27th June
Apologies for the delay with this week's update - social life, vegetable gardening and especially potato-earthing and blight spraying had to take precedent this week. Sorry Reuters and AP, Gov. Mins, ABCs and the others awaiting our latest darts. See Expose! on About Us page.
UK and Irish tourist industries should demand £7 billion compensation for supporting FMD measures.
The Danish Organic Conference in May is a milestone in European agriculture policy
National Vegetarian Week in UK. Vegetarians, currently numbered at 4 million, increase by 5,000 per week in Britain - that's 260,000 per annum! See www.vegetarianchannel.com for lots of delectable news and info.
A golden handshake(shakedown)? Kerrrygold to buy Golden Vale. Hear about the corporate lovemaking just about everywhere in Ireland this last week. Best in www.examiner.ie (Irish Examiner) and www.ireland.com (Irish Times).
Nestle coffee profits $1 billion - coffee producers starve. See, Bitter Coffee: How the Poor are Paying for the Slump in Coffee Prices, www.oxfam.org.uk and on GM Coffee, and its threat to impoverished farmers, www.actionaid.org/campaigns/coffee.html . Have you noticed coffee prices going down?
Food Safety in Ireland a mess. Irish Taoiseach (PM) Bertie Ahern has wanted to reform the Min Ag, DAFF, since he became elected but has been continually thwarted. Food lawyer, Raymond O'Rourke, Dublin, is also lobbying for a radical shakeup of the bureaucratic mess of govt. agencies that deal to some degree with food safety and consumer protection and the formation of a separate Food Safety Ministry. We intend to promote this idea and intend to make it a leading issue in the run-up to the general election next year.
MAJOR SETBACK FOR MONSANTO AS INDIA REFUSES COMMERCIAL GROWING OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED COTTON. New Delhi/London: Greenpeace congratulates India, one of the world's leading cotton growing countries (1), for its decision to not allow the commercial growing of genetically engineered (GE) cotton but maintain the country's GE free status. www.ngin.org.uk , 22 June, Newsletter.
Potato blight, stalks the land again. The annual visitation of the cussed blight (Phytophthora Infestans) is here again in Ireland with early potatoes first hit at the beginning of June. The air reeks of Dithane and Maneb, the conventional, chemical treatments for the fungus, whilst tiny patches here and there show the blue of copper sulphate used by both traditional and organic farmers. Some claim, and we concur, that the Bordeaux and Burgundy mixtures are still the most effective and cheapest methods of dealing with blight. However we have strong reservations about the use of copper sulphate in polytunnel cultivation of tomatoes (allowed by all organic certifying bodies) and over-use in vine cultivation. There are alternatives. We will have a feature on this subject shortly on our Articles page which will include details of the safest and most effective means of using this century-old, anti-fungal, treatment. In the meantime if anyone wants immediate advice contact us by email: info1@planorganic.com
HOW BOGUS HYGIENE REGULATIONS ARE KILLING REAL FOOD The June issue of The Ecologist has an excellent 60 page, Report, supplement, which includes, The horrors of intensive salmon farming, Factory farming and human health and Hooked on antibiotics. www.theecologist.org
Cruel intensive pig practice to be banned. Tying breeding sows by the neck for life, a barbaric, but common, intensive pig-rearing practice, is to be phased out over the next twelve years following a decision by EU Ag Mins. See, Compassion in World Farming report, www.ciwf.co.uk .
Danish organic chickens disgrace. Read something last week on this somewhere but have mislaid the darn thing. I remember that it said that there was unusual mortality,16%, due to neglect and overcrowding on some organic poultry farms. Can anyone help with info?
Next week Organic pioneer's views on Organic Grain Fraud and the future of the movement.
Click here for Reviews of our site
News 15th June
A Nice Mess. We voted Yes for the Nice treaty last Thursday. We are disappointed that the Nays had it in the end. But the people, however tiny the poll, have spoken. That should be it - at least for a long time to come. But it looks as if we will be re-presented with referenda until we vote the way the govt. -and the EU - wants us to. Democracy? One of our junior Ag Mins, Eamon O Cuiv is reported as having voted against the Treaty! Sacking is in the offing. !4 th June. The Min's office informs us that the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, "is now happy about the affair and Mr O Cuiv is not being censored".
Women taking over Euro Agricultural Ministries? Next update.
Are Irish hills open to walkers and tourists or not? Next update.
Extensive research of mastitis control in organic dairying, just published. Full story, email; info1@planorganic.com.
GM industry helping huge growth in organic farming in California. Full story later.
EUROPE rolls out the Green carpet to developing nations. June 14th. The European Commission is holding out a carrot to entice developing countries into making environmental sustainability a pillar of their international trade programs. Full story, next update.
Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack's beans saved his family's bacon. The Mucuna bean promises to improve the living standards of the hundreds of millions of small-farmer Jacks who have never been able to afford high-technology agricultural solutions. The story of the extraordinary bean was told on BBC 2, Correspondent, 11th June, by Prof. Jules Pretty (we didn't see it ourselves - no BBC here - but were told it was "unmissable"). The fast-growing bean could herald "a new agricultural revolution", according to the Essex University academic, famous for his work on sustainable agriculture. It seems to solve the major problems of the poorest peasants and organic farmers too - it's a quick-establishing ground-cover species, a free-nitrogen-from-the-air-fixing plant , an excellent mulch for maize etc (giving very substantial crop gains) and of course it is a nutritious food in itself. Comfrey is probably the only other plant that is as useful to natural farmers everywhere. The most informative site we've found on Mucuna is; http://ppathw3.cals.cornell.edu/mba_project/CIEPCA/MuNews.htm
French Mac Donald Buster, Jose Bove and friends will visit MAFF and Downing Street, Wed, 13th June, to present a radical statement about agricultural policies. It will say that it's vital the new government recognises that policies and market conditions need to change if small farmers are to prosper and consumers are to get the high quality food and environment they have a right to expect. The document also demands an end to policies which favour big intensive farms and corporate interests. See www.ngin.org.uk Newsletter, June, 11th.
Battery-hen eggs to be labelled." Huge victory" claimed by animal welfare groups as ay that consumers now will elect to abandon factory farmed eggs. Not so, says industry - people will still buy intensively produced eggs because they are far cheaper than free-range or organic. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=77263
www.organicts.com for full, world organic news, weekly. Today's issue, 15th June is the last free Newsletter.
www.ngin.co.uk for all GM activist news and occasional, important organic stories - always, hot-off-the-press.
News 5th June, 2001
We are voting Yes for the Nice Treaty on Thurs next. After complex agonising the Yeas, we think, marginally have it. Sorry friends but we believe you're wrong on this one!
Cap in Hand. Commissioner Fischler at Dublin Castle, 31st May, drove home the message that sustainable agriculture is going to be the cornerstone of the CAP from now on. Commissioner David Byrne seemed to hedge by saying, " We are here to defend and improve the European agri-model". Is this a case of wanting your cake and eating it too? Is there a background skirmish going on here as the Irish Ag Min and Comm.Byrne, shield the conventional farming industry against the tide of Brussel's eco-bureaucracy? ( An Augustinian agony? - Oh Lord make me (organically) pure but just not yet). As we dither so shall they reap - see the item below on Chile. Full reports on Castle, DAFF-organised Information Day (to which we were not invited) in Irish Examiner, 1st June by Ray Ryan. www.examiner.ie At the same meeting, though, it was good to hear Jun. Ag Min, Noel Davern, say that, "...a holistic approach must now be part and parcel of every producer's brief". How about Senior Ag Min, Joe Walsh, giving his views on organic farming?
Food Safety Comm. Byrne, selling out to US, GM industry? Is the urbane Mr Byrne showing his true colours now? Is he, whose job is to ensure the safety of our food, pro-GM and anti-organic (see above)? We should demand that he answer immediately on these questions. After a visit by Mr Byrne to the US recently and intensive lobbying from the GM industry a proposal is being put this week to the European Commission to include banned GM ingredients in so-called, "GM-free" food. Jonathan Matthews, www.ngin.org.uk, 4th June, News Bulletin, challenges the food Comm. to answer the article in The Independent, 4th June, GM plan "a license to contaminate", or resign. www.independent.co.uk.
Revolution in Chile. A whole district of southern Chile, Region XI, is to enjoy an organic farming revolution and become an exclusively organic zone, if a proposal by the Agriculture Ministry is adopted. The region's remoteness has meant that industrial farming largely passed it by - now that isolation is to be turned to its advantage.The local senator says, "The opportunities are endless". The prospects for export of organic produce to the EU and the US do indeed seem to be rosy - the one area that primary food producing countries can be price-makers for a change. Many, whose alertness to world food trends is vital to their survival, are beginning to capitalise on organic food production and are no doubt gleeful about our incompetence to feed ourselves with healthy produce. If it weren't for the millions of extra food miles incurred it would be a movement to be wholeheartedly encouraged. See, www.pure-food.com report, 31st May.
Thought provoking. At the age of 10, Jean-Dominic Levesque-Rene became an environmental campaigner in his home town of Ile Bizard, near Montreal, Quebec. Diagnosed with a cancer known as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, he became convinced that he was ill as a result of exposure to pesticides.For full text and graphics visit: http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2001/2001L-06-04-04.html
Fish farms push Atlantic salmon towards extinction. 1st June http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=75601
Hoof it lads - the poor mouth won't work - sell yourselves to Britain - indicates Irish Min.Tour.
In Ireland, tourism unrecoverable losses from FMD restrictions are estimated at IP2 billion (£1.5 billion). The Min. Tour., Jim Mc Daid ( Cabinet country meeting in Killarney, 28th May) however, under pressure to compensate in full, gave the industry IP2 million to help it out. He argues that this figure (0.1% of losses) is "more effective than compensation"! and that it would be "a logical impossibility" to pay the whole cost (bank managers beware!). The 2 mill. is mostly to be spent on marketing in the UK.
UK - Tues. May 29th The losses from FMD to tourism in the UK is estimated at £5 billion. It will be interesting to know the total cost - if it can ever be estimated - to the UK economy of "saving" farm exports worth just a few hundred million pounds. " An ill wind...." though - most of the IP2 million given to the Irish Tourist Board today for marketing will be spent on persuading the British to come to Ireland. You'll gain our punts; we gain your punters; you lose.
Why don't the UK and Irish tourism industries sue their governments for consequential losses etc? £7,000,000,000 is a huge cost for one industry to shoulder on behalf of another and incompetence and political interference should surely be relatively easy to prove. We suggest, to borrow Min. Jim's phrase, it is logically impossible not to seek compensation.
Click here for Reviews of site