Organic food

[sammd]

I bought a bag of organic apples in Sainsburys yesterday and noticed that they've cut down from 6 to 5 in a bag and kept the price the same (�1.89 a bag). Given the already expensive price i think this is a bit cheeky. Is organic food in other supermarkets slightly cheaper?

I also noticed the apples are grown in the USA. Why are these not sourced from English farmers, which would save travel miles and make them cheaper for us?

[nickmo]

90% of organic produce sold in the UK is imported, so bang goes the eco friendly aspect anyway, never mind that fact that the provenence of the stuff is unknown. Plus the chains are only looking to stock rubbish that they can tell the customer to buy, and insult our intelligence by doing as you point out.

British apple growers face a constant struggle to get their produce out there. You can do your bit by using a local greengrocer who isn't too bothered about the shape of an apple - perfect round uniform stuff won't have the flavour you want - but will be able to offer food with taste as their job is to source fresh goods.

Also go to your local farm shop and farmers' market. Apples will store for 6 months with no problem, and varieties grown in the UK do so having been selected through generations of work to make sure that those stored will be as good as just off the tree.

Look at the Henry Doubleday Research site for info on organic in the UK. See at : http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/index.php and give up on the superstore. They really are only interested in their shareholders.

[nickmo]

Forgot to add some info here on apples from the Institute of Food Research: http://www.ifr.bbsrc.ac.uk/public/FoodInfoSheets/applefa cts.html

[sammd]

Thanks for the info nickmo, it's quite interesting from the second link that most apples are imported whether they're organic or not...

...but putting travel miles aside for a minute, isn't fruit and veg in the local shops also grown using all the pesticides and chemicals that we are trying to avoid by buying organic?

[camille79]

"Organic" is a term which varies drastically from country to country. Here in the UK we are lucky that farmers must adhere to extremely stringent guidelines, as set out by the Soil Association. However, this is not standard across the world so don't fall in to the trap of thinking that "organic" is a universal term which always means the same thing. At a time where supermarkets can add at least 20% when the produce is "organic", I think I'm justified to be suspicious of how the standards are checked on the produce they import.

Even traditionally grown crops cannot be sprayed in the weeks before harvest so the idea of fruit being laden with chemicals is not completely accurate.

If your average basket of supermarket fruit and veg has 10,000 food miles (a conservative estimate) then imagine the amount of pollution you're creating! You may not be consuming as many chemicals on the fruit, but you are inhaling them and "consuming" them from the atmosphere!

[nickmo]

Organic does not mean free from any residue of pesticide, bactericide, fertliser, fungicide etc. The certification means that permitted products are used. Farms are factories that happen to have no roof, and the product is edible. Think along those lines, and you see that the farm has to use certain aids to get the yield from the plant, etc. If you have a concern about the reisdue, just rinse the veg in a weak vinegar solution. All the permitted chemicals dissolve in water, and the vinegar is an astringent that helps remove them.

Extract from the Co-Ops site: 'Organic produce is grown using only a small number of named pesticides or fertilisers. But it tends to be more expensive. Historically the quality and availability of organic produce varied quite widely but advances in organic farming techniques have begun to address these issues. Organic systems are designed to produce optimum quantities of food of high nutritional quality by using management practices that aim to avoid the use of synthetic agrochemical inputs and which minimise damage to the environment and wildlife. Despite this, there is still only a relatively small proportion of land given over to organic farming.'

On the point about local shops sourcing foodstuffs, yes, just about everything we eat has some sort of handling issue. I think the best argument for the local shopping though is seasonal goods. The greengrocer uses wholsalers that obviously can import things too, but a good local shop supports the local farmers, so on several levels, your spending pound stays in the local economy and you get low food miles goods, ready to eat and not stored for over-long periods ie extra bactericides to stop rotting. Anyway, s/markets can't sell ripe goods 'cos they can't transport them, so what we get from those shops is pretty useless on taste, nutrition and so on.

Read 'Shopped' by Joanna Blythman and give up on the s/markets!

[sammd]

Thanks for all info. A couple of useful links i found for anyone interested in this thread...

http://www.defra.gov.uk/farm/organic/consumers/index.htm

http://www.defra.gov.uk/farm/organic/legislation-standards/standard.pdf

[sammd]

This is also very comprehensive...

http://www.ifst.org/hottop24.htm