Organic news

This is an extract of an interview with Californian organic restauranteur Alice Waters, published April 29, 2008.

What’s in your kitchen?

A fireplace that I can cook in and big windows that look out to my garden. There is no equipment, as such; certainly not machines. I have lots of pestles and mortars, a rather small stove, a big table to eat at and a big table to cook on.

I mostly buy food at the market and use it pretty much right away. My refrigerator has a lot of condiments, jams and jellies. I also keep pasta, grains and couscous.

I grow mostly herbs in my garden, as well as some salad and radishes and citrus fruits. There’s also lots of mint and lemon verbena. I love making fresh mint tea. We serve it after meals at the restaurant.

Local produce pioneers

California has set a lot of trends among foodies in the western world, and buying from home is just one of them

How would you sum up your food philosophy?

Pretty simply that I want to buy food that’s locally grown, sustainably farmed, seasonably ripe, and then I want to cook pretty simply. I really love having the fireplace going. I cook eggs and toast in the fire; that’s my specialty, if you can call it one.

How have our attitudes to food changed?

I think there has been a reaction to the manipulation of our food system and I think we’re finally coming back to our senses. We’re just realising that we need to eat real food, food that’s grown for our good health, and we need to eat a variety of foods.

I think the most exciting thing is the biodiversity that’s coming back to gardens. We’re not just getting five kinds of lettuce now, we’re getting 25.

What is Britain’s best-kept food secret?

After mad cow, I think you had a kind of wake-up call and people just started paying attention in a way that they hadn’t before. There’s an awareness in England about where food comes from that doesn’t really exist anywhere else I know about. You have the horticultural roots that will make it possible to really change the food system. And you have an enlightened Prince of Wales who is aware of the food system.

Do you prefer eating in or eating out?

I always like to eat at home, but being the restaurantrice that I am, I also like to eat out. I go to the places where I know the owner because I like to get their advice. I love salads and pasta. I’m less of a dessert person and like savoury foods.

What is the next big (real) food trend?

I don’t like to think of it (food) as a trend, but around the world there is more focus on food. If you can call seasonal food in the garden a trend, then I think it’s coming back.

The way that we’re ultimately going to save ourselves and this planet is if we educate ourselves and our children about where our food comes from. I think the work that Jamie Oliver and the Soil Association are doing in England is radical and vital.

US farmers have been given the green light to produce cloned meat for the human food chain. In a report billed as a “final risk assessment” of the technology, the US Food and Drug Administration has concluded that healthy cloned animals and products from them such as milk are safe for consumers.

The announcement follows the launch of a public consultation on the issue by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Its “draft opinion” on the technology gave provisional backing on the grounds that there was no evidence for food safety or environmental concerns.

Joyce D’Silva, of Compassion in World Farming describes it as “…a technology that has arisen out of a huge burden of animal suffering and that is still going on.” She said even if the embryo loss rates were brought down to acceptable levels, the technology would be detrimental to animal welfare. “It looks like it is going to be used to produce the most highly productive animals… These are the high-producing animals that have the most endemic welfare problems anyway.”

The UK National Farmers’ Union has adopted a wait-and-see attitude to the technology. Helen Ferrier, the NFU’s food science adviser said, “Generally our views on the safety or the acceptability etc are really based on the opinions of independent scientific experts.” If cloning is adopted she said the NFU did not favor labeling cloned meat.

“If the product is absolutely the same as its equivalent but using a different system, it’s not necessarily very useful to label it, because it’s misleading to the consumer and it’s impossible to enforce.”

OrganicFoodee.com thinks otherwise. Consumers want the facts about what they are eating. It’s our basic right to have cloned meat clearly labeled so we can choose to buy it or not to buy it. Until cloned meat is labeled, the only way to avoid eating it is to buy organic meat, as organic meat by law cannot be cloned.

British shoppers were warned yesterday that there could be a shortage of organic turkeys at supermarkets this Christmas. The recent bird flu outbreak in East Anglia, which resulted in tens of thousands of premium birds being culled, is posing major problems for suppliers and retailers with less than three weeks to go. Industry experts predict that customers may find it harder to buy a fresh turkey, which will push up prices.

The extent of the looming problem was underlined by a major quality supermarket chain, Waitrose, which said yesterday that it would have no organic turkeys to sell this Christmas. The store had planned to source its entire stock of 18,000 birds from two UK farms on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk. However, they were all slaughtered when the premises became infected with avian flu.

In the past year, the UK organic turkey market has increased by almost 50 per cent as British shoppers spend more for top-quality, traceable produce.

Each growing season, like many other sugar beet farmers bedeviled by weeds, Robert Green repeatedly and painstakingly applies herbicides in a process he compares to treating cancer with chemotherapy.

In his right hand, Duane Grant holds a genetically engineered sugar beet, next to a conventional beet. Once refined, the sugar from each would be the same, sucrose.

“You give small doses of products that might harm the crop, but it harms the weeds a little more,” said Mr. Green, who plants about 900 acres in beets in St. Thomas, N.D.

But next spring, for the first time, Mr. Green intends to plant beets genetically engineered to withstand Monsanto’s powerful Roundup herbicide. The Roundup will destroy the weeds but leave his crop unscathed, potentially saving him thousands of dollars in tractor fuel and labor.

For Mr. Green and many other beet farmers, it is technology too long delayed. And the engineered beets could pave the way for the eventual planting of other biotech crops like wheat, rice and potatoes, which were also stalled on the launching pad.

Seven years ago, beet breeders were on the verge of introducing Roundup-resistant seeds. But they had to pull back after sugar-using food companies like Hershey and Mars, fearing consumer resistance, balked at the idea of biotech beets. Now, though, sensing that those concerns have subsided, many processors have cleared their growers to plant the Roundup-resistant beets next spring.

It would be the first new type of genetically engineered food crop widely grown since the 1990s, when biotech soybeans, corn and a few other crops entered the market.

“Basically, we have not run into resistance,” said David Berg, president of American Crystal Sugar, the nation’s largest sugar beet processor. “We really think that consumer attitudes have come to accept food from biotechnology.”

A Kellogg spokeswoman, Kris Charles, said her company “would not have any issues” buying such sugar for products sold in the United States, where she said “most consumers are not concerned about biotech.”

If some other big food companies are now open to genetically modified sugar, though, they are not talking about it. Both Hershey and Mars declined to comment. “There’s just nothing we have to say on the topic,” a Mars spokeswoman said.

Many sugar refiners and seed developers also refused to comment, hewing to an industrywide plan to coordinate the introduction of the genetically engineered beets and carefully control what is said about them.

When it comes to genetically modified crops, there is a reason to keep one’s corporate head low — to avoid protests. Some opponents of biotechnology are only now getting wind that the sugar beets have been resurrected.

“When I first saw this I said, ‘No, it can’t be,’” said Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association. “I thought we had already dealt with this.”

His organization issued a call to arms and thousands of identical e-mail messages were sent to Mr. Berg at American Crystal Sugar warning that “profit margins of your company and its supporting farmers” would be hurt by consumer resistance.

Mr. Berg said he received 681 messages in a 24-hour period before having the e-mail blocked. He said he still believed that most consumers would accept biotech crops. Mr. Cummins, however, said he would next try to persuade consumers to pressure food companies to boycott the sugar. “I don’t think companies like Hershey are going to want any more hassles than they already have,” he said, referring to recent earnings pressure and management turmoil at the chocolate company.

About 10,000 American farmers grow sugar beets on about 1.3 million acres, mainly in Northern states from Oregon to Michigan. That makes the beets a minor crop compared with corn, at about 90 million acres, and soybeans, at almost 70 million.

And yet beets account for about half the nation’s sugar supply, with the rest coming from sugar cane. The sugar from beets and cane, generally considered interchangeable, is used in candies, cereals, cakes and numerous other products, although some food manufacturers have switched to high-fructose corn syrup, which is cheaper.

When genetically engineered versions of soybeans and corn — as well as cotton and canola — were introduced in the mid-1990s, farmers quickly adopted them. But opposition to genetically engineered crops then took hold, particularly in Europe. Food companies, fearing protests or loss of customers, pressured farmers not to grow the crops.

Sugar was not the only crop affected. Insect-resistant potatoes developed by Monsanto were withdrawn from the market in 2001 after fast-food companies resisted them. Monsanto gave up on developing Roundup-resistant wheat in 2004, in part because American wheat farmers feared losing exports. The rice industry, also heavily dependent on exports, has never grown herbicide-tolerant varieties.

Even if the situation has now changed for sugar, however, other crops might still meet resistance. For one thing, sugar is a refined product that contains no DNA or proteins, just the chemical sucrose. “While the sugar beet is genetically different, the sugar is the same,” said Luther Markwart, executive vice president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association and co-chairman of the Sugar Industry Biotech Council.

By contrast, the foreign DNA and proteins in genetically modified wheat, rice or potatoes can be eaten by consumers, which at least theoretically raises food safety questions.

Moreover, only about 3 percent of American sugar is exported, Mr. Markwart said, compared with about half of wheat and rice.

The sugar industry’s organizational structure also helps. Virtually all sugar processors — the companies that buy the beets from farmers and then extract the sugar and sell it — are owned by the farmers themselves. That makes them more likely to accept the biotech crops than an independent processor might be.

Among farmers, demand for the Roundup Ready beets, as they are known, is expected to be strong. “The sugar beet growers are going to adopt this technology immediately,” said Alan G. Dexter, the extension sugar beet specialist at North Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota. In a survey he conducted, 57 percent of beet growers cited weeds as their biggest problem, with diseases the distant runner-up at 16 percent.

The seeds will be most attractive to those with the biggest weed problems. With a technology fee of a little more than $100 per 100,000 seeds paid to Monsanto, the genetically engineered seeds will cost at least twice as much as conventional seeds. That translates to about $50 to $65 in extra seed costs per acre.

But Duane Grant, who grows about 5,000 acres of sugar beets in Rupert, Idaho, said the extra seed outlays would be offset by other savings. He said his annual herbicide costs would drop to $35 an acre, from $70, and he would no longer have to hire migrant workers to pull weeds by hand, at a cost of $35 to $150 an acre.

Mr. Grant, who was designated by the national beet growers’ association as its spokesman on this issue, also said Roundup would have to be sprayed only two or three times during the spring-to-fall growing season, while the existing herbicides must be sprayed five times or more. The existing herbicides are decades old and some weeds have developed resistance to them, Mr. Grant said.

Some weed experts say there are also some weeds resistant to Roundup and its generic equivalent, glyphosate, as a consequence of the heavy use of the herbicide spurred by the proliferation of Roundup Ready crops. But such weeds are not found in beet fields, Mr. Grant said.

He said that with conventional beets, Roundup can be used only before the seedlings emerge from the ground, because after that the Roundup would kill them.

Bringing back the biotech beets took a long, coordinated effort involving Monsanto, seed companies, growers, processors and trade groups under the auspices of the Sugar Industry Biotech Council.

Rival seed companies all agreed to use seeds descended from a single genetic transformation done by Monsanto and KWS, a German seed company. That meant the industry had to win federal approval only once. The new genetically engineered sugar beet was reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration in 2004 and approved for unrestricted growing by the Agriculture Department in early 2005.

And before planting the beets, farmers have waited for approvals in other important markets. Just last month Europe approved the beets for food and feed use, although not for planting.

Because such foods would have to be labeled in Europe as containing genetically engineered ingredients, some American food companies might use cane sugar, which is not genetically modified, for products they export to Europe. But in the United States, foods containing sugar made from biotech beets would not have to be labeled.

The sugar beet industry conducted field trials in Idaho last year and Michigan this year. Mr. Grant, who was part of the Idaho test, said the biotech seeds actually had slightly higher yields and sugar output than very similar conventional varieties.

Some environmentalists say the use of Roundup on sugar beets could contribute to the growing problem of Roundup-resistant weeds. But the Agriculture Department said it expected little, if any, environmental effect from growing the beets.

One factor that could help keep the trait from spreading is that beets produce seeds only in their second year, after passing through a winter. So beets grown in most parts of the country never produce seeds, because farmers harvest beets every fall and plant new seeds the next spring.

But in California, beets stay in the ground through the winter and there are weeds that can mate with sugar beets. So growers there may be more cautious about the Roundup revolution.

“We have to make sure we don’t cause ourselves more problems than we’re curing,” said Ben Goodwin, executive manager of the California Beet Growers Association.

Story written by Andrew Pollack for the New York Times

A new organic food store has opened in London’s trendy Clerkenwell district where everything for sale is sold without packaging - Unpackaged.

Shoppers are invited to bring their own containers to fill with everything from fresh organic produce to organic rice, organic dried fruits, organic oils and even eco washing powder. The store does offer reusable containers if needed, but is heavily promoting their customers to bring their own by offering a discount of 50 pence per kilo (about US$1 every 2 lbs).

It’s an old-fashioned concept. This is the way most stores operated a hundred years ago, from the old Wild West trading posts of California to the village delicatessens of the Swiss Alps. But the difference with this new store is that it’s modern and fun, with a deep political motivation to spread an eco-message while passing on the price benefits of lower packaging.

A newly published scientific study shows that infants who eat organic dairy products, and whose mothers also consumed organic dairy products when they were pregnant, are 36% less likely to suffer from eczema than children who consume conventional dairy products.

Whilst there is a significant body of evidence showing that organic food contains higher levels of beneficial nutrients than non-organic foods, this is the first example of a definite specific health impact of organic food consumption being published in a peer reviewed journal.

Currently one-third of the children in Western societies show symptoms of allergies including eczema, hayfever and asthma.

Whilst the study confirms organic dairy consumption protects against the development of eczema, the scientists could only hypothesise why organic dairy foods deliver this protection. Their hypothesis follows the established facts of increased levels of the beneficial conjugated linoleic acid isomers (CLA) found in milk from organically managed cows. A separate recent study confirms that higher levels of conjugated linoleic acids are not only found in cows’ milk but also in the breast milk of women consuming organic milk. This therefore underpins the hypothesis that the higher levels of CLAs in the breast milk of organic milk drinking mothers are a key mechanism in reducing eczema, as well as the organic dairy diet of the infants themselves.

CLA’s are currently receiving much attention in nutritional research, as experimental evidence suggests these fatty acids might have anti-carcinogenic, anti-atherosclerotic, anti-diabetic and immune-modulating effects, as well as a favorable influence on the proportion of fat tissue to muscle mass in the body.

Peter Melchett, Soil Association policy director said:
“The first peer reviewed scientific paper showing a significant health benefit from eating organic food is a major landmark. But the scientists’ findings of over a third fewer cases of eczema among children fits in with the experience of many people who eat organic food. Given the strong evidence that organic has more beneficial nutrients, and the absence of harmful additives, common sense suggests that organic food is better for your health. It’s good to see this starting to be confirmed by scientific research. These studies add to the body of evidence showing that the UK Food Standards Agency’s stance on organic food is out of date.”

The research was carried out by the Louis Bolk Institute and the Department of Epidemiology, Care and Public Health Research Institute (Caphri), Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands in association with a number of other medical schools:; Respiratory Epidemiology and Public Health Group, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, London, UK; Department of Epidemiology, Nutrition and Toxicology Research Institute Maastricht (NUTRIM), Maastricht University, PO Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, the Netherlands, Department of Medical Microbiology, University Hospital of Maastricht, Maastricht, the Netherlands; Department of Experimental Immunology, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

VARGINHA, Brazil — Rafael de Paiva was skeptical at first. If he wanted a “fair trade” certification for his coffee crop, the Brazilian farmer would have to adhere to a long list of rules on pesticides, farming techniques, recycling and other matters. He even had to show that his children were enrolled in school.

“I thought, ‘This is difficult,’” recalled the humble farmer. But the 20 percent premium he recently received for his first fair trade harvest made the effort worthwhile, Mr. Paiva said, adding, it “helped us create a decent living.”

More farmers are likely to receive such offers, as importers and retailers rush to meet a growing demand from consumers and activists to adhere to stricter environmental and social standards.

Mr. Paiva’s beans will be in the store-brand coffee sold by Sam’s Club, the warehouse chain of Wal-Mart Stores. Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s and Starbucks already sell some fair trade coffee.

“We see a real momentum now with big companies and institutions switching to fair trade,” said Paul Rice, president and chief executive of TransFair USA, the only independent fair trade certifier in the United States.

The International Fair Trade Association, an umbrella group of organizations in more than 70 countries, defines fair trade as reflecting “concern for the social, economic and environmental well-being of marginalized small producers” and does “not maximize profit at their expense.”

According to Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, a group of fair trade certifiers, consumers spent approximately $2.2 billion on certified products in 2006, a 42 percent increase over the previous year, benefiting over seven million people in developing countries.

Like consumer awareness of organic products a decade ago, fair trade awareness is growing. In 2006, 27 percent of Americans said they were aware of the certification, up from 12 percent in 2004, according to a study by the New-York based National Coffee Association.

Fair trade products that have experienced the biggest jump in demand include coffee, cocoa and cotton, according to the Fairtrade Labelling Organizations.

Dozens of other products, including tea, pineapples, wine and flowers, are certified by organizations that visit farmers to verify that they are meeting the many criteria that bar, among other things, the use of child labor and harmful chemicals.

There is no governmental standard for fair trade certification, the same situation as with “organic” until a few years ago. Some fair trade produce also carries the organic label, but most does not. One important difference is the focus of the labels: organic refers to how food is cultivated, while fair trade is primarily concerned with the condition of the farmer and his laborers.

Big chains are marketing fair trade coffee to varying degrees. All the espresso served at the 5,400 Dunkin’ Donuts stores in the United States, for example, is fair trade. All McDonald’s stores in New England sell only fair trade coffee. And in 2006, Starbucks bought 50 percent more fair trade coffee than in 2005.

Fair trade produce remains a minuscule percentage of world trade, but it is growing. Only 3.3 percent of coffee sold in the United States in 2006 was certified fair trade, but that was more than eight times the level in 2001, according to TransFair USA.

Although Sam’s Club already sells seven fair trade imports, including coffee, this will be the first time it has put its Member’s Mark label on a fair trade product, which Mr. Rice of TransFair called “a statement of their commitment to fair trade.”

He added, “The impact in terms of volume and the impact in terms of the farmers and their families is quite dramatic.”

Michael Ellgass, the director of house brands for Sam’s Club, said the company could afford to pay fair trade’s premium because it has reduced the number of middlemen.

Coffee usually passes from farmers through roasters, packers, traders, shippers and warehouses before arriving in stores. But Sam’s Club will buy shelf-ready merchandise directly from Café Bom Dia, the roaster here in Brazil’s lush coffee country.

“We are cutting a number of steps out of the process by working directly with the farmer,” Mr. Ellgass said.

Some critics of fair trade say that working with thousands of small farmers makes strict adherence to fair trade rules difficult.

Others argue that fair trade coffee is as exploitive as the conventional kind, especially in countries that produce the highest-quality beans — like Colombia, Ethiopia and Guatemala. Fair trade farmers there are barely paid more than their counterparts in Brazil, though their crops become gourmet brands, selling for a hefty markup, said Geoff Watts, vice president for coffee at Chicago’s Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea, a coffee importer.

But in Brazil, a nation with little top-grade coffee, the partnership between small producers and big retailers is a better blend, Mr. Watts said.

Fair trade coffee farmers in Brazil are paid at least $1.29 a pound, compared with the current market rate of roughly $1.05 per pound, said Sydney Marques de Paiva, president of Café Bom Dia.

Most coffee farmers are organized into cooperatives, and some of that premium finances community projects like schools or potable water.

Like most of his cooperative’s 3,000-odd members — and three-quarters of coffee growers worldwide — Mr. Paiva, the coffee farmer (no relation to Mr. Marques de Paiva), farms less than 25 acres of land. He produces around 200 132-pound sacks for the co-op, with 70 percent of that sold as fair trade to Café Bom Dia.

The company would buy more if there were more of a market for fair trade coffee, it said.

The fair trade crop brought Mr. Paiva about 258 reais ($139) a sack, compared with about 230 reais for the sacks that were not fair trade. For the latest crop, that meant an additional 3,920 reais ($2,116) for him, a huge sum here in the impoverished mountains of Minas.

“It’s been great for us,” Mr. Paiva said with a huge, toothless grin. “I call the people from the co-op my family now.”

Mr. Ellgass, the Sam’s Club executive, said the chain hoped to expand its fair trade goods.

So do Brazil’s farmers. “Everybody is doing their best to come up to standard so we can sell our coffee as fair trade,” said Conceição Peres da Costa, one of the co-op’s growers. “Everybody wants to earn as much as he can.”

By Andrew Downie for the New York Times

The indiscriminate use of toxic pesticides on banana plantations in the French Caribbean has left much of the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe poisoned for a century to come, a report to the French parliament warned yesterday. The two islands and their 800,000 inhabitants faced a “health disaster”, with soaring rates of cancer and infertility, said Professor Dominique Belpomme, a French cancer specialist.

Based on present trends, half the men of Martinique and Guadeloupe were likely to develop prostate cancer at some point in their lives, Professor Belpomme said. Birth defects in children were also becoming far more common, he warned.

Tests have shown that every child born in Guadeloupe is contaminated with chlordecone, a highly toxic pesticide also known as kepone, which was banned in many countries in 1979. It was used legally in France until 1990 and in the French Caribbean until 1993. But it was used illegally to kill weevils in Martinique and Guadeloupe until 2002, often sprayed by airplanes.

Professor Belpomme said: “The situation is extremely serious. The tests we carried out on pesticides show there is a health disaster in the Caribbean. The word is not too strong. Martinique and Guadeloupe have literally been poisoned.”

“The poisoning affects both land and water. Chlordecone establishes itself in the clay and stays there for up to a century. As a result, the food chain is contaminated, especially water. In Martinique, most water sources are polluted.”

Politicians from the islands, which are overseas departments of France, were torn between accusing the professor of “alarmism” and calling for a full inquiry.

“This must not be covered up by a conspiracy of silence,” said Victorin Lurel, the socialist leader of the Guadeloupe regional council. Christian Estrosi, the French minister for overseas territories, cast some doubts on the scientific basis of the report but said he was “wholly favorable” to an official commission.

Martinique and Guadeloupe produce more than 260,000 tonnes of bananas a year, worth US$300m. The industry, which employs 15,000 people, also receives £90m (US$180m) in EU aid. The islands, which are relatively poor compared with the French mainland, are already struggling to recover from Hurricane Dean, which devastated every banana plantation in Martinique and half of those in Guadeloupe last month. Many growers may find their soils and water tables so contaminated they will never be allowed to re-plant their crops, Professor Belpomme said. Although the banana fruit itself is not affected by chlordecone, the toxin can remain in soil for 100 years and is absorbed by humans through the skin and respiratory tract. Exposure to the powder can cause tremors, headaches, slurred speech, dizziness, memory loss, weight loss and sterility and raise the risk of developing cancer.

In early August, Guadeloupe’s appeal court accepted a complaint against “persons unknown” for “poisoning” the island with pesticides. This opens up the possibility of a criminal investigation into the responsibility of successive French governments in failing to ban, or monitor, the illegal use of the chemicals.

According to Professor Belpomme, the impact on health in the islands will be more serious than the “tainted blood” scandal of the 1980s, in which 4,000 French people were infected by blood contaminated with the HIV virus .

“In this case, it is a whole population which has been poisoned,” he told MPs. “Those people who are alive today but also future generations.

“The rate of prostate cancer is major. The French Caribbean is second in the world ranking. The rate of congenital malformation is increasing and women are having fewer children than 15 years ago. The standard theory is that this is because of the Pill, but I think it is linked to pesticides.”

But Christian Choupin, head of the Martinique and Guadeloupe banana growers’ association, insisted chlordecone was no longer used and claimed Professor Belpomme’s report had “no proper scientific basis”. “He is giving the impression that people are dropping like flies, which is not at all the case,” M. Chupin said.

By John Lichfield in Paris for The Independent UK

A new American scientific study clearly links exposure to commonly used pesticides increases the risk of asthma. Over 23 million Americans suffer from asthma, of which almost 9 million are minors.

The new scientific study of nearly 20,000 American farmers was presented on Sunday to the European Respiratory Society Annual Congress in Stockholm, Denmark. It was carried out by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

Of the 19,704 farmers included in the study, 127 had doctor diagnosed allergic asthma and 314 had non-allergic asthma.

The study concludes that a history of high pesticide exposure shows a doubling of asthma risk. The link remained statistically significant after adjusting for a variety of potentially confounding factors including age, smoking, body weight, and state of residence.

During the study, 452 farmers aged 30 and over developed asthma. Farmers in Iowa and North Carolina, who used around 16 chemical sprays, were found to be most at risk.

Overall, 16 of the pesticides studied were associated with asthma: 12 with the allergic variety of asthma and 4 with the non-allergic type. Coumaphos, EPTC, lindane, parathion, heptachlor, and 2,4,5-TP were most strongly linked to allergic asthma. For non-allergic asthma, DDT, malathion, and phorate had the strongest effect.

“This is the first study with sufficient power to evaluate individual pesticides and adult asthma among individuals who routinely apply pesticides. Moreover, this is the only study to date to do this for allergic and non-allergic asthma separately,” a spokesman for the researchers said.

“The possible scope of the link between pesticides and adult-onset asthma raises a problem of broader interest, given the considerable quantities of pesticides used in the domestic and urban environments. Their impact on a population which, while less exposed, has a greater risk of allergies and a higher prevalence of asthma, remains to be determined.”

It is more than 30 years since an American scientist, Ben Feingold, first suggested that artificial food colors and other additives caused overactive, impulsive and inattentive behavior in children; this sort of hyperactivity is known to be a marker for later educational difficulties, especially problems with reading, and antisocial behavior.

Feingold’s work and subsequent studies, however, were dismissed as flawed or inconclusive.

Today’s UK government-commissioned research confirming that food additives commonly found in non-organic children’s food have a detrimental effect on their behavior is the largest trial of its kind. But its findings come as no surprise to campaign groups such as the Hyperactive Children’s Support Group, who have long argued that eliminating junk food can dramatically improve the behavior of some children.

One of the things that makes the latest findings so significant is that the research by the University of Southampton has been so thoroughly conducted and reviewed and cannot be argued away; it is published in medical journal The Lancet today. The study also found there was increased hyperactivity in children with no history of problems.

The leader of the research, Professor Jim Stevenson, said it provided a clear demonstration that changes in behavior could be detected in three-year-old and eight-year-old children who consumed a mix of additives. Researchers at the same department found similar effects in a study seven years ago.

The additives tested were designed to match what a child would be exposed to in a normal diet. The mixes tested included artificial colors used for decades in many products aimed at children and the widely used preservative sodium benzoate. All of the food additives in the test are banned from organic food, so choosing organic soft food, candy, cakes and ice cream means avoiding these food additives.

Since Feingold’s original work, behavioral problems among schoolchildren have risen, as have diagnoses of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Estimates of numbers of children suffering from full ADHD vary: one UK survey estimates that 2.5% of British schoolchildren are affected, and international studies put the figure at 5-10%.

The UK Government’ Food Standards Agency (FSA), which commissioned the study, was taking a cautious line yesterday. Professor Ieuan Hughes, the chairman of its expert committee on the toxicity of chemicals in food (CoT), said that since some children in the study reacted significantly to the additives but others did not, it was not possible to draw conclusions about the effect on the general population. Nor was it possible, he said, to extrapolate from these particular additives to other additives.

The FSA revised its official advice, but only to suggest that parents who think their children show signs of hyperactive behavior should avoid foods containing artificial colors and the preservative sodium benzoate by checking labels. In fact, many of the products which contain these additives - sweets, cakes, ice cream and drinks - are sold without labels.

The FSA has also not issued advice to schools on whether the additives should be banned from school food but advised concerned parents to ask head teachers.

Experts were asking yesterday why it had taken the authorities so long to act and why they had not gone further to remove the additives from food. Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London’s City University, said:

“The first calls to investigate these additives were made 30 years ago. Good for the FSA for finally doing this research but why did it take so long? The FSA must take a tougher pro-child position.”

Since EU legislation regulates the use of additives, the agency has referred the findings to the European Food Safety Authority, which has begun a review of all additives. It recently withdrew approval for one of the first colors it re-examined, Red 2G, which has been used for cosmetic purposes for decades in meat products.

Erik Millstone, professor of science policy at University of Sussex, who has studied the additives industry for many years, criticized the CoT and the FSA response as wholly inadequate. “Stevenson’s team has robustly shown that food additives do adversely affect the behavior, not only of children diagnosed as hyperactive, but normal healthy children too. The CoT pretends that these results have no implications for the general population or for food additives as a whole … The complacency of the CoT and FSA officials must now cease,” he said.

Although the FSA and the food industry stressed that the additives had been assessed for safety by the EC, some of the colors have been banned at various times in Scandinavian countries and the US. Also, some were approved many years ago when safety testing did not consider the effect on behavior. Until now, safety testing has looked at individual additives in isolation not in the cocktails in which they are consumed in the diet.

The FSA has been considering the safety of these additives since 2000, when it received the results of a study conducted by the same researchers, known as the Isle of Wight study. That research concluded that significant improvements in children’s behavior could be produced by the removing of colorings and sodium benzoate from their diet. CoT decided that this study was inconclusive, however. The purpose of the latest FSA study was to provide conclusive evidence.

Head teachers who have worked to remove additives from school meals said the research vindicated their efforts. Alan Coode, former head of a primary school in Merton, said: “We knew this all along. When we changed our school meals and removed additives there was a new calmness to the school. The science has just caught up.”

The food industry said it was already removing many artificial colorings. It argues that avoiding sodium benzoate is more difficult because it stops drinks that may have a shelf life of several years going off. The preservative is still very widely used, particularly by soft drinks manufacturers.

PepsiCo said no decision would be taken about its use of additives until it had seen the research. Coca-Cola, GlaxoSmith Kline, which makes energy drinks, and Unilever referred us to the industry’s Food and Drink Federation. Its director of communications, Julian Hunt, said: “It is important to reassure consumers that the Southampton study does not suggest there is a safety issue with the use of these additives. In addition, the way in which the additives were tested as a mixture is not how they are used in everyday products.” He said the industry would continue to reduce the use of additives.

The global additives market is worth more than $25bn (£12.4bn) a year. It grew by 2.4% a year between 2001 and 2004, when the food industry says it was transforming itself, and is growing rapidly.

Article by Felicity Lawrence for The Guardian, UK

Organic food and drink sales in the UK nudged the £2 billion (US$4 billion) mark for the first time in 2006, with a sustained market growth rate of 22 per cent throughout the year.

Launched to coincide with the start of the UK’s Organic Fortnight 2007, the Soil Association’s definitive annual Organic Market Report shows continued strong growth and dynamic public support for organic food, drink, textiles and health and beauty products.

Retail sales of organic products through organic delivery and mail order schemes and other direct routes increased from £95 million in 2005 to £146 million in 2006 - a staggering 53 per cent growth, more than double that experienced by the major supermarkets.

Organic textiles and the booming organic health and beauty sector are experiencing particularly strong growth. 2006 saw a 30 per cent increase in the number of health and beauty products licensed with the Soil Association. At current growth rates, the UK market for organic cotton products is estimated to be worth £107 million by 2008.

The report includes consumer research by Mintel which shows that more than half of those surveyed had purchased organic fruit and vegetables within the previous 12 months; one in four consumers had bought organic meat or dairy products; and one in six had purchased packaged organic goods.

Other key figures from the report reveal:

* Sales of free-range and organic outstripping eggs from caged birds for the first time. Consumer concerns over animal welfare appear to be driving changes in the poultry sector.
* An average of £37 million (US$74 million) is spent each week on organic produce in the UK with consumers living in London, the Southeast, the Southwest and Wales most likely to buy organic food.
* Households with children under the age of 15 tend to buy a wider range of organic foods than those with no children.
* Organic farmers are three times as likely to market their products locally or directly as non-organic farmers in the UK.

Despite the steady growth in demand for organic food over the past decade, some key sectors are still failing to meet demand. Organic livestock sectors are dependent on supplies of organic feed, but UK self-sufficiency in organic cereals fell below 50 per cent, during 2006, increasing our reliance on imported organic grains. The cost of livestock feed, whether for organic or non organic farmers, is rising as a result of recent poor global harvests, increasing diversion of cereals into biofuel production and rapidly rising demand particularly from China and India.

Helen Browning, Soil Association Director of Food and Farming said:
“These figures are extremely encouraging, the year on year growth in sales not just in food and drink, but also the newer booming clothing and health and beauty sectors confirm organic has moved well beyond a mere fad or niche.”

“The staggering 53 per cent growth in sales through home delivery schemes and other direct routes confirms strong public support for local, seasonal and organic food that provides a fair return to farmers and growers, boosts the local economy, and also reduces your carbon footprint – consumers are increasingly linking everyday food choice to environmental action.”

“While this year’s report confirms a positive future for organic food and farming, the organic movement faces challenges in the long-term from climate change and rising oil prices, as do all farmers and growers. Rises in feed and fuel prices will need to be reflected in food prices at the check-out that enable farmers to get a fair return on their production costs. It’s fantastic to have such strong public support for and understanding of the benefits provided by organic farming, but that must urgently extend to more widespread acceptance, by retailers as well as consumers, of the true costs of producing staple foods like eggs, milk, meat , and bread sustainably.”

“The significant short-fall in UK grown organic cereals is a major concern, forcing greater reliance on imports for livestock feed - but of course, it is also a major opportunity for current non-organic cereal farmers to convert and supply a guaranteed and growing market.”

“With the government’s own studies confirming that organic farming typically uses 30 per cent less energy than non-organic farming, it’s not surprising more and more people are choosing to purchase planet-friendly, organic food. This is confirmed by an independent poll commissioned by the Soil Association from Mumsnet, which found that 84 per cent of mums believe that organic is better for their family and 90 per cent for the planet. We’ll be using that endorsement from the nation’s mums to get Gordon Brown to wake up to the planet-friendly benefits of organic food and farming.”

The Chinese government yesterday launched a counter-offensive on product quality controls, threatening a ban on imports of US pork and calling for a worldwide drive to improve health and safety standards. This is because US pork products may contain ractopamine, a growth hormone that is banned in China but not in the US.

Chinese officials are to send two separate delegations to the US to discuss mounting concerns about safety controls following a series of scares over food, drugs and toys exported from the country. The scandals culminated this week in the US company Mattel’s decision to recall 18 million toys made in China and sold worldwide following warnings they may contain faulty magnets on which children could choke.

The first of the Chinese delegations will arrive in Washington this month to meet the US Food and Drug Administration, Zhao Baoqing, a spokesman for the country’s American embassy said, to be followed by a second round of talks in September with the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

However, Mr Zhao warned the Chinese government would not accept suggestions that lower production standards in Asia are the only problem area that such talks should cover. “I would like to say that the question of food safety and quality is a question for all the countries in the world,” he said. “It is not just a question for individual countries.”

Chinese officials are desperate to prevent a global backlash against exports from the country and have already introduced a series of measures designed to reassure trade partners.

In particular, the Chinese exports department has begun random testing of goods from industries including food and electronics, and also begun relaxing restrictions on journalists seeking to report on the manufacturing sector.

Last month, the former head of the Chinese food and drug safety agency was executed following a corruption scandal and officials have also launched a campaign urging manufacturers to more closely scrutinise the activities of sub-contractors.

Nevertheless, the scandals have encouraged some Western politicians to step up calls for much tighter controls on imports from China.

Christopher Dodd, the Democrat senator from Connecticut, who is seeking his party’s presidential nomination, even called for a ban on Chinese imports yesterday. “Parents should be confident that the toys and food they give their children have been inspected and are safe,” he said. “I am calling on the President to use his authority to immediately suspend all imports of toys and food from China.”

Meglena Juneva, the European Union’s Consumer Protection Commissioner, also called for greater vigilance on export standards. The EU already has a system through which each member state is required to notify the Commission of product recalls so that other countries can consider whether to follow suit. The Commission also has powers to ban products sourced from countries or firms implicated in several scandals.

However, widescale bans on imports from China would almost certainly provoke a trade war with the West, with serious consequences for both sides. Trade between China and the US alone is expected to be worth $500bn (£252bn) a year by 2010.

China has already warned it is considering a ban on pork imports from America, on the grounds that some products may contain ractopamine, a growth hormone that is banned in China but not in the US. A similar ban could be imposed on chicken feet and other agricultural produce.

The pork sector could be the first flashpoint in escalating trade disputes between China and the West. China’s concerns about US hormone treatments are mirrored by increasing anxiety among Western producers about an outbreak of the potentially fatal blue ear disease in Asia. Though Chinese officials say the outbreak is under control, the authorities have had to cull tens of thousands of pigs.

By David Prosser, Deputy Business Editor, The Independent UK, 17 August 2007

Somewhere in America, word gets out that the country’s top natural foods grocer is setting up shop. Soon property prices start to rocket. Once it’s built, the Croc-wearing, Audi-driving “soccer moms” arrive, happy to pay over the odds for organically produced food.

It’s a fair bet that many of the customers are also Democrat supporters, the sort of Americans who want to do something positive for the environment. We know this because John Mackey, the chief executive of the world’s largest natural food chain, puts enormous effort into understanding what motivates the people who buy his organic carrots. And Whole Food stores, found in such Democratic bastions as Austin, Berkeley, Boston, New York and Washington DC, are all extremely profitable.

But the company is also at the receiving end of what many see as a politically motivated investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, which is trying to halt Whole Foods’ proposed purchase of a loss-making competitor, Wild Oats.

The commission revealed this week that Mr Mackey has been posting “voluminously” in online market discussion forums under the pseudonym Rahodeb, which is an anagram of his wife’s first name, Deborah.

So far there is no allegation of wrongdoing on Mr. Mackey’s part, and it is widely assumed that the chief executive of a publicly traded company would not be stupid enough to leak insider information on a stock discussion board, or make statements to pump up Whole Foods stock price.

But the commission is eager to show that Whole Foods is anti-competitive, and allowing it to buy out a rival health food chain would lead to monopolistic practices. The blocking of the merger with Wild Oats comes as Wal-Mart begins to move into the organic food business, sensing the enormous profits to be made. Wal-Mart, the number one grocer in the US, could quickly come to dominate the small organic food sector.

Mr Mackey’s anonymous blogging is but the latest of his eccentricities. He is a vegan, a libertarian and a fiercely successful capitalist who hates trade unions. He is worth an estimated $40m and, unlike so many of America’s mega-wealthy, thinks that’s enough. Last November, he slashed his salary from $1m to $1.

He dropped out of university in 1978 aged 25, to co-found his first vegetarian establishment in Austin, Texas, a vegetarian wholefood store with the ironic name Safer Way. Soon he was living in the store, using the commercial-sized dishwasher as a shower. When the store was flooded, loyal customers helped to clean up.

The company quickly expanded, becoming what the Financial Times called “the fastest-growing mass retailer in the US”. Last year, Whole Foods’ total revenue was more than $5bn and its gross profit was more than $1.6bn. The company has 181 supermarkets. It has also arrived in the UK, opening the world’s largest Whole Foods store in the centre of town.

Mr Mackey remains the driving force behind Whole Foods, and unlike other companies such as Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, which sold out to a corporation, he shows no signs of selling up. Instead he is increasingly focused on animal welfare. He has banned the sale of live lobsters in most of his stores and has developed a five-star rating for all meats sold.

“What he’s doing is educating Americans about food and sustainability,” said Bryan Meehan, who sold his company Fresh and Wild to Whole Foods. “He is intensely competitive in a positive way, but also deeply caring about the world.”

by Leonard Doyle in Washington, DC for The Independent, UK

A food additive used to make commercial sausages and burgers pink may cause cancer. Scientific studies suggest Red 2G, (also known as E128), causes tumours in rats and mice and might have the same effect on people. After reviewing the experiments, the European Food Safety Agency (Efsa) said it could set no safe limit for the additive.

The European Commission is expected to ban its use within a fortnight, but products containing the additive on the shelves are not likely to be withdrawn in Europe. In America, there are currently no plans to limit the use of Red 2G.

Efsa has been reviewing the safety of colourings, many of which were approved for use 30 years ago. In a statement yesterday, the agency said its scientific panel on food additives, flavourings, processing aids and materials had reviewed several evaluations of Red 2G since 1999. It found the additive, one of a band of controversial “azo-dye” colourings, converted in the body into a substance called aniline.

“Based on animal studies the panel concluded that aniline should be considered as a carcinogen,” Efsa said, adding that it was not possible to state that the cancer had developed because of the genetic structure of the animal cells.

“It is therefore not possible to determine a level of intake for aniline which may be regarded as safe for humans,” it added. “The panel therefore decided that Red 2G should be regarded as being of safety concern.”

The European Commission is “reflecting” on the assessment and is expected to act at a meeting with member states on 20 July. A spokesman said Red G was used in Britain and Ireland but was not used in Scandinavia.

Ian Tokelove, of the pressure group the Food Commission, said there had been concerns about Red 2G going back decades and it was suspected of being a carcinogen in the 1980s. “Our general view is that additives are totally unnecessary,” he added. “We don’t need them in our food. They’re there to disguise the quality of the food and in this case to make meat products look fresher and meatier than they are.”

Red 2G is permitted for use in breakfast sausages with a minimum cereal content of 6 per cent and in burgers with 4 per cent of vegetables or cereals. It gives meat a reddish-pink appearance that turns brown on contact with heat.

Feature by Martin Hickman for The Independent, UK. July 10, 2007

The fast food chain McDonalds announced that all milk for its tea and coffee sold in the 1,200 outlets in the UK will come from organic British cows, starting the end of July. So far, 500,000 liters are sold in children’s Happy Meals. After the end of July, the company will need 8.6 million liters each year - a share of 5 % of all organic milk sales in the UK. This will make the company one of the biggest buyers for this product.

OrganicFoodee.com hopes the company’s food sourcing continues to improve in the UK and around the world. It would be a huge achievement if McDonalds decided to introduce organic milk into its restaurants across the USA, creating better opportunities for American organic farmers and providing healthier options for American McDonalds customers.

A 10-year study comparing organic tomatoes with rival produce suggests they have almost double the amount of antioxidants called flavonoids that protect the heart. According to the findings, levels of quercetin and kaempferol were found to be on average 79 per cent and 97 per cent higher, respectively, in organic tomatoes.

The study was led by Dr. Alyson Mitchell at the University of California at Davis. Flavonoids can fight heart disease, blood pressure and strokes, and have been linked to staving off some forms of cancer and dementia, said Dr Mitchell.

Differences in soil quality, irrigation and the handling of harvested produce have made direct comparisons difficult in the past, she said. She had conducted two earlier studies to compare organic and non-organic tomatoes. In this latest study, due to be published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the researchers used data from a long-term project that used standardized farming techniques.

Dr Mitchell said the findings can be explained by the availability of nitrogen in the soil. Flavonoids are produced as a defense mechanism that can be triggered by nutrient deficiency. The inorganic nitrogen in conventional fertilizer is easily available to plants and so, the team suggests, lower levels of flavonoids are probably caused by over-fertilizing the soil.

A major British supermarket has dropped Prince Charles as a vegetable suppliers because it says his produce did not meet the right standards. They also dropped fresh produce from Patrick Holden’s farm, the Director of the Soil Association, the UK’s main organic food and farming organization.

The move has prompted Patrick Holden to accuse leading supermarkets of being so centralized and industrialized that they cannot deliver the local organic food their customers want.

Mr Holden said he believes that he and Prince Charles have become victims of the supermarket system’s industrial processes and imposed food miles. They were sacked as suppliers of carrots to Sainsbury’s at the end of January, 2007.

He and the Prince had been forced to truck their vegetables hundreds of miles from their farms to a centralized packing house in East Anglia before they were sent back to be sold in Sainsbury’s stores local to their area.

Mr Holden believes his vegetables were of the highest quality when harvested, but the combined effects of long-distance transport, handling to create large enough batches for the machines that wash and polish the vegetables and further storing after processing to create large enough batches for packing left the vegetables damaged and prone to rot.

The system also resulted in a crop that had been grown for low environmental impact acquiring a greater carbon footprint than conventional carrots grown on an industrial scale, according to Mr Holden. Up to half the crop from the two farms was being rejected in the grading for cosmetic appearance and quality.

Mr Holden said he had decided to speak out because his case was typical. “Everyone who has supplied a supermarket own label will have a story similar to mine to tell but most daren’t tell it for fear of being delisted. This is not confined to one supermarket. It is the unintentional consequence of the centralised supermarket distribution system.”

Sainsbury’s acknowledges that dealing with small suppliers is difficult for big supermarkets, but says it works successfully with others and is willing to try to find a solution to the problems of its highest profile organic farmers. It said its overriding concern had to be the quality of the food it sold.

by Felicity Lawrence for The Guardian, UK.

EU acceptance of GE contamination in all crops, gives New Zealand a real opportunity and point of difference in the world as a GE Free crop producer, according to The Soil & Health Association, New Zealand.

In Brussels on Tuesday, EU Ministers at the Agriculture Council decided to allow contamination of organic food with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The Ministers adopted a new law, which allows organic food containing up to 0.9 percent ‘adventitious or technically unavoidable’ GMO content to be classed and labeled as organic.

“New Zealand has zero tolerance to genetically engineered (GE) contamination and with organic food the worlds fastest food sector growth area, there are fantastic opportunities here for both genuine GE Free organic and conventional growers”, said Soil & Health spokesperson Steffan Browning. “BioGro organic certification standards for example would not tolerate GE contamination, and some British supermarkets are already demanding BioGro. EU consumers do not want GE either.”

“The European Parliament and environmental groups had called for the threshold of contamination of organic food to be 0.1 percent, which is the lowest level at which genetically modified organisms can be technically detected, but due to our increasingly stringent biosecurity and unique geographical isolation, New Zealand’s zero tolerance need not be altered”, said spokesperson Browning.

“Our special position with only limited field trials, that can quickly be eradicated, has to be one of the best opportunities yet for sustainable economic development, with the added bonus of addressing food miles and other environmental trade barriers. Nuclear Free, GE Free & Zero Tolerance, Clean & Green, 100% Pure, BioGro, are winners, not contamination”

“Crop and Food are likely to apply for a further field trial including onions, garlic and leeks this year, but with a likely legal challenge to the recent ERMA decision allowing a GE Brassica field trial, that may be in doubt, leaving just one pathetic GE onion trial to be ripped out, for New Zealand horticulture to be genuinely GE Free.”

“With the onions gone, removing the equally pathetic field trial of GE trees and 200 GE cattle, would allow New Zealand primary producers to walk a very tall GE Free in the world, just as the community has wanted in survey after survey,” said spokesperson Browning.

“A GE Free and Organic 2020, with economic and sustainability benefits, is a far better picture than the contaminated environment that is being hoisted on Europe, and already exists across many parts of the globe.”

Under pressure from The USA, the European governing body has decided to allow a huge amount of genetic modification to enter the organic food chain. Organic foods in Europe can be labeled “GM-free” even if they contain up to 0.9% genetically modified content, European agriculture ministers decided yesterday.

Europe’s agriculture ministers have agreed on a compulsory logo for organic food as new figures showed more and more farmers are switching to the production method in response to consumer demand. The logo will be applied to foods meeting common standards across the European Union from 2009. However, some producers say these standards have been set too low as they permit genetically modified material that accidentally enters the food chain. To be classed as organic, food must contain 95 per cent organic ingredients but can contain up to 0.9 per cent GMOs, to allow for cross-contamination from other crops.

Francis Blake, Soil Association Standards and Technical Director, is quoted, “They have shifted the responsibility and cost of compliance from the makers of biotech crops to organic producers.”

UK Conservative Food and Farming spokesman Peter Ainworth said, “The EU’s plans to allow nearly one per cent GM contamination to go unacknowledged are shocking”

The USDA is considering relaxing legal standards again for organic foods in America. It has drawn up a list of 38 nonorganic spices, colorings and other ingredients that would be allowed in products it legally defines as ‘organic.’

With the “USDA organic” seal stamped on its label, Anheuser-Busch calls its Wild Hop Lager “the perfect organic experience.”

“In today’s world of artificial flavors, preservatives and factory farming, knowing what goes into what you eat and drink can just about drive you crazy,” the Wild Hop website says. “That’s why we have decided to go back to basics and do things the way they were meant to be … naturally.”

But many beer drinkers may not know that Anheuser-Busch has the organic blessing from federal regulators even though Wild Hop Lager uses hops grown with chemical fertilizers and sprayed with pesticides.

A deadline of midnight Friday to come up with a new list of nonorganic ingredients allowed in USDA-certified organic products passed without action from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, leaving uncertain whether some foods currently labeled “USDA organic” would continue to be produced.

The agency is considering a list of 38 nonorganic ingredients that will be permitted in organic foods. Because of the broad uses of these ingredients — as colorings and flavorings, for example — almost any type of manufactured organic food could be affected, including cereal, sausage, bread and beer.

Organic food advocates have fought to block approval of some or all of the proposed ingredients, saying consumers would be misled.

“This proposal is blatant catering to powerful industry players who want the benefits of labeling their products ‘USDA organic’ without doing the work to source organic materials,” said Ronnie Cummins, executive director of the Organic Consumers Association. of Finland, Minnesota, a nonprofit group that boasts 850,000 members.

USDA spokeswoman Joan Shaffer declined to comment on the plan.

Food manufacturers said this week that they were hoping the agency would approve the rules by Friday to continue labeling their products as organic.

A federal judge had given the USDA until midnight Friday to name the nonorganic ingredients it would allow in organic foods, but the agency did not release its final list by the end of the day.

“They probably don’t know what to do” Cummins said. “On the other hand, it’s hard to believe they’re going to make people change their labels, although that’s what they should do.”

Demand for organic food in the U.S. is booming as consumers seek products that are more healthful and friendlier to the environment. Sales have more than doubled in the last five years, reaching $16.9 billion last year, according to the Organic Trade Association in Greenfield, Massachusetts, which represents small and large food producers.

But with big companies entering what was formerly a mom-and-pop industry, new questions have arisen about what exactly goes into organic food. For food to be called organic, it must be grown without chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Animals must be raised without antibiotics and growth hormones and given some access to the outdoors.

Many nonorganic ingredients, including hops, are already being used in organic products, thanks to a USDA interpretation of the Organic Foods Protection Act of 1990. In 2005, a federal judge disagreed with how the USDA was applying the law and gave the agency two years to revise its rules.

Organic food supporters had hoped that the USDA would allow only a small number of substances, but were dismayed last month when the agency released the proposed list of 38 ingredients.

“Adding 38 new ingredients is not just a concession by the USDA, it is a major blow to the organic movement in the U.S. because it would erode consumer confidence in organic standards,” said Carl Chamberlain, a research assistant with the Pesticide Education Project in Raleigh, N.C.

In addition to hops, the list includes 19 food colorings, two starches, casings for sausages and hot dogs, fish oil, chipotle chili pepper, gelatin and a host of obscure ingredients (one, for instance, is a “bulking agent” and sweetener with the tongue-twisting name of fructooligosaccharides).

Under the agency’s proposal, as much as 5% of a food product could be made with these ingredients and still get the “USDA organic” seal. Hops, though a major component of beer’s flavor, are less than 5% of the final product because the beverage is mostly water.

Sales of organic beer, though still a small portion of total beer sales, have been growing even faster than overall organic food sales. They reached $19 million in 2005, a 40% increase over the previous year (2006 figures are not yet available).

Trying to get a share of the market for green products, Anheuser-Busch introduced two organic beers in September, and soon pitched them in fliers to wholesalers.

“Environmentally conscious consumers are looking for certified organic products, including beer, the fastest-growing organic beverage,” the pitch said. “Capitalize on this growing market with Wild Hop Lager and Stone Mill Pale Ale.”

But while the two beers use 100% organic barley malt, less than 10% of the hops they use is organic. Hops are conelike flowers that grow on vines and impart a bitter taste on beer to offset the sweetness of malts.

Anheuser-Busch said it simply couldn’t find enough organic hops.

“There currently is only a small supply of organically grown hops available for purchase by brewers, and we purchased all we could for brewing these beers,” said Doug Muhleman, vice president of brewing operations for Anheuser-Busch Inc.

But that argument doesn’t wash with Russell Klisch, owner of Milwaukee’s Lakefront Brewery, which has been producing beer with 100% organic hops since 1996.

“If we can do it, we think Anheuser-Busch, the world’s largest beer producer with virtually unlimited resources, should be able to follow our example,” he said.

Klisch said there were enough organic hops to satisfy 90% of the current organic beer demand in the U.S., but some brewers were put off by their higher price.

There are no organic hops commercially grown in the U.S.; most come from New Zealand, Britain and Germany. But Klisch has recently contracted with two Wisconsin farmers to grow some on their land. He doesn’t understand why large brewers can’t do the same.

“You’re telling me that Anheuser-Busch can’t find a little plot of ground somewhere to grow organic hops?” he said.

In addition to hops, two other items on the USDA list have attracted particular attention: casings for sausages and hot dogs, and fish oil.

Casings are the intestines of cows, pigs or sheep, which have been used for centuries to wrap meat into sausages and frankfurters.

Although the casings are a tiny portion of the overall sausage, organic purists object to eating anything from animals that are raised on conventional farms, where livestock may be housed in tight quarters and given antibiotics and growth hormones. Further, they note that the USDA’s food safety division has identified cow intestines as a possible source of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

But the USDA has already banned part of the cow’s small intestines for human consumption because of the risk of mad cow disease. Barbara Negron, president of the North American Natural Casing Association in New York, said casings were safe to eat.

“It’s a very safe, clean and natural product,” she said. “It’s not an organic product. It’s a natural product.”

It’s very difficult to maintain pure organic eating habits, Negron added, “unless you want to lock yourself up and only raise your own food.”

Fish oil’s presence on the USDA list has drawn objections because it could carry high levels of heavy metals and other contaminants, said Jim Riddle, a former member of the National Organic Standards Board. But fish oil producers said such contaminants could be screened out through proper processing.

The USDA rules come with what appears to be an important consumer protection: Manufacturers can use nonorganic ingredients only if organic versions are not “commercially available.”

But food makers have found a way around this barrier, in part because the USDA doesn’t enforce the rule directly. Instead, it depends on its certifying agents — 96 licensed organizations in the U.S. and overseas — to decide for themselves what it means for a product to be available in organic form.

Despite years of discussion, the USDA has yet to provide certifiers with standardized guidelines for enforcing this rule.

“There is no effective mechanism for identifying a lack of organic ingredients,” complained executives of Pennsylvania Certified Organic, a nonprofit certifying agent, in a letter to the USDA. “It is a very challenging task to ‘prove a negative’ regarding the organic supply.”

Large companies have a better chance of winning approval to use nonorganic ingredients because the amount they demand can exceed the small supply of organic equivalents, said Craig Minowa, environmental scientist for the Organic Consumers Association.

By Scott J. Wilson, LA Times, June 9, 2007