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Friday 28th March 2003
Grand Slam Fever I try to remain reasonably unbiased in my news and comment and stick to the designated subject matter, but there comes a time in the affairs of men when it is imperative to depart from our narrow briefs (and I don't mean streaking!) and look outside at greater events. I am referring to the rugby match this Sunday (kick-off 2.00 pm) in Dublin, when unbeaten Ireland play unbeaten England in the last fixture of the Six Nations Cup.
Blocks of 10 corporate tickets are being sold for up to €38,000. A pair of ordinary tickets were auctioned on RTE Radio 1 this morning for €4,300! 
A ticket (single will do) from a donor to myself would be very kindly looked upon.
The other media are saturated with coverage and analysis of this clash of rugby titans so I will not even pretend to add to the debate except to say; Come on Ireland! 

Slow Food  I wrote about the Slow Food movement previously (search Archived Weekly News) and an inspiring event of theirs in Cork city.The local Cork chapter is organising a Slow Food Weekend at the Celtic Ross Hotel, Rosscarberry, West Cork, March 28 - 30th. There will be much to delight gourmets, including a lunch at the famous vegetarian restaurant Cafe Paradiso and a Slow Feast, prepared by Irish Chef of the Year, Rory O'Connell.
More from info@celticrosshotel.com and clodaghmckenna@eircom.net . See also www.slowfood.com 
If anybody would like to invite me to any of the meals .....

Dublin's Fair City  Talking of Dublin, I should have had the following in my Where to Buy page a long time ago. The Dublin Food Co-operative Society Ltd runs a weekly market in Dublin that sells organic, health and fair-traded goods. It has a membership now of over a thousand, which includes many organic growers and processors. 
The DFC market is in Pearse Street, Dublin every Saturday, 9.30 - 3.00. It is restricted to members but non-members may have a gawk and a shop for €2.00. 
At least one good-value venue for the pre-match shoppers and those turning up for the anti-war demonstration in Parnell Square at 3.00! 
See www.club.ie/dfc and www.euro-social-economy.org.uk/rr.htm 

Whisky You're the Divil!  Even after I've decapitated the copious amounts of junk email I get, I still have a large volume of regular email to deal with, and, increasingly, regular postal mail regarding the site as well. Most is welcomed: hard news items, softer gossip/opinion that may or may not lead to something weightier, seeds and other products to try out, magazines and books to review. 
One email this week brought my attention to an article - with the by-line, Planorganic.com - on a Japanese site - in Japanese! I got some clue to its  content by the embedded, obviously untranslatable, Athenry and Teagasc. So now, they know all about Mellows, fellows, in Japan?
Another corresponent uses the email address of ssdhm@. Apart from the similarity with the name of a certain Middle Eastern despot, I am certain, he/she/it is from Ireland - there's an obvious familiarity with certain Irish parish-pump affairs. If anybody recognises the email moniker, and has an address for same, I would be eternally grateful.
But the best communication this week was a snail-mail, which included a useful newspaper cutting about fair-trade, a note with some especially nice sentiments, and a card. The card is what really tickled me. It showed a tanker sinking, leaking a brown substance, watched by some wobbly seabirds on a nearby rock. The caption read; After 50,000 gallons of whisky leaked into the sea, no tern  was left unstoned . 
Corny maybe - but it made me laugh anyway! Thank you nicat@.

Ireland - Fluorescent Green?  Another step on the way to making Ireland a concentration centre for GM excellence is the launch of a new website by the gov agency Forfas, on behalf of the Inter-Departmental Group on Modern Biotechnology. A News Flash, headlined Sheepish about GM Food? Biotechnology... Myth vs Fact has arrived on the desks of every career guidance teacher in the country.
Anybody registering on the biotech site could be in a competition to win " a fabulous digital camera" Wow! For that mess of pottage I might even sell my soul!
In the interest of fairness and balanced information, if you know a career guidance teacher, kindly refer them to www.ngin.org.uk for the other side of the biotechnology coin - and to Planorganic, of course, for its usual, unbiased stance on the issue. Thanks to Galway correspondent for the original bumph.

Irish Organic Magazine - what a waste!  Hundreds of copies of the Irish magazine, Organic Matters, are piling up in the offices of the publishers, the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association - IOFGA - according to a regular contact.
Members of the organisation get the magazine as part of their annual subscription but membership has in recent months more than halved to just over 200 and the print-run has not been altered.
Two thousand copies of the magazine are printed each issue. The distribution pattern until recently was about 500 copies to members, with the balance being given either as complimentary copies or sold retail. 
You become a member of IOFGA by paying €38.09 annually which entitles you to certain voting privileges and six copies of the bi-monthly Organic Matters.
Members are distinct from licensees, of which there are now about 650 - also down substantially from last year. The least of these pays €400+ per annum for inspection and certification. They then paid separately for membership.
But licensees have since last December, the "option" of paying the extra membership charge - and hundreds have opted not to bother; some because they don't want the magazine, others because they felt they were paying more than enough for the license fee already and should be getting the magazine "thrown in". 
One long-term license-holder, much disgruntled already at what she saw as the  "uncaring attitude" of IOFGA to members, also pointed out that she "has to sell an awful lot of vegetables just to pay for the organic license" and it was "absolute crap" that they then had to pay extra for the magazine. However it is telling about the quality and reputation of the magazine that she still subscribes! The magazine is "indispensable", she admits, and has been "greatly improving" over the last year. 
Another licensee (not a paid-up member), suggested that, as a gesture of goodwill, IOFGA should immediately send all non-member, symbol holders back-issues of the magazine instead of wasting them.

Tuesday 25th March 2003
We live in fictitious  times  Although the Oscar winner, Michael Moore, was referring this week to Mr Bush, his electoral illegitimacy and the war in Iraq, it could also be very well applied to what's happening in the arena of organic and GM foods. One example: new, dynamic UK organisation, farm, conducted a poll on what its members felt about GM crops. The poll was initially heavily against the introduction of GM crops but then, a strange thing began to happen .....Read all about it on their site, www.farm.org.uk and, for many other samples of "stranger than fiction" happenings involving the spreading of disinformation about GMOs and organics, especially on the Web, see, http://ngin.tripod.com/080303b.htm

Organic Grain Scandals  A powerful message was sent out from France recently to those who cheat on organic standards. A French grain trader was sentenced to 3 years in jail, fined €20,000 and banned from working in the grain sector for 5 years. Colleagues were also handed down fines, a suspended sentence and a ban on trading in grain. 
The price of organic feedstuffs continues to be a restricting factor on the growth of the organic meat industry. To tackle the problem, some UK firms are negotiating contracts between UK growers and grain processors. Their  objective is to reduce the levels of imported organic grain and bring down prices.
See www.organicts.com this week for the full stories. 

World Water Forum  As the besieged population of Basra is driven to take their water from  the sewage-filled Euphrates, it is ironic that 10,000 delegates are meeting in Japan to discuss world water quality and distribution. Not a lot is expected to come from it all; "..much of the language is a dreary UN/development-speak that conceals the pain underlying the issues being debated." comments Patrick Smyth in the Irish Times last Saturday. He quotes, however, as an example of some of the "stirring calls to action and conscience", a former Dutch minister, Jan Pronk; " ...the world is dividing into two paradigms, the essentially selfish preoccupation with security, and sustainability.. which is the only guarantee of world security."www.thirdworldwaterforum.org  
See also, International Institution for Sustainable Development at www.iisd.ca 

Simply Organic, the UK company - as opposed to our home-grown firm of the same name - has been reprimanded by the UK Advertising Standards Agency. The main bone of contention was the claim by Simply Organic that organic meat products come from animals "fed on a vegetarian organic feed". The Agency pointed out that organic standards allow a percentage of fishmeal in compounded feedstuffs. Other advertising used by the company was also criticised. Simply Organic defended themselves by saying that they only used wording recommended by the Soil Association. 

Christian Science? No I'm not going soft on religion, but I think you may find it interesting to have a look at the influential Christian Science Monitor's website and their take on world agricultural options - How to feed the world - www.csmonitor.com/2003/0220/p11s01-sten.html. Warning; the article contains quotes by our right-wing friend, Dinny Avery, which contains "Nuts"!

Organic Recipes  I had intended collecting some organic recipes for your dilectation, but, why bother, when on a site like this you can graze through 600! www.edenfoods.com.
I will give you one though - my great breakfast standby. 
One cup of Flahavan's Organic Porridge Oats pitched into 2 cupfuls of cold water. Bring to the boil and cook for about 3 minutes, stirring like billyo. Mix in a small carton of Glenisk Organic Strawberry Yogurt, sprinkle with Bunalun Raw Cane Sugar and, if you really want to impress, caramelise the sugar-topping under the grill. You won't even think about any other food for about six hours; even if, like me, you're shovel-pushing in the garden in this fine weather.
 
Make Ireland green - Fluorescent green perhaps! As we are getting nowhere in terms of organic development and in making this country green in the ordinary sense of the term, should we not urge the gov to drop all pretence, and openly volunteer to the EU/US to be the exclusive host to all GM crops in Europe?
Wouldn't we be perfectly poised and qualified to be a GM concentration island? Ireland - The GM Food Isle? The job of the amalgamated/emasculated Bord Bia/Bord Glas would be so much easier then, don't you think?
Would you like to comment?

Thursday 20th March 2003
American invasion. No, not the one that is taking place today in the Middle East. But the one which is underway in Europe against the European consumer's resistance to the introduction of GM food. This defiance is seen by the US as utterly irrational. The no-mincing-his-words, US Trade Representative, Robert B. Zoellick goes so far as to describe opposition to GM food as "immoral". In February he was proposing to officially sue the EU before the WTO.
However, in the New York Times, Feb 4th, a senior White House spokesman gave a temporary stay of execution on that aggressive move when he said "There is no point in testing Europeans on food whle they are being tested on Iraq". 
Now that the desert war has commenced, the European war on GM resistance can be pursued. It will, undoubtedly, now be pressed with a particular vengeance as French "monkeys" and German "krautheads" were found to be somewhat wanting in their support of the US/UK war on Iraq. 
The softening up processes ("decapitation attacks"?) have been going on for some time. Formerly reputable organisations, the Royal Society for example, have been infiltrated, politicians and pundits swayed with threats and inducements, and so-called "independent reports", shown to be demonstrably partisan.
If you think this is hyperbolic, let me remind you of what's been happening in the last few weeks.
The Scottish Executive has given the green light to GM crops.
The Food Standards Agency has been shown to be notoriously pro-GM 
Margaret Beckett, UK Environment Secretary, has been shown to be pro-GM and has indicated that approval will soon be given for the planting of commercial GM crops.
The UK Consumers Association is up in arms (if you'll pardon the expression) over the bias of the FSA and its lack of concern for the public's health fears over GM food.
Franz Fischler, EU Ag Comm, to many the prophet of a new age in environment-centred reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy, has now given a clear signal as to where he stands in relation to GM crops; " No form of agriculture must be excluded from the EU." 
You would not be blamed for not picking up on all these stories - the blizzard of war coverage has inundated us all in recent weeks. See Strange Bedfellows, an article published today in the Ecologist and on the NGIN website www.ngin.org.uk 
NGIN is also a good resource for articles published by The Guardian, The Independent, Scottish Herald and the Observer (not a peep from the Irish media on GM in recent months).
If we are rolled over on the GM issue, there is absolutely no doubt that you can kiss goodbye to organic farming and thirty years of slow painful development and hope. It will be a return for us to the backyard methods of farming where we could be reduced to growing our fruit and vegetables under bits of plastic, hopefully avoiding contamination from the surrounding prairies of GM crops. 
Fight this fight while you still have the weapons of debate and demonstration. 
In a successful post-Iraq-war climate, a triumphant US may prove to be irresistible in a trade war with Europe.

Beet: the propaganda. And still on the GM subject, if you know of conventional sugar beet growers that are quoting the agricultural press or their advisers as being in favour of using GM seed and the Monsanto/Round Up method of cultivation, refer them to this article from a conventional farming source; The Economic consequences for UK farmers of growing GM herbicide tolerant sugar beet. See the FARM website, http://www.farm.org.uk and archived at; http://ngin.tripod.com/nginlist.htm 

Wednesday 19th March 2003
World organic news. Organic Trade Services in the UK do a fine job of rounding up world news on the organic scene. They have recently allied themselves with Organic Business, a monthly magazine, and together they now reach 13,000 professionals in the organic industry. You can see their current news page at www.organicts.com/newspro/general/index.shtml  Some of the headlines this week: 
_{USA: Major ad campaign to restore the Organic Standards (Reforming the "stealth" provision - see below, 11th March and 24th February)
UK: Organic Centre Wales to continue for another 3 years, says Michael German.*
Ireland: Irish organic college saved from the axe? (from myself, with permission)
Germany: Organic supermarket extension continues  
EU: Safe food and support for rural life should be EU prority, say citizens of future member states}

* Minister German, talking about the success of the Organic Centre, said that "it was the envy of the rest of the country" and "raised the profile of Wales in the organic movement in Europe."

Welsh Ag Min under fire The same Michael German - Welsh Assembly Rural Development Minister - could be called before standards' watchdogs this week over claims he broke Assembly protocol. A Plaid Cymru AM claims Mr German has breached guidelines set down for Assembly members and the ministerial code of conduct over a DEFRA report into GM crops. The Minister has already apologised to the Assembly for "inadvertently misleading it". He had denied receiving the report and had blamed his officials in public for having "over-looked" the document. 
Also, today, the Minister will probably face further criticism when the Rural Development Committee publishes its report into Mr German's handling of subsidy payments to farmers.
Source, Western Mail, 19th March, via www.ngin.org 

Eastern Europe wants organic farming  A fascinating report by Eurobarometer surveys attitudes towards the future of farming and food among the citizens of the future EU member states. Safe, healthy food emerges as one of the strongest aspirations with almost 70% favouring organic farming methods for the future. The full document can be seen at, http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/survey/cc/index_en.htm

Tuesday 18th March 2003
The dear little shamrock I haven't done a complete survey of the cost of the little clover used by St Patrick to demonstrate the Trinity (according to a myth elevated to a "truth" a thousand years after Patrick's time), but a few examples up-country over the wekend are illuminating of another truth.The cheapest and the best example of our national emblem, that I could find, was available in Lidl, the German no-frills, low-price store that have upset the Irish Farmers Association so much recently*. They had lovely samples of the authentic trefoil in planting-out pots for 59 cent. The next cheapest was a rather blighted looking specimen in a nick-nacky shop in Kinsale, Co.Cork for € 2.50. I'm sure our many Paddy Day tourists paid much more in parade-side places.
I'll bet however the troops in Kuwait, proudly brandishing their shamrock-bedecked helmets yesterday, got theirs free. I wonder how St Patrick would feel about the national legume being carried into battle against Iraq this coming Thursday? 
And nary a sign of an organic shamrock! Where are our organic entrpreneurs?
My Lidl plant however is going into my beyond-organic soil so, next year, I will be able to offer politically-correct sprigs, free, to the first ten or so visitors that request them.
Those of you waiting with bated breath for my treatise on St Patrick will have to wait a bit longer - I didn't get it finished in time. Guess why?
* The IFA doesn't like the idea of Irish consumers getting too used to cheap food prices. They also complained some weeks ago that Lidl and Aldi (the other similar German chain) stocked too few Irish food items. This has been contradicted since by an MRBI survey that showed Lidl stocked more Irish food products than Tesco. On another tack, I haven't found a single organic item yet in the German stores although I believe they do stock some in the fatherland. Perhaps time to start lobbying them for same.

Crud in milk The nasty bacterial infection, mastitis, that is the bane of conventional milk producers, also crops up in organic herds. As antibiotics are out (largely) for organic milk herds there have to be other treatments for them to rely on. I was asked by a large Australian conventional dairy for information on organic treatments and I came up with the following references, which the Australians assured me were very useful. The sites are at Reading University, my old alma mater. www.veeru.reading.ac.uk/organic/ and www.organic-vet.reading.ac.uk/ The vet there who will help with enquiries is Malla Hovi.
Researchers at Reading say "There is a need to develop new mastitis control strategies for organic dairy producers. The recent, rapid growth of the organic dairy sector has highlighted mastitis as one of the key health concerns among organic dairy farmers..."
If any of my visitors have more information, I would appreciate it. 
See also the Veterinary page.
The Milk article is being carried over to next week.

Mellowed Out I have been taken to task for relaying the casting of aspersions on the free-range, organic hens at the Galway college. A spokesperson for the college tells me "The pop holes are open all day long until dusk for the laying birds to freely move in and out." The non-sighting of the "in-conversion" chukkies is not down to objective observation, the source close to the hens says, but to the agendas of "some begrudgers". 
Could it be possible that we have begrudgers in Ireland? And organic ones at that?

Later  St Patrick - the organic free-range pig herder. He was not however the first Christian in Ireland; nor even the first missionary.  He was sent in to clean up after the Pelagian heresy - the Irish Reformation - in the 4th/5th Cs! 
Our history of rebellion goes back a little further than our history books would have us believe.
Patrick as we popularly know the figure, is an extreme example of hagiography and "history massaging". 
Milk: Fit to drink. Yes says we. No says they. 

Tuesday 11th March 2003
Donner und Blitzen A beautiful spring day here today in Bantry Bay. Yesterday however was entirely different. A thunder and lightning storm knocked out electicity and phones but, catastrophically, it also destroyed a house in the town of Bantry. Fortunately, none of the family of six were at home. 
The other good news is that the family have been showered with generosity and kindness by many in the close-knit community. The most appropriate and generous gift however was the handing of the keys of an available, comfortable house into the hands of the mother as she watched the flames rage through her detached house. 
in other good/bad local news, an injured crewman was lifted by helicopter from the deck of a Spanish trawler yesterday morning, right across the Sound from here. Earlier attempts to rescue the man in the open sea were thwarted by 30' waves and 70mph winds. My photos of the operation, sent by email to a news organisation, didn't get through in time because of local computer server problems resulting from lightning strikes. Also, a  quirk of the storm seems to have blasted my phone but today I can still send email!
My third brush with lightning. Missed again! Next time perhaps? And whatever happened to the adage that lighning never strikes twice?

Who's Nuts? "It's nuts," is Dennis Avery's take on organic farming. Dinny is director of "global food issues" for the Hudson Institute, an American right-wing think tank. He is the usual, rent-a-rant spokesman called on everytime the networks, ABC, NBC et al want to have a "debate" on organics. "If the US, for example, wanted to go totally organic, it would have to increase its cattle herd nine-fold and convert almost the entire US land mass to pastureland to create enough manure"*, he calculates. 
Master of hyperbolics, Avery the GM advocate, grabs for the public's attention thus: "We'd have room for cities and roads and manure production, but we wouldn't have the space for crops or Yellowstone National Park." 
See Answering the organic attacks of Trewavas, Avery, Krebs et al. for Dinny's romp and rant in London and a scientist's, reasoned, structured arguments refuting the bullish Avery's manure and other arguments.
* Do you know the old Noah's Ark joke on this theme? If you want to hear it, contact Jim@planorganic.com 

Deal cut a deal. For a cheap $4,000 campaign donation, a craven US congressman, ironically named Nathan Deal, slipped a little paragraph into a large, complex bill that  allows organic livestock producers to use non-organic feed if the price of organic feed rises by a certain amount (see below 24th Feb.). 
The US organic organisations understandably frothed at the mouth. Twelve years in preparation, the National Organic Programme standards, introduced last November, were justifiably hailed as the best in the world. This action by Deal on behalf of one of his minor sponsors, chicken farmers, Fieldale Farm Corp. of Georgia, is seen by supporters of organics as a sneak attack on the integrity of those standards. 
But now, even the Agriculture Secretary, Ann Veneman, has rowed in with her support "It is important to maintain a strong organic program that ensures the integrity of the organic label placed on consumer products." 
"I think that USDA's statement provides the perfect justification for quietly saying: Let's repeal this," said Bob Scowcroft, head of the Organic Farming Research Foundation in California. 
Whether it will be repealed is another matter. Ms  Veneman stopped short of supporting Rep. Patrick Leahy's move to repeal the measure.

Pesticides and baby food. Last July the EU brought into force a regulation banning any pesticide residues in processed baby food. The argument was that there should be zero tolerance of pesticides in infants' food because their immature immune and hormone systems were more susceptable to damage from them. 
Just before the ban, six such products in the UK were found to have residues, four Heinz, one of Farley's and one Boots organic baby cereal.
There was much more bad news on pesticides in the report including discovery of banned pesticides.
Incidentally, more than 50% of all lettuce was contaminated.
There is a UK watchdog that publishes details of regular testing. See www.pesticides.gov.uk  and www.foe.co.uk for comment and criticism.

FSA and FSA. The head of the Food Safety Authority, Scotland is found out to be a notorious GM proponent. He joins his colleague, Sir John Krebs in the English FSA who is not only at odds with environmental groups over his anti-organic/pro-GM stance but even with his own minister, Michael Meacher. www.sundayherald.com/31984 (Via NGIN).

Burn or bugger off. The Irish gov is getting stroppy with the meat industry and will withdraw its public subsidies for the processing and destruction of meat-and-bone meal, MBM, in a few months time. Until now, € 410 was given for every ton produced and exported to Germany for incineration*. This was reduced to € 250 last week. From July next, zilch. 
The cagey Ag Min Joe Walsh, under pressure from Min Finance, seems to be saying - Solve the problem yourselves; you're supposed to be private industry**.Dispose of MBM, by incineration, digester or whatever but pay for the bloody thing yourselves - and put up with the heat from protesters. 
Without state help, the cost of disposal ultimately goes back to the livestock farmers.They refuse to accept any further reductions in the beef price. If the MBM companies don't get paid,  the factories close and the farmers go out of business. An impasse?
*Isn't it interesting? Incineration is not good enough for us here but OK for Germany, a country a few miles down the road from us in terms of environmental development.
** Reminds me of similar abandonment by the Min Ag in the 1970s. 

No need to go organic in Ireland. I really should get danger money for exploring Irish gov agricultural sites.
They are so mind-deadeningly boring! 
It's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it, I suppose!
Sometimes however suffering pays off; here is a gem that hints at the mindsets of the mandarins and the pollies that decide on our agricultural future. It comes from the state agricultural authority, Teagasc site: 
"Promotion of organic products should not imply to the consumer that non-organic products are not safe and healthy. This is particularly important in the Irish context where conventional farm management may be similar in a lot of ways to organic farm management in other countries." (My italics, of course).
Now you have it, Irish food production is as pure as driven snow - it's just all those foreign feckers that have BSE, TB, Brucellosis, antibiotics, pesticides etc. See, if you dare, www.teagasc.ie/advisory/organicstatus2001.htm#market 

Saturday 8th March 2003 
Irish Organic College saved from the axe? With €15 million to be shaved off its budget, the state-supported agricultural body, Teagasc, was very busy at its board  meeting this week. Following previous announcements of buildings and land being sold and offices consolidated, many more "relocations" and "transfers" are to take place. 
But the Teagasc facility we are more interested in, Mellow College in Athenry, is apparently to remain more or less intact. The organic community here in Ireland can sleep easier in their beds now that Teagasc has "reaffirmed its commitment to the development of organic farming demonstration and research units at Mellows College." (In the same breath however, it talks about transferring existing and proposed courses, organic and otherwise, away from Mellows to another facility at Mounbellew).  
As an added soporific, there is this: "The Authority is committed to developing the Athenry campus into an important adult training facility in organic farming and in a wide range of rural enterprise areas." Hallelujah! The Heathen have been converted.
And if all that was not enough to keep you sleeping soundly, the board is also going to boost Athenry to be the main Teagasc centre in the west, with its sheep and physiology research, regional advisory service, and now with the relocated Rural Economy Research Centre. 
And, sorry if this wakes you up, a very strange bed fellow for an "organic college", its new bio-technology labs, which apparently have cost millions to install. 
Is it the bio-farming pointy-heads that are to take the beds formerly ear-marked for the residential organic students? 
Is Research, and bio-tech at that, going to rule the roost in the fields of Athenry?
Time will tell. 
The air is still too thick with the dust of demolition to be able to see clearly what's what. My suspicion however is that *Downey may be out but his ethos lives on.
And talking about roosts, what about the commercial-scale, organic (sorry, "converting") chickens in Mellows? Correspondents tell me that the poor "free-range"critters have not seen the light of day in living memory.
I am still being urged to go and see Mellows; some think that it is a model all right - but a model of a factory farm! 
Organic, smorganic! 
If by any stretch of your, by now, tired imagination you want the full press release about all this stuff, contact Miley at Teagasc HQ, mmiley@hq.teagasc.ie  Ask him for one for me too, will you? He neglected, despite personal contact (and polite it was too) recently, to send me one. 

*Dr Liam Downey former Director of Teagasc, now largely, and hopefully harmlessly, in retirement (partly down here on Beara) gave the infamous talk about organic and bio-tech being mutually supportive. See Archived Weekly News, November 2001.  

Thursday 6th March 2003.
Organic college reprieved? The Irish Agricultural and Food Development Authority,Teagasc, after its board meeting yesterday in Dublin, announced several more closures and consolidations of regional offices, but Mellows College, Galway, with  its organic courses and farm are to remain intact. News coming in indicates that some conventional courses at the college may be scrapped
More later.

Wednesday 5th March 2003 
Scots expand their organic demonstration farms. As we here in the Republic contemplate the closure of a state organic demonstration farm at Mellows College in Galway, Scotland has just added two more to its demonstration farm network, the interestingly named Godscroft mixed farm of 715 ha.in Berwickshire and East Mains, Kirkinner, a 180ha.dairy farm. The aim of the network is to demonstrate the feasibility and practicalities of organic farming through farm walks and seminars linked with commercial farms. One of these, coming up on the 13th March, is, Parasite and disease monitoring in organic sheep. Details from, d.younie@ab.sac.ac.uk 
The Scottish Executive, although turning down a recent proposal by a Green MSP to become 20% organic in a decade, has passed the Organic Farming Action Plan. The Plan includes a target to reduce organic imports into Scotland to 30% and double the acreage of good quality land in organic conversion - but without a time limit. 
The English Soil Association had a considerable input in devising the Plan. See more on their website, www.soilassociattion.org.
Currently, a staggering 8% of agricultural land in Scotland is organic. 

Welsh Plan Organic. The report, The Future of Organic Farming in Wales was published a few weeks ago. 
Wales, although home to most of the original organic pioneers in Britain and the location of the largest organic wholesaler in the country (at Lampeter), its organic sector is relatively small today.There are only 550 organic farms out of a total of 28,000, that is, just less than 2% - a quarter of Scotland's (but three times the proportion in Ireland!). 
The report, which is the result of a six-month inquiry into the Welsh Assembly's policy towards organic farming and the prospects for the sector, shows clear support for the organic sector.
But there is an interesting rider to the document that we should all perhaps take notice of: Glynn Davies, chairman of the Welsh Assembly's Agriculture and Rural Development Committe, emphasises the need for the organic sector  to develop in line with consumer demand rather than being driven by government targets. "...as the same market pressures and the reform of the CAP push conventional agriculture in a similar direction, farmers should be aware that premiums for organic produce will come under pressure. Recently, the sector has experienced similar economic difficulties to the rest of agriculture with production imbalances, import competition and supply-chain difficulties placing pressure on prices. This illustrates that organic production is not a panacea for Welsh agriculture. As with the conventional sector, only high-quality, well-managed organic farms that respond to market needs will prosper." www.organic.aber.ac.uk/policy/ardreport.pdf
Food for thought, no doubt, and perhaps all the more reason why we should look more closely at the whole farmers' markets movement. This I intend to do later this week.

Food Truth Standards  The Food Standards Agency (headed by the notoriously anti-organic Sir John Krebs) in the UK has just published a report that shows that 20% less UK consumers ate organic in 2002. 
This seems to be at total variance with the prediction by food industry analysts that organic sales in the UK this year will be over £1 billion - and all other statistics!

Make Health not War was the title of an unusual full-page advertisement in the Irish Times last Saturday. Presumably it has appeared in other newspapers? It was paid for by an American physician, Dr Mathias Rath, " who led the breakthrough in cardiovascular disease and cancer"(?). He goes on to say that "The primary cause of the World's most common health conditions is a chronic defiency of micronutrients (2 billion suffer). The pharmaceutical industry tries to protect its global drugs market by outlawing natural remedies". 
With this I totally agree, but my slogan would be, Healthy Food for All. And rather than promoting supplements, which the good doctor is obviously doing, I would urge that healthy/organic/sustainable food production should be our primary health service. If the food was what it should be there would be little if any need for supplements.
Anyway, if you want to have a closer look at what the doctor has else to say, see www.dr-rath-health-foundation.org 

The polluted pays!  As the media are saturated with rumours, discussion and preparations for war and the public thus distracted from environmental and other issues, it behoves those of us that care to keep a close eye on our particular field of interests. Under the smokescreen of international tensions, sneaky attempts to undermine organics and other environmental issues can, and do, take place. See Weapons of Mass Deception below, 24th Jan.  
As another example of this, an attack on organics is taking place much closer to home this week - and from an unexpected direction.
Welsh Plaid Cymru MEP Jill Evans is "extremely concerned" at a draft proposal about GM crops being proposed by EU Ag Comm Franz Fischler which will be discussed today by EU environment ministers. In a document titled, "Co-existence of genetically modified, conventional and organic crops" the Ag Comm says "that the responsibility for co-existence measures such as buffer zones or pollen barriers should fall on the economic operators (farmers, seed suppliers, etc.) who intend to gain a benefit from  the specific cultivation model they have chosen". 
In plain English, if the organic farmer can't keep GM contamination our of his crops, tough! It's his fault. Ms Evans understandably says "This approach would turn the "polluter pays" principle upside down. Instead of those who produce and use GMOs being responsible for what they do, the conventional and organic farmers would be expected to prevent GMO contamination. It's crazy that we should expect the polluted instead of the polluter to have to pay." (My italics)
This is the action she is taking: "I am urging the governments of Europe and the European Commission to go for strict legislation on the co-existence of GM and non-GM crops. The legislation should require producers and users of GMOs to take effective measures to prevent the unintended presence of their GMOs in other products."
See Ms Evans' website for this and other issues she has spoken on, www.jillevans.net  

The polluter pays. Of course this is how it should be. Here in West Cork, as in other parts of the country, we will soon have to pay for the amount of rubbish we produce. New waste bins are being fitted with electronic chips that will automatically weigh the refuse as it is loaded into the truck. Customers will then be billed for that weight, on top of a fixed annual charge for the service. 
Being a frugal people here on the peninsula, there will undoubtedly be an immediate response in terms of people reducing their waste by burning the combustibles or, hopefully, by composting their organic wastes normally chucked in the bin. 
I know it is practiced to some degree on the Continent, but I think it would be an excellent idea to return all packaging to retailers for them to dispose of and pass the cost back to the original seller. Patience, I suppose - it will all come in time.
Frugality can be a virtue, but there are those who are a step or two below being just frugal, who will have even more reason, as they so narrowly see it, to continue criminally throwing their rubbish into the sea. 
But there are even worse things that end up in the briny. Apart from farm effluent and fertiser run-off, which is not as big a problem here as in other parts of the county (Kilbritten e.g.) and country, it is still the practice of some farmers to dump dead cattle and other farm animals in the sea. 
There is an another variation on recycling unique to Beara. Cars that have reached the end of their usefullness on the mainland are left in the vicinity of the ferry ramp. Islanders then bring them across to Bear Island where they have another lease of life, untaxed and uninsured for a few years (there is no permanent Garda/police presence on the island). Until quite recently, some of those eventually ended up at the bottom of a cliff in the sea.

Good newz! New Zealand organic meat farmers are getting 50% more for their produce than their conventional counterparts. Fruit growers are get between 50 and 100% of an organic premium.

More good news. 
Ireland. The Green Party, in Ireland are promoting a NO LOGO day on the 10th April to encourage school kids in particular to abandon expensive branded clothes.
Spain. Andalucia now has 67,000 ha. under organic cultivation, 2,600 producers and 110 organic industries.
World. World organic industry sales were € 29 billion in 2002.
Italy grossed € 1.6 billion in organic output in 2002: up 35% on 2001. There are 1,200,000 ha. of organic land in Italy now, 57,000 producers, 4,000 processors and 122 exporters. 
Austria. 72% of Austrian consumers buy organic produce regularly.
UK. Warriner School, Bloxham, Berkshire, runs a 48 acre organic mixed farm which is used to supplement environmental education. It supports itself by selling produce to parents and friends.

Next week; Fears for babies after pesticides found in food - including organic baby food!