen on certain aspects to it.
I did a stint arranging mortgages for farmers and land owners. There are big business farms out there but in the main they are few and far between. Family farms are still the norm for the UK and probably much of Europe. I've seen what regularly comes in and goes out financially and there is no room in the budget for the workers on the majority of farms. The industry has been undergoing some of the worst farm returns since the 1930's in the past few years. In that light a conversion to organic is downright impossible for many.
The money mustn't come from the public in subsidies, this creates a reliance for badly managed farms. I would like to do away with all badly managed farms and have them all supported by good workers and sound advice from the various bodies available. It must come from the food buyers in the price of the food.
Our priorities are wrong as a nation. We spend hundreds a year on childrens toys, tellies, cars etc and complain about a few extra pennies on good food. The farmers must receive a fair price for their goods, we currently fall far short of that. Again the lamb example ... I was conduting the sheep weighing activity on the open farm when I was collared by a man. He was interested to know how much we would get at market. I did a quick calculation based on the previous weeks sale and told him about £11-17 depending on the buyers. 'Per kilo?' he asked ... No, per sheep was my answer. He then went on to tell me he paid £13/kilo in his local supermarket for lamb. I'm not saying the farmers should get the whole £13 but there is a huge short fall from £13 to 88pence.
The other problem is skilled labour. The youngsters coming into the game are becoming fewer because the wages are so poor. Besides who wants to be living in a village at 16-24 years old? Some organic farms have been relying on volunteers during summer because they are too small to be able to employ a full time, properly skilled employee. Family farms are tending towards the same, they can only employ one or two people at best. To be honest a lot of the kids coming out of school right now have absolutely no work ethic at all, I've nearly pulled all my hair out at times LOL.
Farmers need to work together not separately, they need to make a noise and they need to push for more food education among the non farming public.
Education about farming is what's needed and I agree that farmers need to work together and somehow get through to the public. Townspeople have no idea what goes on in the country - to listen to the country alliance it is nothing but hunting, shooting and fishing.
Three years ago a cousin, in his sixties, took two sheep to market and was offered £1 each so he took them home and said he'd rather they grew old on his pasture. It was the first time he had ever brought animals home from market and he was depressed. His sons won't farm having seen what it's like and he has now sold up and taken early retirement. The family has been in farming for generations. Not any more.
Here in this part of Switzerland (the Alps) the farms are too small to be really viable; they get enormous subsidies and still have to find other ways of making money (like renting this flat and garden to us, anything to raise some extra cash).
My father-in-law, a farmer, has no farming grandchildren at all. If this goes on, who is going to produce the food?
As for organic farming - I agree, a lot of it is the ideal to aim for and not practical if you want to make a living. Integrated production is perhaps a simpler way to go and farmer's markets and closer links with consumers can only help. If people want organic produce though, they are going to have to pay for it and a lot of them can't and many of them won't.
Importing 75% is ridiculous - if the demand is there, where is the supply?
And as for the work ethic - lack of that is Europe-wide!
After taking part in this thread, I think I need to go and dig my garden to get rid of the steam it's creating!!! LOL
I see we are all agreeing on many points here and I feel much less like a voice shouting into the wind, as I have done previously. I'm glad to know there are others who care deeply about food and health issues. It's also apparent that what is happening here is happening all over Europe if not the entire Western World.
I'm not from a farming background and spent many hours during college arguing with farmers sons about opening gates to the public being the only way forward. I got the chance to put my views into practise a few years ago and that was an education in itself!
Now if only we 3 could be elected Agricultural EMPs ;)
Sorry to cause steam Gerddi especially in this heat!
That's all right Baa - we've all the shutters closed and are trying to get a breeze through the flat. The trouble is, the air that's coming through is warm but, when we go outisde, we realise how successful we are being at keeping the flat cool.
I'm not from a farming background either but grew up in a country village. I married into a farming family.
All we need to do now is make people aware of where their food comes from and how it is produced. :-)
Over to you, policians! Dimitri, Baa and Gerddi will be happy to act as consultants!!