Food flown into the UK may be stripped of organic status in a move being considered by the Soil Association.
Food can’t be “organic” if it arrives by airplane. What?
The Soil Association says highly perishable or out-of-season produce make up the bulk of air-freighted organic produce.
Due to growing demands to cut the environmental impact of food distribution, the Soil Association is now considering options to reduce the carbon footprint of air-freighted food…including a campaign to partially or fully deny food imported into the UK by air the right to label itself organic and comprehensive labelling showing a product’s country of origin as well as the air miles it has travelled.
The Soil Association – not surprising – only represents British farmers.
Here’s a decent article – which unfortunately requires 5 pages of registration – detailing everything from the sensible bits to the absurd about the so-called controversy. Examples include an advert whining about carbon emissions for a shipment of strawberries from New Zealand to the UK. Never noticing that the UK doesn’t get any strawberries from New Zealand.
My take? The folks doing the whining are like the nature-lovers who support alternatives to fossil-fueled energy as long as you don’t build a windmill that disturbs the view from their summer cottage. Mostly hypocrites and dilettantes!
Stop “foreign competition”? How about a blanket “stopping foreign nations” as developing countries claw themselves up out of the growth stone age using anything at their disposal – including burning their forests. The rest can afford to go “green” now that they’ve made it. Like the Richie Riches who can easily buy green credits to soothe their carbon guilt. If the West is serious about stopping global warming, would they ever use their ill-gotten gains to pay for the greening of all the polluting nations they now criticize?
Btw, It’s ironic that “organic” steals its name from the seemingly wholesome “organic chemistry” which is all about molecules based on carbon – like benzene and toluene.
RBG
There is talk about something like this in Sweden, some sort of label with red, yellow, green scale. Foreign competition should be affected, Norwegian fish sent to Thailand and then to Sweden (Thailand is not something you pass on the way from Norway to Sweden) seems excessive. But on the other hand, growing tomatoes here demands a heated greenhouse. That will also get a bad rating, worse than lets say a tomato from Holland.
Disagree entirely with the article…. I live in rural England, surrounded by hills and sheep, and yet if I went to the local supermarket the lamb and mutton is as likely to be from New Zealand as anywhere else. Madness! Carbon footprint aside, in the UK we have a modicum of democratic control over our country, even within the EU there there is some democratic control, but outside of the UK and particularly outside of the EU we have no say in how countries govern themselves, nor should we, so I don’t see why we should by products from any other country unless its something we can’t do here in the UK…. It just makes sense to buy things from your country, and your community, when you can…. I think the soil association are spot on….
Just another play for power.
Before you know it the UN will try to find a way to tax individuals in the developed nations. Wait and see.
This global warming crap is what happens when scholars are motivated by $$$.
Speaking of which, one blog I like to read for an alternative to the typical greenhouse drivel is Inhofe’s senate blog.
One excerpt from last week
“This past winter saw record snows in the Rocky Mountain region as well as an unusually cold spring in Alaska. Currently, we are seeing a Memorial Day snow advisory for the Colorado Mountains. Wyoming being buried in a May snowstorm and parts of Canada are still enduring winter. In addition, South Africa just set 54 new cold weather records with some parts seeing snow for the first time in 33 years as snow and ice continue to fall. And I am not finished. A massive snowstorm in China has closed highways and stranded motorists. And finally, winter has arrived early in Australia as the snow season is off to a promising start for the winter recreation industry. “.
Sounds like Global Warming to me.
Most people are wrong most of the time.
Believe it, Live it, Profit from it.
Here’s a decent article – which unfortunately requires 5 pages of registration…
Nah….
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If I got a local alternative, I prefer buying it instead of something from far away. Not only due to the stupidity of transporting something half across the globe when its also being grown just outside the city limit, but also to recirculate my money in the local economy.
Six toes? What – five aren’t enough?
If you notice, none of the articles cited are about screwing your local farmer, opposing farmers markets, etc..
They’re about agri-business that’s clambering on board the deservedly growing movement for healthier produce – and willing to screw dedicated farmers in 3rd World nations in the process.
Example: here in the States you now can buy a range of produce from papayas to mangos from true organic farms in Belize. The government there has recognized that advancement for both domestic and export markets.
The ADM crowd in the US is ready and willing to try exactly the same ploy – of damning the produce because it gets transported from Central America – even when it comes from nations which have the carbon footprint of one LA neighborhood.
Baloney! “Local” doesn’t mean healthier. It doesn’t even mean family farm, anymore.
The only way to reduce the total carbon footprint is to reduce the number of feet.
#2
Fully agree… I can’t see the sanity in having for instance fish transported to China in order to be processed and then back to here to be sold. It might make sense from an economic perspective, but not from an environmental point of view.
#7
Who said that local meant healthier? Or family farm? I can just tell you that we buy all meat and most of our vegetables directly from local organic family farms.
And as for you example with papayas to mangos… You can’t really grow them here, so yes, you will have to import them. But would you import potatoes from China?
#3…Ben….your correct in what you say. Buying local is a GOOD thing. But you know as well as I that a lot of UK locals have been scamming the public on organic foods. From eggs to veggies, even to chickens and beef. It’s not just a UK problem of course. But buying local may not always be the best answer.
A rating system, with all the info needed to determine how **green** a product is would be a good idea. But not just for products from Nambibia, but also from just down the road in Gloustershire.
Labour has not been very keen on *organic*….the Enviromental Minister Miliband?…..has said that organic isn’t any better for you…..what he fails to understand is, it’s not about better, but about not filling our bodies with chemicals that later can be harmful to us, and that using chemical’s, pesticides or growth promoting, pollutes the ground and eventually our water supplies.
Look what they are finding in studies about giving dairy cows antibiotics……they are passing them on to us, and is one of the prime factors in causing higher resistance to them in humans. And there is the growth hormones we give cattle and pigs and chickens, that are being passed to us….leading cause of the feminization of men(man breasts, softer features etc….not becoming girly).
But this move by the UK is just protectionist. They could care less about carbon footprints or anything else but money. And it will devastate farmers who grow truely organic foods in the third world, and who depend on the foods they raise to provide a living for them.
#8, The only way to reduce the total carbon footprint is to reduce the number of feet.
Especially those feet with six toes. What a footprint !! 🙂
#11
No foot fetish?
Another reason not to pay a lot of attention to labeling.
For those with a foot fetish… check this out! Nipple on the foot…
http://tinyurl.com/s8lgq
You foot fetish folks must have had wet dreams when Lord of The Rings came out and those cute wee furry feet made their appearance. 🙂