Today's News

10 March 2010

‘British classics’ made with meat from the other side of the world:
Research shows that food companies are selling products labelled "British" or "traditional" which contain meat from thousands of miles away. Birds Eye's chicken dinner meal from its "British Traditional" range, for example, carries a picture of rolling green fields reminiscent of the English countryside, but is made in a factory in the Republic of Ireland and contains intensively produced chicken from Thailand, 6,000 miles away.
The Independent (10 March, p.20)

Curse of the alien species
Michael Leapman warns that importing tiny insects to tackle Britain’s Japanese knotweed problem could easily backfire on us. He asks: “what if, once they arrive, the wind carries them to places where no knotweed grows? Will they develop a taste for pears or carrots, like their cousins?”
The Daily Telegraph (10 March, p. 17)

Consumers suspicious of nanotech, irradiation and cloning
New technologies such as nanotech, animal cloning and irradiation trigger feelings of “unease, uncertainty, and sometimes outright negativity” among consumers, said a new report from the UK. The research, funded by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), examined public attitudes towards a raft of novel food technologies. It concluded that people were generally “unsupportive” of these - although the level of understanding about the technologies was considered low…Key factors in determining consumer points of view included perceptions of risks and benefits, as well as moral and ethical concerns – particularly regarding cloning and genetically modified foods.
AP-FoodTechnology.com (5 March)

Borough Market offers opportunities for small producers
For the first time in Borough Market’s 250-year history, it has joined forces with an annual food festival to bring new producers to London. Every Thursday, 14 Real Food Festival producers will come to Borough Market to offer their home-grown produce to tens of thousands of customers. The Real Food Festival is also working with the Soil Association to bring a selection of the Festival’s organic producers to London. The Thursday fixture is a prequel to the Real Food Festival, where hundreds of small producers get another chance to promote their goods to a wider audience. The Real Food Festival is on May 7-10 in Earls Court, London.
Farmers Guardian (9 March)

Farming Today
Website summary: Farmers face subsidy cuts if they fail to do their cattle paper work. More than two and a half thousand farms failed to notify the authorities about births, deaths or animals leaving the farm. After one of the coldest Scottish winters in decades, Farming Today finds out what's being done to ease the suffering of the Highlands wild deer population.
BBC Radio 4 (listen again)

And finally…Oscar winners reveal whale-meat smuggling operation
In an action worthy of the eco-commandos of Greenpeace, the makers of The Cove, an Oscar-winning documentary on Japan's dolphin slaughter, have helped break up an alleged whale meat smuggling operation at a Santa Monica sushi restaurant catering to "adventurous" eaters.
The Guardian (10 March, p.17)

Quote of the day
"The Food Standards Agency say you cannot portray a product using words or images that misrepresent the food, so if you are using a scene of rolling countryside then that should imply those ingredients are from that scene.”
Rob Ward, founder of the Honest Food Labelling Campaign – The Independent – 10 March 2010