Is organic food in trouble???
Without any benefits to the consumer, let's hope organic food dies a quick death...
Pity Britain’s organic farmers. According a full-page report in today’s Guardian, they’re close to going bust. Sales of organic produce have fallen 13% per cent in a year (organic vegetables, for example, are down £34.1 million). So Green and Blacks, Rachel’s and Yeo Valley are all fighting for their survival, and the firms are meeting today in London to help co-ordinate a fightback.
As Zoe Wood reports:It is a big ask for an industry which has been badly battered. The latest data from analysts TNS – which monitors sales through supermarkets – shows the market for organic food was down 13% in the year to 9 August. Sales of organic vegetables are down more than a third in the last year, and demand for fertiliser-free fruit has fallen nearly 16%. While organic milk is now the fastest growing organic foodstuff, sales were up only 2% over the last 12 months.But what has caused the demise of the organic food industry? Well, no surprises, it was the recession. Andrew Baker, the chief executive of Duchy Originals (the Prince Of Wales’s expensive food company) told the Guardian: “The organic industry hasn’t done a good enough job of informing consumers about the benefits, so it was vulnerable in recession when the choices we make are based on price.”
Aha! So the recession has forced people to make choices based on price, has it? Welcome to planet earth, Andrew. That’s what most of us have been doing our entire consumer lives. And it seems the well-off, organic brigade, are now learning how to look after the pennies too. Sure, they won’t admit at their trendy soirées that the chicken they are serving is Waitrose own-brand battery hen - but then the guests won’t able to tell it’s not organic, Normandy-raised, and corn-fed either. (I wonder, what the hell else are you supposed to feed a chicken?) We know that organic food isn’t more nutritious. And it’s also pretty obvious that it doesn’t taste any better. It’s clear, then, that the organic food industry has been quiet over consumer benefits because, besides feelings of righteous smuggery, there aren’t any.
posted by GayandRight @ 10:19 AM
5 Comments:
The farmers cut their own throats because they charged more for organic food so during lean times, it is going to be left on the shelf as people go for cheaper options.
They go back to dowsing the food in chemicals and cramming as many chickens as possible into as small an area as they can and say that they tried, but people just didn't want it.
Eating organic food was always more of a moral question than any actual health benefits which was never proven.
No proven benefits? Let me ask you this, were you created with pesticides, and a stew of hundreds of toxic and questionable chemicals, drugs and substances within you? Actually now you would be due to contamination in the environment which you would raise a child. If possible we need to go back to a more natural way of doing things, but it won't be easy. The problem with organic food was the expense which only made it an easy choice for those that could afford it. Unfortunately, many people had to make difficult choices in order to consume this stuff by having less of other things. All in all I don't advocate wide scale government intervention in this industry. (real conservative)
Take up your fight with the Food Standards Agency, who said last month last month: 'There is little, if any, nutritional difference between organic and conventionally produced food and there is no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic food'.
One of many that have said the same thing for ages.
Now the animal cruelty involved is another thing altogether and the reason why i want to see organic food more readily available.
It's awful! Organic foods must be an imperative for the British government, this is a matter of public health.
It's too bad that people are not aware of the importance of eating organic foods.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home