May 27th 2002

Green Magic. Renate Kunast, Germany's, Green, Federal Minister of Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture is one Ag Min on track to kick European agriculture into the environmentally cleaner 21st century. She is setting a blazing agenda that will hopefully light fires under the neanderthal (with apologies to our innocent forbears) Ag Mins in some other European countries. "Consumers must be at the centre of our attention" she demands as she also calls for a new consumer protection and agricultural policy which will focus on quality rather than quantity. Like ourselves, Ms Kunast wants "an agriculture which provides safer and higher quality food: which produces in a sustainable and welfare-oriented way", and is based on a policy "which helps to bring back jobs and added value to agriculture and rural areas, rewards non-marketable services (environmental) and in an adequate way promotes organic farming". To achieve this she has gathered together all the important stakeholders in the food chain in Germany. She calls this group, which comprises, farmers, the feed industry,  retailers, consumers, the food industry and politicians, the Magic Hexagon. Full speech at: www.german-embassy.org.uk/speech_by_renate_kunast__feder.html
I felt I had to lead with a positive and constructive item, like the above, as the news generally is quite depressing. Although the speech is not current, it is still one of the most heartening political declarations on food issues in recent times.
Apologies to Min Kunast and my German-speaking readers for missing out the umlauts - I cannot make it apply from my programme. Suggestions?

The Mighty Quinn. The upmarket Irish chain of stores, Superquinn, launched an Organic Promotion last week. In a slightly novel move, suppliers' representatives and growers will be available in stores to talk to customers about their products and relay the organic message. I was interested to hear,also, that there will be a range of environmentally-friendly packaging offered (I am waiting to hear more from Superquinn about this - I have a special interest in how potatoes are packaged).They are selling organic onions, for example, sealed in paper bags for the first time. Hopefully they will do the same with potatoes. The promotion of their 250 organic lines - "From spring lamb to strawberry jam", will run for 6 weeks. 
Love them or hate them, it has to be admitted that the supermarkets, albeit for unabashed commercial reasons, are substantilly advancing the organic agenda with promotions like this. www.superquinn.ie

Bord Bia Brags for Irish Lamb. The population of my favourite part of France, the south east, apparently eat much more Irish lamb than anyone else in Europe and the boys from the Irish food board are out there making sure they eat even more.There is no doubt that Irish lamb at this time of the year is simply delicious and as close to being organic as it gets. Bravo to the locals of Haute Savoie, Provence and so on for recognizing a good food product when they see it. 
I certainly enjoy spring lamb with few qualms and was delighted to see our local SuperValu doing a 33%off promotion over the last few weeks. 

War looms on GM front. The US is threatening a trade war over the EU's GM labelling policies. The message from them seems to be quite blunt - take our GM-laced food, in which we've invested so much, or we'll ram it down your pesky necks, you Euro pinkos! British consumer organisations are up in arms over their gov's support for the Americans on the issue. www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,722463,00.html 

Fourth of July. American Independence Day of course but also the date for an Open Day at the Irish gov. agricultural agency, Teagasc, Organic Unit, Johnstown Castle, Wexford. All the org. heads from DAFRD and UCD will also be on hand. No fireworks however are expected.
The emphasis at Johnstown is on grass farming for cattle and sheep. Organic livestock farming is of course the direction the recent Report of the Organic Development Committee want us to go in order to achieve (in fact the only way we can achieve) the paltry 3% organic target by 2006. If interested, contact via, www.teagasc.ie/events/2002/opendays/johnstowncastle0704.htm or phone 053 42888.

D'Unbelievable didn't happen. One optimistic note from the Irish general election was the exit of Councillor Hickey (D'Unbelievables' Pat Shortt ) in the first count. The tufted-hair, beer-bellied, country Independent, who waged a wily campaign on the TV show XitPoll was mercifully not elected - he promised to bring back the recently sin-binned plastic bag! 
Another positive development is how well the Green party did increasing their representation by 300% - from 2 to 6.
I was disappointed however that Mary White, standing for the Greens in Carlow/Kilkenny, campaigning specifically on food issues, didn't make it this time. I was also sorry that Raymond O'Rouke, the food safety expert barrister, running for Fine Gael in Wicklow, did not get elected in this, his first foray into national politics. See Publications page for his book, European Food Law. Another Fine Gael candidate, ex Ag Min, Alan Dukes who featured in an Irish Examiner article, "Dukes sees an organic Ireland of the welcomes" was another surprising casualty of the Fine Gael party slaughter at the polls.

Has anyone got the balls? As the Roy Keane football saga unfolds (part of the problem was the non-arrival of balls and other kit at the training base in the Pacific), hourly adding more problems for the Irish World Cup team, it seems that the players, their entourage and supporters may have another difficulty if they are successful in getting into the next round. Foot and mouth disease has been confirmed in South Korea, only a handful of miles from the stadium that will be the venue for the second round. 
Would Joe Walsh, if he is still the Ag Min by then of course, tell them all to come home? And be quarantined?

Double Bind? The Irish Junior Ag Min, Noel Davern, responsible for Organic Development, although elected again to the Dail, is not expected to continue in this post. Ex IFA farm leader, Tom Parlon, elected as a  Progressive Democrat for Laois/Offaly will almost certainly be in the running for an Ag Min job as the horse-dealing goes on this week.
For the future of organics in Ireland? Parlon or Davern - the Devil or the Deep Blue Sea? Organics won't gain much either way, I believe. Parlon showed his teeth recently in attacking the venerable Irish Examiner journalist Damien Enright who has a strong and ofttimes poetic pro-environment slant in his regular back-page article of Thursday's Farming supplement. Enright articles like, "Lets ditch the poisoners", Sept 20th 2001 are the sort of thing that  gets Parlon's goat.
(Incidentally, Davern's Fianna Fail running mate in South Tipperary the urbane, scholarly but politically naive Martin Mansergh was scuttled by canvassers who warned voters that "he was a black Protestant landlord". He still polled a respectable fourth - in a three seater).

Organic farming  finished says new EU report if GM crop cultivation becomes widespread. The report is felt to be so controversial that the originators tried to keep it from the public. Terrible stuff! Reconcile this with the  reports below, if you can. The EC's Joint Research Centre says it will be "virtually impossible" to prevent contamination of organic crops if GM plantings increase.  www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,722463,00.html  

Labour financed by GM profits. Lord Sainsbury, the UK Science Minister in charge of GM policy, has made over £20 million in the last few years from GM shares. The supermarket peer at the same time has donated £10 million to the Labour party. Of course there is no connection between these facts and Tony Blair's enthusiasm for GM technology and the issue that Labour is about £10 million in the red - debit that is. And of course the aristocratic, billionaire grocer doesn't know anything about all this as his investments are tied up in "blind trusts". He's just lucky! 
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=299036

Organic Attacks. There is a useful summary on this site of the orchestrated attacks on organic food and farming from both sides of the Atlantic. www.organicconsumers.org/Organic/media052102.cfm. A lot of the material is from our energetically campaigning friends at Norfolk Genetic Engineering Network.
As well as the GM debate NGIN's several newsletters a day keep me abreast of what's going on in the UK press re organic food and farming. www.ngin.org.uk

Paraquat linked with Parkinson's? The UK gov's Advisory Committe on Pesticides' chairman, Prof David Coggon, has ordered a "review of all published studies" in the wake of findings that "certain pesticides could act as nerve toxins and trigger Parkinson's disease." Paraquat is mentioned as an example of such a pesticide.
If a connection like this is finally, scientifically made then it will be even grater than the BSE scandal - the ultimate food-scare biggie and the end would almost definitely be nigh for the producers of conventional pesticides and indeed other agri-chemicals. 

The Naked Chicken The featherless chicken is the latest obscenity from the Dr Frankenstein GM labs. In pursuit of the ultimate cheapjack chicken meat, Israeli scientists have produced this little baldy monster. But it will be cheaper to produce, they insist:  "normal" intensively farmed chickens (raised of course in abnormal conditions!) need a lot of ventilation to cool them down. Consequently in hotter climates, like Israel, "home" produced chicken is more expensive to rear. "Feathers are a waste" the head of the lab said. Tell that to the Celtic chukkies on a bleak December day! 
A much less obnoxious product from Israel is, if you are not boycotting produce from that sad country, are their organic Nicola potatoes available in 2.5 kilo bags from Wilsons at SuperValu stores. 

Blowing in the wind. As we all know now, the largest off-shore wind power station in the world is to be built off the shores of Co.Wicklow. Exploratory drilling has already taken place in the area. But one of the sites that is being  tested is the Codling Bank, home to a massive and stable whelk population. But this is not just a natterjack toad situation, the whelks give good employment to over 40 boats that have potted for them for generations, mostly for the discerning gourmet French market. The fat succulent whelks from the Bank are some of the best in the world. Tread softly windpower consortia, I say, lest you cock up once again, as in Tipperary (Slievenamon) and Wales (offshore dev.destroyed local shell fish stocks).

Organic Salmon blasted on BBC Scotland. The BeeB reported that organic salmon had more sea lice and toxins than conventionally farmed salmon. Fishing industry news sites, like IntraFish.com, and others had a field (water?) day at the expense of the organic sector.
It would now seem that Scot's BBC have promised the Soil Association - which licenses organic fish farming - that they will be good from now on and not broadcast any more lies. Does anyone have more on this? One of these days the SA may consider me sufficiently respectable to send a press release. 

O'Connor Don Quixote. Whilst I stay at home tilting only at the metaphorical windmills (except of course in the case of the Tipperary wind-power station mentioned above and last week), my younger brother, Stephen, is on a solo horse-trek through La Mancha-like parts of Spain on an epic, 3,000 km long journey back to Cornwall and Ireland. 
My experiences climbing the Inca Trail, through a civil war-torn province in Peru, sixteen years ago, are only trotting after some of the stuff that has already befallen my sturdier sibling. 
He put the heart crosswise in me yesterday describing, by mobile, a hair-raising Blair Witch-type incident in the woods the night before. I joke you not - it was a knee-knocking experience, for me in any case, and I was hearing it in bright sunshine! 
Apart from fulfilling a life-time's dream and raising money for some of his  favourite mental health causes, he is also keeping tabs on all  organic manifestations (maybe the strange goings-on the other night was a wild organic boar or bear!) he will come across in his trans-continental travels.(Hah, haah - that's how to do research on a shoe-string - or should I say a short rein?)
I will have bank account details next week if you would like to donate to the charities.

The €uro makes it feel like home - this is a quote from my Irish friend, Tony O'Malley, the sculptor, from a visit to his family in Andalucia this week.
And I stand to win a substantial bet from my favourite brother-in-law, Graham in Cornwall as the € improves against the pound - as long as it is sustained until December and Christmas dinner at my sister's. Organic turkey this year - I'll be bringing it.

Speaking of Spain, does anyone out there know about the "plasticultura" intensive horticultural region of Almeria, especially about problems of pesticide contamination and export bans?

17th May 2002

Piss-a-beds: that's what we used to call the dandelion as kids. In England, they were more delicately called piddlybeds. I remember being condemned by my sisters to wetting the bed if I picked it. The taboo only applied, it seems, to the yellow flower which was a slightly sinister looking thing anyway. The French called it dent de lion - the lion's tooth and pissenlit. I think though the flower looks more like a lion's mane than his dentition. Perhaps it's the leaf they are referring to? But then they look more like harpoons! In any case when it turned into that wonderful, fluffy seedhead, we felt comfortable enough to play with it like birthday cake candles and puff its little' parachutes' into the wind. Like a lot of folk-names, Piss-a-bed is a graphic indication to the dandelion's main herbal qualities. Strongly diuretic - yes it could cause you to wet the bed - it is also very rich in potassium and lecithin. The latter helps break down fats and cholesterol and is much recommended these days as an aid to slimming. Right! I'm off to my patch to pick a bunch of those barbed spears - and as the French also do, mix with sorrel leaves - and have my weight-reducing wild salad. Taraxacum (from the Arabic tarakhaqun - meaning "wild chicory") officinale is the dandelion's botanical name. 

Wild Things. The new Soil Association organic standards, just published, include rules about collecting plants from the wild. I hope I'm not infringing those rules now by garnering my little wild garnish. I must look up the International Association for the Conservation of Nature, who apparently will rule on what's allowed to be picked and from where. www.soilassociation.org 

Organic farming methods completely vindicated - almost . Proof positive of the benefits of organic farming are there of course but are thin on the ground, often complex to explain and are usually heavily challenged. A report from  the American Organic Materials Review Institution looks however very solid indeed. Almost 100,000 samples of conventional and organic produce were tested. The frequency of pesticides in conventional produce were many, many times more than in organic food. The existence of some pesticides in the organic samples should not be surprising, indeed it would be impossible not to have some traces, as contamination occurs from spray-drift from neighbouring conventional farms and soil and water sources. See  www.ngin.org. for some of the spurious challenges to even this heavy-weight research. Full documents at,  www.omri.org/FAC.html 

The Reichstag was aflame this week with whiffs of succulent organic dishes as the pro-organic, German Ag Min Renate Kuenast opened a Bio-Segl week to publicise the new organic logo. I wonder when the Food Island's reconvened Dail (today is General Election day here in Ireland) will get around to enjoying organic fare in Leinster House's  members' restaurant - 2102 or 2202?  www.bio-segl.de 

Old Flame. There are some in my dear old county of Tipperary getting incensed about incineration. Read all about it on, www.noincinerationsouthtipp.com .The last time I got environmentally excited in my home county was when one of the Golden Circle, O'Reilly Hyland, was about to have a massive wind-power station stuck on top of one of the most beautiful and historic hills in Europe.That was the rock he perished on! Wind power is just about OK if the site is right.

Hemp Ice Cream. Poring over the lucky Germans' menu has got  me ravening but now I'm positively drooling as I read about an ice cream produced from crushed hemp seeds - in Strawberry and Mint-Chocolate flavours. Aargh! (I am lucky if I can get an Aero when I get to town!). The hemp ice cream is not to be sniffed at either by you suits, who read my site (and all of you of course are very welcome), as it was voted Best Organic Product of 2002 recently. And if the deliciousness and the adventurous whiff wasn't enough to get you going, the miraculous stuff is also high in protein and has no cholesterol. Oh, it would go so well with my salade sauvage! www.motherhemp.com . Somebody tell me when and where we will have this product in the Republic?  

How to rubbish your opponents on the Internet, especially if they are environmental or organic organisations, or otherwise anti-GM.
You, dear reader, would never get to know how to do this, professionally at least, because you simply haven't enough money (except perhaps for some of the suits!). But for those who have, like our favourite-hate-corpo, Monsanto, and their AgBiotech associates, it's a breeze. Because a corpo-need will always attract some greedy little greasers to meet it. The grubby one doing the dirt this time for the Frankenfood giants, is highly successful, public relations company, The Bivings Group.
Monsanto, reeling from its expensive mauling by activists and Euro-consumers generally a few years back, now employs Bivings. The Group engages in psy-ops on the Net - "Internet lobbying" as they so delicately have it. More revealingly, on their website, they refer to their tactics as Viral Marketing: How to Infect the World. A quote from their website: "There are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience know that your organisation is directly involved... See George Monbiot's article in the Guardian, 14th May, The Fake Persuaders.
www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,715158,00.html 

Underhand. Greenpeace has leaked a not-for-the-public-eye EU report on GM crops which shows that all farms, including organic, could face unsustainable increases in costs of production from the widespread introduction of GM crops. See www.ngin.org.uk 

Overhand. Why bother hiding the above when another just-officially- released EU report says that the intelligence of the public's perceptions about GM food have been totally underestimated. Present approaches, it says "will fail to promote public acceptance of agricultural biotechnology.." It goes on to tell, us in another million words or more, that decision makers should provide an open dialogue with consumers, industry, science and gov. What have we been saying all along? 
And why do all these reports take two to three years to do? I was shocked to find recently that a EU-sponsored Coastal Survey of fish farming in this area will take 3 years! There definitely won't be any wild salmon left at that stage!

May 10th

Keep Britain Farming is the clarion cry of a website I've just found. Its not organic - although it has the odd organic story - but there is very good and up-to-date news on it. The links are extensive too and well organised . www.keepbritainfarming.com .

Enter the Dragon. The Americans do it bigger! Red Dragon Ag Flamers are propane-fuelled flame weeders - but some of their models are as big as conventional wide-boom sprayers. www.FlameEngineering.com 

Organic is a buy! An institutional investment bank in the US has published a Better Food and Nutrition Industry Report in which it projects sustained growth of 20 - 25% in the organic sector and recommends it strongly as an attractive investment opportunity. The organic industry in the US is currently worth $15 billion in sales. Growth trends are very visible, it goes on to say, and do not seem to be affected by other negative trends in the economy.
The bank is Adams, Harkness and Hill Inc. and more can be found on their website: www.ahh.com

The Elephant has laboured - but has it produced just a mouse!
Finally, the Irish Department of Agriculture has come up with the Organic Report. It has been a long time coming, and who knows at what expense?
The last fix I had on the report was at the IOFGA conference back in October when John Fox, DAFRD and chairman of the committee, told me, 'It would be no later than the end of January.'
But to be fair to the hard-working civil servants, this is an election year and their obermeisters would naturally (natural to the party in power, of course) put on hold all announcements of goodies, even minor ones (from their vision-less point of view ) until the most propitious election moment. The delayed sheep premiums of €13 million, now to be paid on the 10th May, are another particularly blatant example.
The Junior Minister for Agriculture, Noel Davern has surprised us all with his sudden, about-face on organics with the launch of this report. He now gives the impression that he is enthusiastic about the organic industry, hailing it as having now entered the 'mainstream'. Only some weeks ago he went on record saying that organic will remain 'a niche market'. In other interviews with people from the organic side of the fence, he has shocked them with his robust, anti-alternative attitude and comments. Talk about the fox being put in charge of the chicken coop!
Some time ago I wrote to Min. Davern: '..there is history to be made for those who are prepared to grasp the nettle .. Without you or I the changes will come anyway. The question really is are we going to be in the vanguard of this new organic/pure food movement, ...or are we going to be just camp-followers dragged reluctantly into EU-led environmental farming with no kudus (for Ireland) at the end of the line?' I could have saved my breath!
With Ag Mins like Walsh, Davern and O'Cuiv there has been precious little nettle-grasping, and at that I suppose we should not be surprised. They owe their support to conventional farming and its interests and they laugh behind the scenes at the beans-and-sandals-brigade, especialy the non-Irish ones.Organic is a road that they will only be driven on when the EU drovers crack the whip enough.
Whilst miserably unambitious with a target of only 3% organic by 2006, far short of other EU countries' Organic Reports and Action Plans, it represents a 600% increase on the present! That says a lot in itself!
The full report is welcome though as a fairly thorough analysis of the organic sector, its shortcomings and opportunities.
Moreover, the organic participants in the committees learnt a lot about where the bureaucracy and other food 'stakeholders' are coming from - and vice-versa of course (Soon I hope to have a copy online of Hilary Tovey's prescient article, Messers, Visionaries and Organobureaucrats, which all concerned could usefully read. In the meantime, see synopsis below*).
There is no doubt the report could become the basis for an intelligent and effective development of the sector - if -and this is a big 'if', if there was the political will to see it through! There is a political talent-vacuum at DAFRD at the present but who knows, maybe the up-coming election will change things. Look up the DAFRD press release at: http://www.irlgov.ie/daff/Pressrel/2002/90-2002.htm. The second part of the document is however unreadable! A version sent to me by email (following a direct request) from the dept. was fine however.
There isalso an Adobe version of the full report at: www.irlgov.ie/daff/Publicat/Organic%20Development%
20Committee.pdf

* Messers, visionaries and organobureaucrats: dilemmas of institutionalisation in the Irish organic farming movement. Hilary Tovey Trinity College Dublin Published in Irish Journal of Sociology, Vol. 9, 1999, pp. 31-59.
'This paper asks what happens to 'alternative' social movements like the Irish organic farming movement, which try to promote sustainable forms of rural development, when they begin to be incorporated into state policy for farming and the countryside. Does this provide a context in which farming and the food industry can begin to be 'restructured from below', or does it lead to 'deradicalisation ' of the movement and its ideas? ....institutionalisation is often experienced by movement members themselves as a critical, even highly divisive development, which can result in severe damage to the movement's core ideology and values.'
IOFGA's experience, analyised in the paper, points to 'the corrosive effects on movement participants of incorporation of the movement organisations into state corporatist types of structure.'
The article goes on to conclude that 'institutionalisation will profoundly affect the movement while leaving the state relatively untouched - that the organobureaucrats will become another species of state agents and those who want a 'real alternative', may have to withdraw, regroup and start all over again'.

Organic Matters
The May/June issue of the Irish organic magazine has just hit the streets. Apropos of the preceding item, it is interesting to hear a hard-working young German farmer on 140 acres in Tipperary say; 'We need more backup and real support from the state - Ministers must be personally supportive(!) - at the moment state agencies don't provide a good enough service to be of any help to me.' Will things improve for the likes of Jens Krumpe after this report? Or will the main benficiaries be state agencies themselves, as one attendee at some of the deliberations suggested to me?

Election Issues.
As Ireland heads for a mid-May general election there is a conspicious absence of food and agriculture issues in the debate. The main issues seem to be Health, Education, Crime and Pensions.
'Health' of course should be the area in which food issues are mainly discussed, but what goes in your mouth in terms of food and drink doesn't seem to count as an election issue - let's face it - as an issue period!
When will people and govts make the connection? ' The health of a people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their power as a State depends" Disraeli 1877, and the further connection that food quality should be the primary health service.

Small Change
Once upon a time it was bruited about that Irish Taoiseach (PM) Bertie Ahern had wanted to reform the Min Ag. I hear though that he was continually thwarted - he probaly wan't pushing that hard either - and all that was done eventualy was to change the Dept's name from DAFF to DAFRD - but not on their websites and emails yet.
Food lawyer, Raymond O'Rourke, Dublin, also lobbied 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.
Now there's a man who might make a good govt. minister - and he is contesting the election - for Fine Gael in Wicklow.

Truth Decay as well as Tooth Decay.
 Bottle-fed babies are at risk from fluoridated water says the Irish Food Safety Authority -or at least, as investigated and reported by the people at www.fluoridefree.com. They pose the question also - 'Why does Ireland cling to fluoridation when 98% of Europeans have either never tried, stopped or banned the chemical.' It seems that in an unpublished report last October, the Scientific Panel of the FSA agreed that bottle-feeding infants were being overdosed on fluoride and recommended that infant formula not be reconstituted with fluoridated tap water. We still await in Ireland, the report of the Irish Fluoridation Forum which is now long overdue: Min Health Martin has been conspiciously silent on the matter. There is a suspicion too that a number of members of the Forum have close links to the fluoride industry.

Crisps, Bread and Chips possibly carcinogenic.
A Swedish research group have discovered that there can be hundreds of times the EU limit of a suspected carcinogen in crisps, chips, cereals and biscuits. The substance, called acrylamide, is formed when carbohydrates are baked or fried. It was found in concentrations of over 100 times that allowed by the WHO for drinking water in french fries from McDonald's and Burger King in Sweden. An experiment by the Swedish National Food Administration showed that cooking chips until they were brown and crispy, as opposed to lightly cooked, increased the levels of the toxin by over 300%.
The British, Food Standards Agency is giving the problem high priority despite the fact that the Swedish report is still only a preliminary one.

Wines to Die for.
Two autumns ago I had the great good fortune to be taken to the Valle de la Drome in south-east France by a good friend. Amongst many wonderful things I enjoyed from that region was the luscious local wine Clairette de Die and the sparkling Cremant de Die, both organically produced. Die is the name of the largest town in Drome.
To my great disappointment, even though specialist wine shops seem to know about the wine district, I have not been able to buy these lovely wines either here or in the UK. That is about to change hopefully as their Export Manager, Claude Athimon is energetically looking for UK and Irish distributors and pursuant to that will be at the London International Wine and Spirit Trade Fair 2002, 21st - 23rd May. Look for Jaillance, Stand G 40, Southern Hall. www.jaillance.com and email: export@jaillance.com 

The Staff of Life
I make the best goddamn bread this side of the Pecos.The soda-bread recipe is from my mother with, of course, organic ingredients (In her early days the ingredients were largely organic too).
I'm very proud of my bread and I always bring some with me when I'm travelling. I fed a whole rally team in England with sandwiches a few weekends back (see item below) with fillings bought at the Bord Bia Speciality Foods Symposium (the Saturday open-to-the-public stalls affair - in the bloody rain!) in Kinsale the morning of my flight; St. Tola organic goats' cheese, delicious dry-cured ham and spiced beef and relishes from Ballymaloe. I was sad that I couldn't take up Paddy O'Keefe's offer of cartons of Tipperary Organic Ice Cream as he was clearing his stand.
When I need a rest from my own exquisite baking I buy Sunnyvale Organic Wheat Sourdough bread. It's a great product, healthy as bejasus, has a long shelf-life in its sealed package and can be cut as thin as water biscuits - for the cucumber sandwiches, don't you know. It's made by Everfresh Natural Foods (no website or email) in the UK and seems to be widely available here.

Racing with organic power. 
Forgive my little indulgence here but I have to tell you about this website - www.rallyinsite.com. It belongs to my son Senan who is making his career in motor sport. Apart from paternal pride, the other reasons why I include a mention of it here is because he has my website advertised on his and he eats an almost wholly organic diet as part of his training: some at least of my ideas have rubbed off on him.

Sin Bins
Ireland's only Socialist member of parliament, Joe Higgins argues that bin charges should be abolished as only 1.5% of waste going to landfills in Ireland is domestic.The out-spoken Dublin politician, once roused a food conference in Cork (Growing Awareness, Skibbereen, 2000) to cheering with his anti-globalisation and anti-mutinational rhetoric. On Pat Kenny's radio show, 29th April he described himself as an alternative to the 'great blob' of other politicians in the Dail.

GM Corps are a Sell.
Is Agbiotech History?This is the question posed by a recent posting from Norfolk Genetic Engineering Network and answered, as Americans have it, in the affirmative. Pharmaceuticals are growing at three times the rate of agricultural biotechnology and parent pharma corps. are getting fed up with their troublesome junior divisions. As scientists say that the science underpinning GM risk assessment is unbelievably weak, the smart money is leaving the likes of Monsanto and migrating to pharmaceuticals.
Monsanto's recent dull performance - 2001 sales down 3.3% - is a contributing factor to the gloom for the sector. Even their Golden Goose, the glyphosate weedkiller Round Up, was down by 8% worldwide with significanly lesser sales in Latin America and Asia. See www.ngin.org.uk Newsletter, 26/04/02 Can you afford GM agriculture?
If you have a hankering for conspiracies and some great detective work on the skullduggery of the GM brigade and their PR tools look up eco-warrior Jonathan Matthew's article at: http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit_index.html 
Honestly, this stuff is stranger than fiction and would be hugely entertaining if it wasn't for the fact that people and their livelihoods are the victims of these Machiavellian goings-on.