12 November 2007

NSW Health Minister, Reba Meagher, today announced soft drinks and foods high in sugar, fat and salt will be phased down in all food outlets and vending machines in NSW public hospitals, as part of increased efforts to tackle obesity. Ms Meagher said the new policy would apply to all food and drinks supplied to staff and the general public at vending machines, shops and cafeterias in the state's public hospitals and health facilities.

"The first stage of the policy's implementation will focus on commercial, ready-to-eat and pre-packaged food and drink products," Ms Meagher said.

"It will limit the amount of so-called 'Red' food and drinks high in saturated fats, sugar and salt sold at food outlets, shops and from vending machines to no more than 20 per cent by June 2009.

"Food and drinks prepared on-site for staff and visitors will be addressed in the second phase of the policy's implementation."

Ms Meagher said NSW public health facilities are well placed to model healthy eating for the broader community.

"If we are serious about tackling obesity then we have to practice what we preach," Ms Meagher said.

"We need to make it easier for people to eat healthy food by removing drinks and foods low in nutritional value from NSW public health facilities and replacing them with healthier choices.

"We have adopted a similar approach in NSW schools canteens - which has been highly successful - and hope to see similar results in our public health facilities."

Ms Meagher said under phase 1 of the policy, all NSW health facilities will be required to:

• Provide food and drinks to staff and visitors in line with the Nutrition Standard (limiting 'Red' food/drink to no more than 20 per cent)
• Adopt marketing strategies which promote healthier pre-packaged food and drink choices
• Incorporate selection criteria relating to the provision of healthier food and drinks in food service outlets
• Provide healthier food and drink choices to staff after hours, on weekends and on public holidays in line with the Nutrition Standard.
  

Ms Meagher said the new policy follows a selective review of food and drinks being sold in public hospitals and was developed in consultation with Area Health Service representatives and the relevant union bodies.

For a range of health information, go online to www.health.nsw.gov.au <http://www.health.nsw.gov.au>

John Vidal, environment editor The Guardian Saturday September 1 2007
The organic food revolution is still gathering pace but could be knocked sideways next year by higher prices and difficulties finding enough produce in Britain, the fledgling industry warned yesterday.

New figures show Britons spent £1.9bn on organic food, drink and textiles in 2006 - 22% more than in 2005, but still less than 1.6% of all UK food sales. The market for produce grown without synthetic chemicals is now the third largest in Europe after Germany and Italy and has increased 27% a year on average for more than 10 years.

But the price of cereals has risen steeply with US farmers now diverting millions of hectares of land to grow biofuel crops and more animal food going to rapidly developing countries such as China and India.

Helen Browning, Soil Association director of food and farming, said that was now feeding through into the shops and would have an impact on many organic foods including meat, eggs, cornflakes and muesli, as well as baby foods and beer.

"Prices will have to rise. There has been a substantial rise in the price of grain, soya and maize. It's leading to a shortage of organic cereals. Farmers are finding it harder to find the food for livestock. I am very nervous for [organic] pig and poultry farmers." said Ms Browning.

According to the Soil Association's annual market report, published yesterday, the public says that it wants more locally grown food. However, shortages of home-grown grains mean the industry is becoming increasingly dependent on imports. UK self-sufficiency in organic cereals fell to below 50% for the first time in 2006. "The significant shortfall ... is a major concern," said Ms Browning.

The report showed that although more people have turned to organic food, it is still largely a preserve of relatively affluent southerners. Consumers in Scotland and the east Midlands are the least likely to buy it. Nearly 50% of people who bought it last year thought it too expensive.

In one of the least expected trends, organic food is moving rapidly from vegetables and cereals into processed foods, clothing, beauty products and alcohol.

Most sectors increased 15%-30% last year and sales of lamb and chicken by nearly 40%. Demand for milk increased 20%. At current rates of growth, the market for organic cotton products could be worth more than £100m by next year. Britain now consumes more than 10% of all the organic cotton grown in the world.

But it emerged that the food revolution, which began in the 1950s with a handful of British farmers concerned about the loss of soil quality, is dependent on supermarkets, which sell 75% of all organic products and which increased sales by £225m to more than £1.44bn last year.

The biggest surprise of 2006, said Ms Browning, was the growing popularity of box schemes where households are delivered a selection of fruit, vegetables and sometimes organic meat. Sales of boxes increased 53% last year, with more being sold direct by supermarkets. But the old idea of boxes of gnarled-looking vegetables delivered from small farms complete with soil and beetles is changing. Some "boxes" now cost £250, and the biggest schemes may collect from 60 or more farms and serve 10,000 or more customers.

According to the Soil Association, a premium organic sector is emerging where products have added benefits such as higher quality ingredients or are fairly traded. A Soil Association poll found 38% of people wanted local sourcing of food.

Despite the overall success of organic food in Britain, the amount of land turned to growing it decreased for the third year running in 2006 and is now 22% less than in 2004. Fully organic land in Scotland decreased by 14% and in England by 4%.

Lord Peter Melchett, policy director of the Soil Association, said that had been mainly due to a few large hill farmers in Scotland and the north of England pulling out because they could not market their animals successfully.

Worldwide, sales grew by more than 15% to nearly £20bn with Germany reporting a 20% increase. The organic land area in Europe has grown by nearly 400% in 10 years.

The ACCC has put resources into prosecuting fraud and protecting Australian consumers!

This will send a message that certifying products to the new Australian Standard will be the most cost effective way to ensure the integrity of organic products.

$216,000 of the money received as part of a settlement for misleading labelling by  the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been put aside for  ongoing development and promotion of the Australian Standard for Organic and Biodynamic Products.

It has been passed directly to the Organic Federation of Australia (OFA) to assist its continued development to protect the integrity of products labelled as organic.

This will ensure compliance against misleading and deceptive practices for organic products sold on the domestic market including imported products. For the first time there will be uniform requirements the export and domestic markets in Australia.

A committee consisting of industry & government representatives has been set up by Standards Australia to develop an Australian organic standard which will provide the organic industry with a uniform national benchmark for the production and the marketing of organic produce on the domestic market. Once developed, this standard can be used by government agencies such as the ACCC

McDonald's announced last week that by the end of this month all the milk used in the tea and coffee it sells in its 1,200 restaurants in the UK will come from organic British cows.

Only 66 per cent of organic produce in supermarkets is British.

Organic food sales have exceeded the £1bn a year mark in the UK for the first time. Sales were up 9.3 per cent on the previous year. Organic milk was up 19 per cent, alcohol rose 13.6 per cent and meat, fish and poultry were up 11.5 per cent.

 More than 20 million households bought organic goods last year. London and the southeast of England accounted for 43 per cent of sales.

Organics make up just 0.7 per cent of the food and drink market.

From http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2115773,00.html

British producers struggle to keep up with consumers' soaring demand

Amelia Hill, Sunday July 1, 2007    The Observer

...........'I'm not normally apocalyptic,' said Patrick Holden, Director of the Soil Association, 'But the organic food industry is facing big problems that need to be sorted out as a matter of urgency.'

Figures to be released this week will reveal that the organic industry is in grave danger of becoming a victim of its own success. The public hunger to shop ethically, locally and sustainably - a phenomenon that reached its acme with the high-profile opening last month of the American Whole Foods Market in London's Kensington High Street - is eating up British crops faster than farmers can produce them. The organic sector's success is creating problems that could end up irrevocably damaging consumer confidence in organic food.

Despite breaking through the £1bn a year barrier, the growth in sales of organic food in the past year has dramatically slowed. Experts have no hesitation in identifying the problem as an increasing shortage in local supply.

According to the TNS World panel figures, revealed in the Grocer magazine, sales of organic foods were up 9.3 per cent to £1.03bn in the year to 25 March. While this is impressive, it is well below the 17 per cent growth of the previous year.

'Retailers have been instrumental in the growth of the organic sector,' says Richard Hogg, marketing director at Duchy Originals, Prince Charles's upmarket food producer. 'By positioning organic produce within mainstream product offerings, consumers now recognise the breadth of the organics sector. However, the biggest challenge over the coming year will be the industry's ability to continue to source quality organic raw materials to meet this increased demand.'

Read the whole article. It holds warnings we here in Australia would do well to heed.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2115773,00.html

Organic Regulation has been accused of supporting the corporations and big business in supplying the needs of the Organic industry

  According to a Samuel Fromartz (See his book written about in our Christmas Book List)

"That's a lesson in the organic market, which witnessed a first this week: a mega-organic dairy with 10,000 cows (3,500 "organic"), which was clearly skirting regulations, was suspended by a certifier and no longer allowed to sell "organic" milk."

.......the organic market is one of the most developed green markets. It has been around for nearly three decades and has been defining national regulations in the U.S. at least since 1990. With the increasing popularity of the food, a lot of new producers have rushed into the market and there have been clear attempts to skirt or push the envelope of those regulations.

At first, no one seemed to notice, since industry players seemed content to benefit from the growing market size and not rock the boat too much.

But then consumer and farmer advocacy groups began blowing their horns, revealing these practices and trying to restore integrity to the market. In the dairy sector, that move was pursued on two fronts: by coalitions of smaller organic dairy farmers who were clearly losing at the expense of bigger operations, and by an advocacy group known as the Cornucopia Institute.

They "outed" the violators with a publicity campaign, essentially holding the organic market to greater transparency. And secondly, they sought to rewrite the organic regulations so that those pushing the envelope would be reined in.

As a result, public pressure built on the USDA National Organic Program and on certifiers.

The result: Last month, QAI, a major certifier, suspended the organic operations of the Case Vander Eyk farm in the Central Valley of California. This was significant -- the first time a certifier of this sort of mega-dairy has taken this type of action.

It's necessary to have tough regulations and to continually refine them in reaching for the goal of a sustainable market ... but it is not sufficient. What's also needed is awareness, continual advocacy, and political pressure.

"scams, scandals and secrecy: the truth behind animal product food labeling"

Consumers are being confused by some producers who hide inhumane factory farming methods behind `feel-good' product labels, a report from leading animal protection group Voiceless claims.

The report, From Label to Liable: lifting the veil on animal-derived product labelling in Australia,

Voiceless director, Brian Sherman AM, said, "The current regime of animal-derived food product labelling in Australia leaves consumers ill-informed about where their food comes from and fails to provide them with the confidence to make ethical choices at the supermarket."

The Report's key findings include:

The majority of Australia's animal-derived food products such as pork, chicken and eggs are sourced from factory farms where animals endure a life of institutionalised cruelty. Many are mutilated without pain relief and denied the ability to roam freely or exercise most of their natural behaviours.

If a product label does not refer to a farm production method, there is a strong likelihood that its contents have been sourced from a factory farm.

·         Most jurisdictions in Australia do not require animal-derived food products to identify the farm production system from which they have been sourced.

·         A veil of secrecy shields consumers from the truth about how animals are raised for food in factory farms.

·         Ambiguously worded food labels such as `farm fresh' or `naturally perfect' reinforce the likelihood of consumers being misled as to the true origin of the product.

·         A number of terms are currently used to differentiate animal products. These include caged eggs, barn laid eggs, free range, open range or range eggs, grain-fed beef, free-range, bred free-range, organic and biodynamic.

·         Most of these terms are not defined in legislation, which means there is broad scope for consumer uncertainty as to their meaning.

·        According to the European Union, increased awareness about the suffering of farm or `production' animals has caused a `seismic shift' in public attitudes. This consumer wave appears to have reached Australia with unprecedented growth in free-range and organic products

·        www.voiceless.org.au

"organic agriculture has the potential to secure a global food supply, just as conventional agriculture is today, but with reduced environmental impact." Noted the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at its International Conference on Organic Agriculture and Food Security in Rome  May 2007

The Conference reported "The strongest feature of organic agriculture is its reliance on fossil-fuel independent and locally-available production assets; working with natural processes increases cost-effectiveness and resilience of agro-ecosystems to climatic stress. Organic agriculture also breaks the vicious circle of indebtedness for agricultural inputs which causes an alarming rate of farmers' suicides."

FAO as well as promoting the Benefits of Organic Agriculture also has one of the best definitions of "Organic Agriculture" and "Food Security" http://www.fao.org/organicag/ofs/index_en.htm

Hundreds of shoppers lined up for their first taste of Whole Foods Market, as the world's largest organic and natural foods chain opened its inaugural store outside North America in London.

  Whole Foods sees its 80,000 square foot store -- the country's biggest dedicated food retail supermarket -- as a first step to dozens more British shops and as many as 300 across Europe, co-president Walter Robb told Reuters this week.

  Analysts have suggested the 194-store U.S. chain threatens to cream customers from Britain's premium food stores like Marks & Spencer and impact the lucrative "luxury" food sales at supermarket groups Tesco and J. Sainsbury.

  Whole Foods' march into Britain, 27 years after it was founded by Texan John Mackey, an advocate of natural foods, comes amid a boom in demand for organic produce with studies showing over 60 percent of UK shoppers buy organic every week.

  Whole Foods rang up $5.6 billion in sales last year. Many analysts see the U.S. chain, which posted lower than expected second quarter results, ramping up its sales as it taps new markets.

Source: scotsman.com

Felicity Lawrence Tuesday June 26, 2007

Sainsbury's has dropped the Prince of Wales and the head of the Soil Association, as vegetable suppliers because it says their produce did not meet the right standards.

The move has prompted the director of the organic food and farming charity, Patrick Holden, to accuse leading supermarkets of being so centralised and industrialised that they cannot deliver the local, organic food their customers want.

Mr Holden told the Guardian he believes that he and Prince Charles have become victims of the supermarket system's industrial processes and imposed food miles. They were sacked as suppliers of carrots to Sainsbury's at the end of January.

He and the prince had been forced to truck their vegetables hundreds of miles from their farms to a centralised packhouse in East Anglia before they were sent back to be sold in Sainsbury's stores local to their area.

"Everyone who has supplied a supermarket own label will have a story similar to mine to tell but most daren't tell it for fear of being delisted. This is not confined to one supermarket. It is the unintentional consequence of the centralised supermarket distribution system."

Sainsbury's acknowledges that dealing with small suppliers is difficult for big supermarkets.

Award winning journalist editor and author Felicity Lawrence.  Read "not on the label, what really goes into the food on your plate published in 2004 it is still a chilling insight into twenty first century eating. (See this in our Christmas Book List)

A new study commissioned by three environment groups has found that rainwater tanks are a more cost effective alternative to other water saving measures.

The study conducted by economists, Marsden Jacob Associates, found that rainwater tanks are more than five times as energy efficient as a desalination plant per kilolitre of water produced.

It also revealed that if governments rolled them out to 5 per cent of households in Sydney and south-east Queensland, big water projects like dams could be delayed for up to a decade.

The independent report commissioned by three environment groups found tanks are more cost effective and energy efficient than a desalination plant or a dam.

Nearly 40 per cent of Adelaide households have installed them, but only 5 per cent of households in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney have them.   

Professor Ian Lowe from the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) says governments should seriously consider rainwater tanks as an alternative source of water.  

"There's a very big saving in putting in rainwater tanks instead of infrastructure," he said.

"Just to give a classic example - for what the Queensland Government is proposing to spend on Traveston dam you could give every house in south-east Queensland a rainwater tank and have money left over.

How safe is your genetically engineered (GE) food?

A GE corn product approved for human consumption in Australia has produced toxicity symptoms when fed to rats. A new study on the effects of GE corn variety, MON863, on rats concludes it can't be considered a "safe product". However, the same variety was given a big tick by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), our government food safety regulator, declaring it safe for humans.

TAKE ACTION: help remove risky GE food from Australia

READ MORE: about Australia's toxic corn

This week SENATOR KERRY NETTLE introduced a private members bill into the Senate that will reduce Australia's exposure to unsafe synthetic trans fats which are added to fast foods such as chips, bakery products, biscuits, and doughnuts. Trans fats have been shown to be a significant contributor to coronary heart disease, which kills thousands of Australians each year. The bill will ban corporations from using trans fats and sets the standard that the States should follow.

Government  has been relying more and more on vague promises from industry for self-regulation, with the  major parties' concern being more not to  offend the food industry rather  than  recognizing the real issue - protecting public health