Today's News

12 September 2012

“These awards showcase the best of organic food and drink and the high quality of products within this market. As the organic market returns to growth, this is a great time to encourage wider availability of these products so that more people can enjoy them.”
Finn Cottle, Soil Association Certification Trade consultant, on the Organic Food Awards – Tyrone Times – 9 September 2012

Soil Association award for dairy farm siblings
An organic dairy which prides itself on farming the ‘old fashioned way’ has won the highest possible national accolade. Acorn Dairy – which has farms at Archdeacon Newton, Darlington and Spennithorne, near Leyburn – has been awarded the organic equivalent of an Oscar by the industry body the Soil Association beating fierce competition from the around the country.
Ripon Gazette (11 Sept)
Read more about the winners of the Organic Food Awards 2012

Brewery toasts double award success
Stroud Brewery is toasting success after winning a Soil Association Organic Food Award for its organic Maris Otter Vintage Ale 2011 and Big Cat organic stout. The Organic Food Awards 2012 recognise and celebrate the highest quality organic food and drink and are among the most prestigious and widely respected in the UK food sector. The judges could not decide on the winning product, so decided to award both Stroud Brewery products as joint winners in the beer category.
Gloucestershire Echo (11 Sept, p.8)

Harry’s Eggs wins taste award
Co Durham organic egg producer Harry Hodgson and owner of Harry’s Eggs has won a Soil Association Food Award for the quality of his eggs, as judged by a panel of chefs and food critics. "We put so much work and effort into all that we do, so its great to receive recognition for what we already believed," said Mr Hodgson, who started with his first flock at Pierecebridge Farm as a six-year-old.
Farmers Weekly (11 Sept)

Organic Food Award for Omagh’s Heavenly Tasty Organics
Omagh-based, Heavenly Tasty Organics has received a Highly Commended award at the Soil Association Organic Food Awards for its unique range of frozen baby weaning meals. Heavenly Tasty Organics was highly commended for three of their puree flavours – apple, pear and butternut squash – in convenient packs each containing 4 heart-shaped portions for mothers weaning babies from four to six months upwards.
Tyrone Times (11 Sept)

Campaign for organic milk to be used in schools
Organic milk, as the cheapest entry into organic food, should be served in schools, says the managing director of an organic feed company. Ian Proctor, of Hi Peak Organic Feeds, said: “A vastly bigger organic market awaits the UK, but it will only be unleashed when organic food in Britain receives the same priority as in wider Europe.
Farmers Guardian (12 Sept)

Organic food study ‘missed the point’
Heather Pilatic, communications director of the Pesticide Action Network, writes about how she thinks a recent Stanford University report on organics – and the media reaction - misses the point.
Huffington Post (11 Sept)

Holding his ground
There’s a popular misconception about the organic farming fraternity — one that encapsules all organic enterprises as pie-in-the-sky, brown rice-and-sandals dreamers — well intentioned folk, but without a scrap of sense. Not so. In fact that image could be seen as a sort of black ops campaign by vested interests, particularly now as the organic sector enters into a titanic battle with the Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) lobby. Enter Josef Finke, the man described as the Grandaddy of the organic movement, and a man who moved a lot of mountains in his time. And a man who’s now suiting up to take on Big Corpo.
The Irish Examiner (12 Sept)

Blog Spot: Hardy ‘millenials’?
Natural Products editor Jim Manson looks at the ‘millenials’ generation, who are are already big news for the organic and ethical food industry, because as Soil Association Certification CEO, Rob Sexton pointed out in The Grocer magazine last week, younger consumers seem to understand organic better. They also see it in an overall positive light and are less likely to deflected by controversies stoked up by the media.
Natural Products (11 Sept)

Why Big Farming won’t buy Nicholas Kristof’s ‘happy cows’
Victoria Bekiempis writes that anthropomorphising cattle won't improve farm animal welfare: agribusiness needs a business reason to reform.
The Guardian (11 Sept)

Ensure best practice when using antibiotics to keep disease at bay
At a recent Animal and Plant Health Assocation (APHA) conference, resistance to antibiotics was identified as a major problem for Irish agriculture. APHA is the representative body for the agro-chemical and medicines industry in this country and delegates were warned of the potential link between the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals and the development of MRSA-type bugs in our hospitals.
Irish Independent (11 Sept)

Badger cull legal challenge fails at court of appeal
A challenge to culls that will kill thousands of badgers has failed at the court of appeal.
The Badger Trust had attacked Mr Justice Ouseley's decision in July to uphold government proposals for two pilot culls aimed at tackling tuberculosis in cattle, one in west Gloucestershire and the other in west Somerset.
The Guardian (11 Sept)
Badger cull to go ahead this autumn as last ditch legal challenge fails
The Telegraph (11 Sept)

Paterson unveils new ‘rural contract’
Defra Secretary Owen Paterson has hailed the importance of rural growth in England as he launches a new ‘rural contract’ in Cumbria today. Under the rural contract, countryside communities will have new power to hold the Government to account on its promise to grow the rural economy and support thriving rural communities, Mr Paterson said today.
Farmers Guardian (12 Sept)

China investigates use of children in GM trial
The Chinese government announced on Monday that, following the discovery of deeply controversial testing practices, a lead researcher on a genetically modified rice testing programme has been suspended from work.
Farming Online (11 Sept)

Farming Today
It is predicted the drought in Spain will affect the volume of olive oil produced this year, leading to higher prices on UK supermarket shelves. Meanwhile, the price rise could be good news for British oil producers. A three year field trial of GM blight resistant potatoes is coming to an end. Anna Hill visits the John Innis centre in Norfolk to see the results of this years crop. And as the amount of land being farmed organically in the UK falls by 9%, Cumbrian farmer Richard Price tells Caz Graham why he chose to revert back to conventional farming methods on a 3,500 acre estate.
BBC Radio 4, listen again (12 Sept)

And finally…The Cold Edge: Polar photography by Dave Walsh
Dave Walsh's photographs show what it is like to be truly on the edge. The images taken during Greenpeace expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica, between 2007 and 2010, question our romantic relationship with remote, harsh and pristine environments of the polar regions.
The Guardian (12 Sept)