We are urgently developing research requirements with other European laboratories to make sure we understand and the disease (Schmallenberg) better.Organic farmers do support non-organic produce – Melchett
THE organic movement happily promotes the purchase of non-organic food produced by British farmers, leading environmentalist and organic protagonist Peter Melchett claimed this week.
His comments come in response to criticism from Peter Kendall, NFU president, and John Gummer, former Environment Secretary, at last week’s Conservative Party conference that the organic movement’s unique selling point was to attack conventional farmers.
Mr Melchett said: “The Soil Association certainly does not attack non-organic farmers or people who buy and eat non-organic food.”
On the contrary, he said: “We promote non-organic local food, Freedom Foods and the Red Tractor in our Food for Life programme.”
He added: “I’d be interested to hear from Peter [Kendall] what the NFU has done recently specifically to promote British organic food to consumers, in the way that the Soil Association promotes the purchase of non-organic food from British farmers.”
Mr Melchett also dismissed the notion that organic farming held the ‘only’ solution to feeding the world. He said his message that organic farmers did ‘not have all the answers’ and were ‘still learning’ was largely ignored by critics.
Although he added organic farmers could feed a growing world population if the public changed its diet to eat less grain and protein-fed meat.
This was not pie in the sky, he said, where consumers were already turning to organic farm produce in their droves.
“Peter Kendall and John Gummer have been criticising organic farming for years, and during that time organic sales in the UK grew at up to 30 per cent a year, with growth only slowing when the recession hit.
“There are already signs, for example from Tesco’s, that organic sales are beginning to pick up again. So Peter and John don’t seem to be having much influence on consumers,” he said.
Finally, Mr Melchett was unequivocal in his response to Mr Kendall’s comments that European agriculture should listen to the science and look seriously at adopting genetically modified technology.
He urged legislators to look at past mistakes: “We remember many scientists telling us we were wrong to ban the feeding of cattle brains to other cattle because at one time there was no scientific evidence this caused any problems,” he said.