October 29th 2002
Organic Matters magazine, bi-monthly news organ of IOFGA, has just published the Nov/Dec issue. Usual high quality content, including my humble contribution, Web View from Hungry Hill. 
I have now, finally (archiving is a pain!), archived these epistles and you can view them (those of you deprived of the pleasure and profit of OM) by clicking on the following links:  Nov/Dec 2002 - Marketing your meat using the web + Irish agricultural sites. Sept/Oct 2002  Recovery - Revolting - Revisionism - Revolution + Sites to visit. July/August 2002 - Charged Up - Gold Diggers - Gold from the Sea, and Web - Golden Words.

Buy the Guardian, this Thursday. Apart from its usual meaty articles and Thursday's Online supplement, I may be published, finally, in the august publication. Prize to first person to tell me they've seen the item.
And whilst you're in the newsagents on Thursday get a copy of the Irish Examiner - planorganic.com is mentioned, I pray, favourably, in the Farming section's Organic Diary.
And, before you leave the premises, if you don't get it on subscription, fork out the reasonable few € for Organic Matters.
The Editor of OM has informed me, following my item last week, that the paper used in the esteemed magazine is made from "forest thinnings".  

23rd October 2002 
GOP votes NOP Yesterday saw the introduction of the US Dept.of Agriculture's Organic Standards under the National Organic Programme - NOP*. They have been greeted with rafts of articles and programmes in the mainstream media - ABC, Washington Post, NBC, New York Times etc. The reaction on all sides is largely positive and welcoming but there is some disgruntlement amongst organic pioneers. Try Google News.
*Of course there is nothing in the Irish media - it doesn't rate, as it has nothing to do with Nice,  pervert priests and errant Cardinals (not that I think these latter issues do not deserve the most thorough airing in public and justice to the victims ! 
  
Yes. Very Nice. Ireland is flavour of the month in Europe this week, especially amongst farming interests in the applicant countries, having voted a resounding Yes on Saturday in the referendum on the Nice Treaty.
The Yes vote (this was the second referendum on this issue - we voted NO the first time, last year), is being interpreted, amongst many other laudatory things, as a warm welcome into Europe to the 10 applicant countries and an indication of Ireland's generosity, openess and commitment to the ideals of the EU.
No mentions this time of Irish racism, greedy self-interest and parochialism!

Friends of the Earth have a league table of supermarkets rated on how much organic produce they stock, GM food etc. www.foe.co.uk . 
We should flatter them by copying this idea for Ireland. Any volunteers to do the work? I will gladly publish it?

Burger Shite. Burgers are in trouble again. McDonalds in Moscow was bombed last week. However this was nothing to do with a Russki Bovè* type escapade but just an ordinary decent criminal act according to Russian police. 
Meanwhile the Irish satirical programme, X-IT File, Sun 21st October,RTE 1, reported that "crap" (e-coli 0157) was discovered in 5% of Irish burger samples. This led the presenter to speculate, "Why should we wonder if crap is discovered in 'crap burgers' ". He further wondered whether more extensive research would show that there was actually meat in burgers!
* Just to show that although we may be on the extreme Western fringe of Europe down here we are often visited by the exalted. French activist, and McDonald trasher, Jose Bovè's daughter visited last week and was mightily impressed with the local craic&ceoil. 
The Min Ag Joe Walsh was here too recently - to open our new € 1.5 million Coastguard Station in Castletownbere - a lovely building and a great, if slightly out-of-proportion - cost-wise - facility. One begrudger was heard to say that it looked like a  "haybarn".
And then there was the Storm - Rebecca that is, performing for a gig in aid of the Lifeboat Service. I didn't attend but I'm waiting for a Storm report from others.

Tears will be souvenirs, at least from onions, if they proceed to produce a GM version  without its tear element. Japanese scientists have now isolated the gene that causes the lachrymose reaction when peeling the alliums. They've called it, imaginatively - lachrymosia - or something like that.

Salmon Stinks. The Scottish Sunday Herald carried a headline last week - Farm Salmon is now most contaminated food on shelf. Read their Environment editor Rob Edwards' in-depth article. www.sundayherald.com/28565. Food Safety Authority of Ireland please note.

The Ecologist. Organic Matters, organiclife, Organic Style, Smallholders, Permaculture. Organic Gardening. All worthy publications. But where is there a good tree-saving, online, organic/sustainability magazine? 
There is none. All any of the above do with their websites is herd you towards their hard-copy, forest-levelling, toxic-ink intensive, travel mile-extensive, news-stand glossies.
Time for a change, I would venture, and allow organic consumers to apply their ecological principles to their reading habits. 
Incidentally, but still  on the subject of tree-wasting, does anyone know whether you can return hard-copy, junk mail to senders - at their expense?

"Septic Isle" - "Celtic Gnats" I'm delighted to say that nobody got it right - not just because it saves me another prize - but it indicates that few of my readers read the Daily Mail.The slagging was in a recent article about Ireland, Nice and The CAP. Find it yourselves - I'm not giving a link to the DM. 

Non-Organic but Raging News in Ireland and Scotland and elsewhere.

Reel Ireland. For a true flavour of Ireland go see Peter Mullen's film, The Magdalene Sisters opening this week. 
And if you were, like me, one of the few unlucky ones not to see the infamous Prime Time programme last week on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, bombard RTE with requests to show it again (The times they are a changing - Cardinal Connell was heckled in his own pulpit on Sunday? There are calls for his resignation, even jailing, over alleged cover-ups of paedophile priests). 
The Scottish Sunday Herald also had a report on the Vatican's current discussions to bar homosexual seminarians from ministry - they are obviously linking homosexuality with child abuse. This is causing outrage in gay organisations.The Herald quotes an American report that 60% of clergy are homosexual and a Channel 4 documentary that described seminaries as places of "high camp activity". www.sundayherald.com/28621. 
If those early, unique liberals of ours, Hubert Butler and Owen Sheehy Skeffington were only alive to see this day? Will expand for anyone interested).
 

19th October 2002
Nice One. Today Irish voters go to the polls to vote on the Nice Treaty. Basically, we, uniquely in the EU, have to have a referendum on whether to ratify this treaty which deals with the enlargement of the Union and modifications in how it is organised. 
I know this is not shattering news to many of my readers in the UK and further abroad but it has been the straddling news item in the Irish media for the last month.
The stultifying dullness of the debate was broken recently by the revelation that the most vociferous of the NO campaigners had deep associations with German neo-Nazi parties. Republican Sinn Fein, the Socialist Party (one member) and the Irish Green Party are also advocating a NO vote whilst all others, left right and centre are urging their supporters to vote Yes. 
Last year we voted No. 
This year....?
Next year.....? 
It seems that neither the Gov.nor the EU is prepared to take NO for an answer from the Irish electorate on this issue. 
The world holds its breath. 

"Buy British First" urges the Soil Association in its Organic Food and Farming Report, 2002 released this week. The organic farming area in the UK is now more than three times the size of London( Wow!) and is worth almost £1 billion a year, second only to Germany, it tells us. www.soilassociation.org 

Buy British Organic. There may be other reasons to buy British too.
There simply is not enough choice of organic goods in Irish shops according to Richard Collins, Carlow/Kilkenny. Richard commutes every week to the UK and comes back loaded with organic goods that he simply cannot get here in Ireland. Whilst acknowledging the recent improvements in the range of organic items stocked in Irish shops, he says " ...Ireland is coming a poor second to its European neighbours when it comes to organic food".
Range however is not the only problem: in the case of fruit, he says "...often the range is poor and the quality suspect".
The astute and ultra-mobile shopper suggests a solution to the confusing image of Irish food being projected: "...(combine) all the ... Irish organic food organisations into one easy-to-see brand. It's amazing that the Soil Association’s logo from the UK is more familiar to Irish buyers than our own." True?

Irish Organic Beef Prices Down. I see that the price of Ballinree/Ballybrado Organic Beef is reduced this week in SuperValu. 
Dare I say that I and M. Storey may have had some part in that?  

Irish Food Safety. See interesting Survey of Artisan and Traditional Food Producers in the Irish Food Safety Authority's latest bulletin. This follows the symposium in Kinsale in April last, the tail-end of which I managed to attend as I was on my way to the UK (and not to do an organic shop - although I did bring back some Tesco Organic Bloomers! Ask me about them?). www.fsai.ie  

Good News. See new Google News. Type "organic food" into Search, for many US stories on organics following the introduction of the National Organic Standards this month. It trawls over 4,000 news sources throughout the world. Amazing stuff. Enough here to keep even the most ardent organic news gopher going indefinitely. 

Fatal Harvest soon, and the rest.

17th October 2002 
Simply the Best? A new Irish organic website, www.simplyorganic.ie has been launched this week. Simply Organic are an arm of the long-established, traditional fruit and vegetable company, Begley Bros. based at Arran Street, Dublin. Over the last 18 months they have invested in special facilities for storing and packaging organic produce. 
Paul and Greg Begley and fellow-director Bernard Tumulty add a personable and dynamic character to the organic side of their business. 
They have already built up a substantial turn-over selling directly to multiples - throughout the year!
But see the site itself. 
Apart from information about the company and apt small pages about the nature of organic produce, Why Organic? The Future etc - their Product Range page is exceptional; it's educational and unique in its transparency about the origins of Simply Organic lines - Irish produce features in most vegetable categories (no onions though!) - but only for relatively short seasons. A lesson to someone?
In addition, the website is worth looking at from a design point-of-view. It is also crisply and intuitively navigable. Well done Simply Organic and best of luck.

October14th October 2002 
A "SaveOur Seeds" petition signed by over 70,000 people (including moi) will be handed to Comm. Fischler and Comm. Byrne at a meeting of agriculture ministers in Lux. today. Three hundred organisations, representing over 25 million people, have also signed the document. 
The SOS petition calls for there to be no legal threshold for GM contamination in seeds above the limit of detection, currently 0.1%. A EU Directive is being proposed that will increase these levels by up to 900%!  - which will, according to Greenpeace, be GM  "by stealth" in Europe. 
See www.saveourseeds.org  - for more details of the campaign. And for a full exposition of the complex arguments see, http://act.greenpeace.org/ams/e?a=seeds&s=blue2  
Thanks to www.ngin.org.uk for alerting me to this.

To come later this week - More on Irish organic certifying bodies. The absolutely-must-book for Christmas or the Solstice. Prize, if you can guess the title. Mags Review - New International. Ecologist. organiclife. Organic Style. Organic Gardening. 
Who recently called us "Celtic Gnats" on a "Septic Isle"? Another prize for right answer.

8th October 2002 
Scotland to Reap Organic Marketing Opportunity. The Scottish Green Party, with the backing of many MSPs and over 80 organisations, is putting forward an Organic Action Plan which would see 20% of Scotland's land in organic production in ten years. Robin Harper, MSP says "There is an unbeatable marketing opportunity for Scottish farming."
One million acres ( over 7% ) of agricultural land in Scotland is now organic or in conversion, although much of the acreage is in upland farms producing lamb and beef (there is some criticism that a lot of this is for the subsidy only - sound familiar?). 
Mr Harper hopes that his Plan will address this imbalance by giving substantial encouragement to lowland producers to grow organic crops to replace imports of organic fruit and vegetables: they now stand at 70% of consumption. 
The Action Plan now goes to the Rural Development Comittee and should be debated in parliament in the Spring.
Interesting to hear also that there are 24 new students starting post-graduate courses in Organic Agriculture at the Scottish Agricultural College. 
I will email this piece to our own Org Ag Min (if somebody at the Dept. can tell me who that is this time) and perhaps the Irish Green Party also. 

Somebody is Coining it ."Consumers should start screaming" at the price of beef and "Farmers should start screaming at butchers" was the strident message on the Agri slot of 5-7 Live, RTE, 7th October, as they reviewed the current beef market and the campaign of picketing the meat factories over producers' prices (so far this has produced a zilch outcome).
Ireland is at the bottom of the EU table for factory prices, according to a just-published IFA survey that the programme quoted.
Consumers, they said, should raise hell about the rip-off because, "The housewife is paying three times what the farmer is getting". 
Casting a non-screaming, cold eye on the organic beef market, journalist, David Storey takes a look this week (Irish Examiner, Thursday, Farming supplement) at the prices Irish organic beef producers are getting at the moment. He coments that they are certainly not any better off on prices than their conventional brothers and in some cases organic animals are being sold this autumn for half what they fetched last year! 
And guess what? - prices have not come down in the shops. 
Not one iota! (I am still waiting for someone to claim the prize I offered some weeks ago and tell me of a higher organic premium than Ballinree's, quoted in my item below, 26th September, Supermarkets and Processors are Coining It ). 
And the housewife is paying, at least in some supermarkets, considerably more than three times what the producer gets.
Whatever happened to market forces? You know, supply goes up, prices go down, consumption then goes up, supply goes down and prices start going up again.
But then, as the economists would say about this particular situation, "This is not a perfect market place". 
The bottom line is, that farmers and consumers are suckers in the short term, "price takers", and have to move mountains in order to improve their lot, whilst the middlemen, with almost all the levers of marketing and economic power, like the landlords of old, fatten exceedingly on the excess profits.
Mr Storey wonders too at who might be pocketing the difference - "Between the farmer and the fridge, somebody must be adding on even more than they used to" concludes the diarist, formerly an organic producer himself. 
Talking of landlords, perhaps the old Irish weapon of Boycott would be appropriate again in this situation.
Read further in the Examiner article, about how a British supermarket, Sainsbury's, "in conjunction with the UK, Soil Association, pulled the carpet from under the Irish organic beef sector", thus precipitating the current crisis. 

US State to Vote on GM Labelling. As the US threatens trade war on the EU for having the effrontery to go ahead with GM labelling, there is an upstart in their own backyard. 
Oregon is going to be the first state to allow its citizens to vote on "whether they will require food makers to label products that contain GM ingredients." 
The vote takes place next month.

Caged Hens Healthier. Read the spurious arguments being put forward by the US chicken industry against the National Organic Programme's new standards being introduced on 21st October. www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20021004-042949-6233r

Coffe grinds. If you beef producers are feeling hard-done-by, consider the plight of other Developing World, "price takers".
There is truly miserable hardship being suffered by coffee producers worldwide as growers' prices drop to the lowest levels - in real terms - for over a hundred years. Fields are being abandoned and growers' families often have to resort to roadside-begging to try to survive.
But does the retail price of coffee come down?
Of course not. Its the same story as with our Irish beef.
The multinational coffee companies, Nestlè, Kraft, Proctor & Gamble etc refuse to pay producers more on the grounds that it would encourage even more production.
They are silent on the retail price issue. 
The coffee over-supply is of the order of 40m bags (each 59 kgs) and there are suggestions that millions of bags of the lowest quality coffee should be burned! 
Oscar Samora, in Nicaragua, is however prospering, relatively, as he gets twice as much as his neighbours for his organic coffee which he sells direct to the roasters.
Amazingly, in my local SuperValu, I can buy Fair Traded, organic coffee cheaper than most of the conventional coffees on offer. 
The brand is Cafe Beneficio, made by Simon Lèvel, Holland, and some of it could be coming from Oscar's plantation: the claim on the packet is that the beans are "Purchased directly at the plantations in Latin America and Asia". 
It's really good coffee too. 
Organic Premium = minus 5% approx. Is this the lowest around?

Struck Off. My item last Thurs about the organic inspectors' strike aroused considerable debate. I believe that members of the Board and inspectors who were not blessed with a computer and access to the Net were faxed with copies of the article. And presumably those without fax facilities were phoned, and those without.......
A member of the board - with a computer -  informed me that, ".. it (the article) doesn't present the full picture" ( I daren't ) and that I should have spoken to a member of the Board (I did!). And in future I should go to himself or the Chairman for information. Aye.
But then I was told I shouldn't, in any case, be prying into the "internal business" of the Association! 
Apparently they are spending more time and energy trying to ferret out the mole they think is talking to me than sorting out the inspectors' strike and other business.
Save your powder, I say to them. There is no mole - either on the Board or amongst the inspectors.T
The best quality information on these affairs I have so far received was from a market trader at the Fair Day in Castletownberehaven, last week. I swear! But in any case,  there are the dogs in the street.
So far, sources (when balanced against a range of information - usual journo-stuff) seem to be have been reasonably accurate. 
I do however avow that I got it wrong about licenses being revoked. The same member of the Board told me, in the past, "Several people had their licenses withdrawn". 
I've asked for further information on these cases. They are to be made public in future, he tells me.
That mine of information, the CTB trader, also told me that one case before the Board, involving alleged infringement of standards by a major producer/processor/retailer, is pending at the moment. Again I wait for further clarification. Somebody on the board this time? 
I also hear that the IOFGA directors are about to take drastic action in regard to the inspectors' strike and that some people are already lobbying for jobs. 
I got it wrong about the inspectors' qualifications too (really sorry about this - I'm only learning the trade):apparently you don't need to have been an organic farmer or indeed have any farming experience at all, to qualify! 
And some inspectors fit this category, I am reliably told
.
Great, even I could be eligible then! I thought my uncertified grower status precluded me from applying in the past. Gi'e us a job!
But, shucks! Could they afford my five star hotel requirements?
I am sorry to hear that I am not flavour-of-the-month in IOFGA circles at the present - one member and long-time acquaintance shocked me by saying that I had even been struck off his Christmas card list! 

Virus Alert The virus WW2/ Bugbear-A is sweeping through the computer world. Apparently it exploits weaknesses in MS browser and other software from where it invades email files and hijacks them to spread itself. It is a particular problem with home computer users who may not have top level security. It can for example, bypass some anti-viral programmes.
 "Patches" have been available, apparently for over a year, from Microsoft to fix the problem. www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/
security/bulletin/MS01-027.asp.
The AV company Sophos has good information on the bug and offers free "disinfection": www.sophos.com/support/bugbear.html.

Thursday 3rd October 2002.   
Irish Organic Inspectors Strike. The Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association, IOFGA, has a serious scrap on its hands as its organic standards' enforcers, "withdraw their services". 
The contracted inspectors, whose main qualification is that they are experienced organic producers themselves, feel that they have been unfairly treated in recent cost-cutting strategies by the board of the major Irish organic certification body.
The seven inspectors regularly visit organic enterprises, monitor converting businesses and perform spot-checks.They are paid per inspection and their travel, hotel accomodation and other expenses are covered. 
IOFGA's board, newly elected this year with Antrim farmer John Hoey as chairperson, had to undertake severe cost-cutting in an attempt to balance its books.
Reflecting the serious state of the Association's finances, office staff at Kilbeggan, Co.Westmeath were cut from four to two last summer with an estimated saving of €50,000. 
The inspectors took a cut of 20% in their inspection fee, some months ago. "Our contribution towards solving the financial difficulties of the Association" one of them said at the time.
The IOFGA board, confidentially, paid a substantial bonus to one and salary increases to both remaining head-office staff on the basis that they were going to have to work considerably more efficiently to do the work formerly done by four. 
When this was leaked recently to the inspectors, they felt very aggrieved and confronted the Board with a demand to re-instate their original fees. In a meeting with the directors last Friday, Paul Bell representing the contractors, presented their case, which has now expanded to five conditions (other four not revealed yet).
The Board is not in a mood to be sympathetic towards the inspectors. At least one member is adamant that the inspectors' demands will not be given in to. He maintains, "The inspectors have damaged their case by breaching confidence and they must not be allowed to be the tail that wags the dog." In a comparison with a similar inspection operation, he went on, the IOFGA contractors are shown to be well paid, even at the reduced rate, for the work they do.
One long-standing IOFGA member told me that he was annoyed, not just to hear that there was a strike that may affect the image of organic food, but that the affair is cloaked in such unnecessary secrecy - apparently, he had just spent some time in discussion with a board member who never even hinted at the problem. "This has a whiff of  Ray Burke about it. Consumers' rights to know have to be respected " he said, adding that, "If there is this atmosphere of cover-up in the Association, there may be other worms in this can to crawl out yet." 
Another contact wondered why the long-term "life-style" organic producer had to be inspected as often as "grant organic" newcomers. She was suggesting that a considerable saving could be made by just having spot checks for the vast majority of producers with a long-term clean record of meeting organic standards and more frequent inspections for the few who may be under suspicion of cheating. She furthermore said, "These should, without mercy, be thrown out of the organisation if shown to be in serious breach of the organic standards. They discredit us all." 
She could not tell me (and a straw poll didn't enlighten me) if anyone had ever been kicked out of IOFGA for abusing standards. But the consensus was, that if there hadn't, there should be!
Which raises the questions - are the inspectors doing their job properly?
Or if they are, is the IOFGA Board responding properly to feed-back from them?