OF&G :: The blog

While we attend plenty of shows each year, it’s been some time since OF&G was at Natural and Organic Products Europe. So, with a renewed vigour we addressed that this year and set up a not insubstantial stand along with three of our licensees.

Our visit to this year’s show, at Olympia, London, was a roaring success. It was great to get face-to-face with existing licensees as well as to meet many, many potential new ones. The whole show team, Steven, Ruth, Joanna and (for one day only) Mark, found the whole experience very positive. The same could be said of the licensees who set up their displays with us and managed to give the whole thing the feel of a small OF&G marketplace!

They were: Miller, farmer and bread and cake mix maker, Rebecca Raynor, who heads her successful Glebe Farm brand; Brenda and Lucy Clarke with their team from Trevarno Organic Skin Care who showed of a great range of high quality products; Al Sharif, of Harrisons and Crosfield, purveyors of carefully selected, and beautifully packaged, teas.

Here are some pictures to sum up the show (click on them for bigger versions):

And the really good news? We’ll be back next year!

It’s very heartening to see the Welsh Assembly taking a strong stand on GM as it moves towards adopting a ‘polluter pays’ principle.

At OF&G we’ve been calling for this all along. It makes perfect sense that if you introduce GM to the countryside and end up contaminating crops of your neighbours (or even further afield) you should bear the costs.

For some reason Westminster seems dead against this and determined to make it as easy as possible for GM companies to pollute our countryside.

If an organic farmer gets GM contamination in their fields, their crop can no longer be called organic, meaning the loss of any premium and no return on the extra costs and efforts they have incurred. How can it be right that the person or company causing this should not be held responsible?

If the Welsh Assembly Government puts the onus on the ‘polluter’ it is effectively banning GM from being grown within its borders - that’s a brave and principled move which we support wholeheartedly.

The Food Standards Agency has announced emergency measures to deal with the threat of GM rice, known as ‘Bt63′, from China creeping into the UK.

A long list of rice and rice products coming into the country will have to be certified free of Bt63 GM contamination because it is an unauthorised GMO in the EU.

The FSA has notified local authorities who will be responsible for liaising with businesses in their respective areas that might be importing or selling contaminated products.

It’s good to see positive and decisive(ish) steps being taken, but from OF&Gs’ point of view, we fear this is just the tip of a pretty worrying iceberg. As more GM products are shipped around the world (and there are many of them now) it gets harder to avoid contamination of organic and non-GM products, no matter whether it’s accidental (or adventitious) contamination.

If this happens supplies of organic and non-GM products are going to be even thinner on the ground than they are now - putting even greater pressure on prices for animal feeds and milling grade cereals. Perhaps the Bt63 scenario will re-open the public’s eyes to the Frankenstein Foods debate…