OF&G :: The Blog

Some very uplifting news comes to us today from licensee, Jones Organic, makers of organic pasties and pies.

Jones Organic - Organic Steak & Vegetable Pastie

Business is good and the firm has now signed a lease to take on new premises which allows it to double its baking and refrigeration capacity.

While the business is proudly based in Bridgend, South Wales, increased demand from retailers in London and the south east has created the conditions for the bakery to ramp up its activities.

You can read all about the new move in the the words of Jones Organic themselves here: Jones Organic Press Release 21.10.09 [Adobe PDF file, 48k].

As well as supplying delis and organic stores around the country, the firm runs a very tempting mail order service which can be accessed through the website.

There’s some fascinating history to the company and its founder, Mike Sweetman, on there as well.

We wish everyone at Jones Organic every success with their expansion.

Interestingly, following on from the last post, a new Defra-backed report has emerged which suggests that shoppers have a perception of organic food and farming that is beyond the practical requirements of the regulations.

The study, carried out by the University of Exeter, reports an ‘expectations gap’ between the reality of production and processing and the knowledge and understanding of shoppers. Read the Farmers Guardian report here.

This is not entirely surprising and is the kind of communication failure that we all hope will be addressed by the OrganicUK initiative (see previous post).

Unfortunately, whenever we read something like this you can bet it will be spun quickly into a story about organics misleading consumers. Again, that’s probably our own fault as an industry for letting ourselves get into that position. Now is the time to take serious steps to address the problem. It’s a bit of a shame, though, that Defra will fund this kind of research, but doesn’t seem willing to find money for the OrganicUK bid to the EU to help us move on from the problem.

Somewhat strangely, the Food Standards Agency has felt the need to publicly dismiss the findings of a French study that called into question its own recently published and controversial report.

The FSA-funded research by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine made the claim that organic food was no more nutritious than non-organic. This has been disputed heavily by some heavyweight scientists around the world but, even so, led to some very damaging and misleading headlines about organic food.

Last week we highlighted here a French study that called the FSA/LSHTP findings into further question. That French report has since been highlighted by a number of media outlets and the FSA has come out fighting, claiming that the French used ‘diluted data’. Take a look at this piece by The Ecologist.

What seems immediately strange is that the FSA feels the need not only to defend its own report, but to attack the French one in the process. Why is a body that should be agnostic on such issues coming across as desperate to avoid having to officially recognise any empirical benefit to organic food and farming? Your thoughts on a postcard – or a comment below…

OrganicUK is an extremely important initiative to bring this country’s organic sector businesses together to properly communicate what organic stands for.

We've pledged - will you?

OF&G has been firmly behind the project from very early days, to the point where we were the first certifier to commit financially to the project.

Now we’re encouraging every organic-related business to get onboard and put their weight behind this crucial move to inform shoppers why they should buy organic.

We’ve very proud to be a backer, so today we’ve added the badge prominently on our website as a reminder to all to take a look and think carefully about what they can afford to put in.

If you haven’t already, please do take a look at the OrganicUK website. If we can pull off a great campaign, everyone will benefit.

There’s an interesting study on organic food, including nutrition, that seems to run counter to the report published a few weeks ago on behalf of the Food Standards Agency.

The French Agency for Food Safety (AFSSA) begs to differ with the findings that proved so controversial in this country.

You can view the report, led by Denis Lairon, by downloading the PDF document here. It’s language is pretty accessible even for us non-scientists and it makes for an interesting counterpoint to the findings of the UK ‘study’ that the FSA will no doubt lean on for years to come.

Just a brief update to note that downloads of our Guide to Organic Certification: Food Processing stand at exactly 400 at the time of writing. That’s quite a neat milestone, don’t you think?

In addition to that we’ve sent copies of the printed (and satisfyingly heavyweight) version all over the UK and around the world. Did I mention that it’s free in both formats?

If you haven’t seen it yet take a look here…