Organic?

[ina]

In some ways you are right - I would prefer to buy from a small local producer rather than the supermarket, whether organic or not. However: the producers don't just pay "large sums of money for the right to have the word printed on the package" - they pay money for being certified, and that involves a lot of work through having to be inspected on a regular basis. This is, of course, for the good of the consumer, so that he/she can be sure that if it's called organic, it is organic. (It's good for the producer, too, because advice on growing methods etc comes from the certifying body, too.)

The main objectives for breeders of varieties for organic methods are resistance to diseases and pests rather than uniformity (and blandness), although unfortunately that might come into it in some cases. Organic growers seem to have a lot more rejects than conventional growers (due to small blemishes, wrong size etc), which also drives the price up; what's left has to be either sold as feed (lots of carrots and potatoes go that way, to dairy cows for example); in some cases it might be suitable for processing, but a lot will also be scrapped.

Ina

[Millymollymandy]

I guess a lot has changed since I lived in the UK. I remember when organic veggies arrived in the shops and everyone avoided them BECAUSE they were dirty/had blemishes/holey leaves etc (and they were very expensive then too!!).

[LSP]

I was at a bookshop yesterday and who would be smiling at me from a cover of a book on SuDoku? Carol Vorderman. What? Has this woman with a Third Class degree in engineering a monopoly of brains in the UK?

I am not straying from the point. In America, it is becoming or has become illegal to claim to be organic unless your produce has been certified as such by the authority. Translation: pay$$$$, do the paperwork, and gain the benefit of becoming officially 'organic'. Otherwise, don't advertise yourself as such. Result: the big farms with the big money with the big lawyers get certification. Who wins?

The state has monopoly of the word 'organic'. This is possibly worse than the GM companies who analyze and patent DNA structures of rice and wheat in existence and grown by indigenous farmers for thousands of years and now they have to pay for the privilege of saving or exchanging seeds because GM companies now 'own' the knowledge of what is inside those seeds (eg http://www.i-sis.org.uk/LiberatingKnowledge.php)

For a 'flavour' of the 'organic' debate:

http://salon.com/tech/feature/2002/07/2 ... index.html
(read all three pages, then the following responses)

http://salon.com/tech/letters/2002/08/0 ... print.html

For something more succinct:

http://www.jubileefarm.org/organic.html

http://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/ ... ocess.html

LSP

[Wombat]

Who the bleep is Carol Bordeman?

Nev

[Shirley]

Who the bleep is Carol Bordeman?

Nev

A maths genius who has been on telly for quite a while who now seems to be appearing EVERYWHERE.

I like her though as she raised a huge amount of money for the Cleft Lip & Palate Association last year!!!

[Millymollymandy]

Generally game shows Nev, which could be a waste of her talent but I bet she earms more this way. I quite like her too.

[gunners71uk]

im organic ish if i cant afford organic meat i bye it from my local butcher who can tell me where it was from. you go to a supermarket and buy organic meat all prepacked in plastic etc or you can go to a butcher and view the cuts and have it cut and put in a bag and unwrap at home.im not sure about organic seed i just sow seed and use chicken pellet manure ido what i can in me budget allows., i think organic produce could be cheaper and some companies capitalise on the trendy ness i give you an example i went to my local farmers market bought some organic sausage which when i cooked had far more fat then ones from my local butcher.
so its down to sussing things out.

[Shirley]

<snip> i think organic produce could be cheaper and some companies capitalise on the trendy ness i give you an example i went to my local farmers market bought some organic sausage which when i cooked had far more fat then ones from my local butcher.
so its down to sussing things out.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there Gunners!! Trendy means expensive.... I so want to start my own business doing what many people are doing already but NOT charging the earth for it... lack of funds means that I can't do it... but one day!!!!

[ina]

Whether a processed product is to your taste or not doesn't have much to do with organic - the term organic says nothing about the recipe! So yes, as with all food, you have to try them out and see which ones you like.

Prices for organic food are often pushed up by the big retailers who go with the trendyness. But then, I wouldn't buy off them anyway. Believe you me, the farmers are just as badly off as conventional farmers - they rarely earn enough to live on. And if somebody can sell their organically grown product without the certification - good for them. Quite often you'll find that they have problems selling enough to live on.

Yes, it would be nice to be able to do away with the "expensive" certification and label. Unfortunately, back in those times when the regulations weren't so strict, a lot of conventional farmers took advantage of that and sold their product (particularly the stuff that wasn't up to "conventional standard", ie. which was a bit dirty and the wrong size), for a lot of money as organic. I for one don't want to be ripped off like that. And not everybody will have the chance and find a direct supplier they get to know so well that they can trust them if they say "we don't use pesticides/artificial fertiliser".

LSP - it's illegal everywhere in Europe, not just in the States, to call a food product organic if it's not certified so. You can, of course, say on the packet that it's grown without this that or the other. And every farmer has to do the paperwork... Particularly in the UK almost all farmers belong to a farm assurance scheme of one kind or another, often even more than one. If you don't belong to them - forget it. You won't be able to sell more than a bit to your friends and good neighbours.

Ina

[Wombat]

When I was doing farm Technology at TAFE one of the guys worked on a (family) apple orchard, they used to put all their fruit that was a bit marked or small in a separate bin and while they didn't SAY it was ordanic, they didn't discourage the idea...........

Pain in the bum as it is - certification has it's points because no matter what the system, somebody will rip it off!

Nev

[diver]

my partner ran his family butcher's firm for about 40 years, bought and sold cattle and worked in an abbatoir. He tells me that the big producers, who sell to the supermarkets sell exactly the SAME meat as organic as non organic. The difference? They leave it to hang in the fridge for a few weeks longer. He is not making this up..he travelled all over England inspecting meat as well as buying and selling. He is retired now butthis was only a few years ago.

[ina]

If this is true, it should be made public! But you would, of course, need quite substantial proof. As I said above - organic is a protected term for specific growing/farming methods. And the abbatoirs must be certified organic, too; not all abbatoirs are allowed to sell meat labelled organic.

On the other hand, what does often happen is that organic meat is sold as non-organic, simply because the market for organic produce is sometimes saturated. (It was the case not too long ago that a substantial part of the organic milk produced in UK was sold as non-organic, because they couldn't get rid of it as organic, and because at first, there weren't enough dairies that could process organic milk. Bad luck for the producer - they have more expensive production costs but get the price that doesn't even cover the cost of conventional production. During the last months the sales of organic milk have risen, so at the moment this is not so much a problem anymore.)

Ina

[Andy Hamilton]

my partner ran his family butcher's firm for about 40 years, bought and sold cattle and worked in an abbatoir. He tells me that the big producers, who sell to the supermarkets sell exactly the SAME meat as organic as non organic. The difference? They leave it to hang in the fridge for a few weeks longer. He is not making this up..he travelled all over England inspecting meat as well as buying and selling. He is retired now butthis was only a few years ago.

I have worked in places that package the same food to go to different places. Like economy stuff being sold in marks but surely non organic sold as organic is too much of a big risk for a supermarket supplier to be taking.

[Steve Hanson]

Now you have mentioned abattoirs I think you should know a few things about killing and transportation and there is nothing organic about any of it.

Transportation regulations in the UK are a sham I have friends in the UK who transport livestock for a living sometimes there own but mostly for other producers. They are based in mid Wales and the nearest abattoir, which can process the kind of numbers they carry for customers, is on Anglesey 4 hours drive on a good day. But when they get there they may have to queue for up to 4 hours before unloading, worse than that however is the other haulage companies they meat at the abattoir who have driven from southeast England to save a money on the slaughter costs. You can only drive for 11 hours on a taco, driving from the southeast coast of England at 58MPH or less (M25) takes at least that long. The animals are loaded in the dark of the night and driven all through the day if the driver does not arrive before the abattoir cut off time the animals have to stay on board until the next morning. My friends know that some animals have been kept in their transport for up to 48 hours twice the legal time allowed.

That’s not the worst; now consider this, pigs are transported 3 tiers high on slated floors, but the bottom floor in now no longer allowed to leak on to the road when it travelling (this is know to spread disease) so 2 tiers of pigs urinating and defecating on top of the bottom tier. The bottom tier does not lose any of this mess it just keeps getting wetter and shittier for up to 48 hours, now think of what its like in the summer at 21C. Death during this process is not uncommon, pigs are not avers to eating meat? figure it out.

Now get the animals left alive off the transport, they cannot be killed in this state of cleanliness so they have to be cleaned first, jet washed to be precise. Then pigs are given an electric shock to stun them and then dunked in water heated to 65C some do not stay stunned and come around in the water and are scalded to death or drowned.

Organic Pork????????????

Steve

PS I keep pigs and love them they are wonderful intelligent creatures with individual characters.

[Shirley]

bleuch Steve!

That is disgusting.

I must admit that I don't like pork very much anyway - in fact I'm eating less and less meat as time goes by.

Those poor animals - intelligent animals at that! I can't imagine that journey for the animals at the bottom of the wagon... and the row above them too.

I guess the answer is to eat pigs that have been bred on a smaller scale and killed and butchered locally.

I love pigs too - beautiful animals.

Shirlz xx