Reports are appearing today of statistics coming out of retail analysts, IGD, which apparently show that a sizeable chunk of shoppers are sticking by organics – credit crunch or not.
Talking Retail rounds up the report here. It shows that 19 per cent (or roughly one in five) consumers are holding firm in their organic purchasing.
There are some other interesting facts and figures, but slightly concerning, though not surprising, is the one that suggests eight per cent of those questioned didn’t know what organic stood for anymore. It’s not surprising because realisation has finally dawned across the sector that we’re not getting clear messages out. Fortunately, there is work in hand to address this, such as the OrganicUK initiative being co-ordinated by Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming, which OF&G is backing.
Overall though, mounting evidence, both empirical and anecdotal, points to organics going through a dip, rather than a crash.
food, organic, shopping
Via the Twittering of our friends at Farmers Weekly (@CarolineFW) yesterday, this blog piece came to light regarding the farcical situation of trying to find what should be a simple piece of information – how to send a small consignment of butchered, packed and labelled organic beef to France.
While there are many bureaucratic layers involved in food and farming, the whole bizarre scenario is unforgiveable.
I’d just like to pass on a comment made by our hard-working Processing Dept team while discussing it this morning:
“It was terrible. We don’t know the answer right now, but we would have found it for them, rather than passing them round the houses.”
That’s the kind of dedication we like to see!
export, farmers weekly, food, France
Organic Farmers & Growers is very pleased to be unveiling its new Guide to Organic Certification for food processing.
This has been a long-time in the making as our processor certification team refined and refined it to ensure it was going to be as useful and practical a publication as possible.
The guide spells out all of the stages of gaining organic certification in food processing and should answer most, if not all, of the obvious questions that anyone would have before going into the sector. It would also prove a useful reference for companies that have to regularly train new staff in this field.
It’s definitely a quality product (the printed versions would stand up very nicely to be lugged around production facilities), but is also available as a free download from our website.
As well as describing the stages of the certification process there are examples of all the relevant forms, so applicants can see at-a-glance how to complete them. It really should remove a lot of guesswork.
Congratulations to processor CO’s Ruth and Joanna, Development Officer, Steve, and Office Manager, Angela, for pulling this together.
food, guide, processing, publication
