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When it is organic food in name only...
Are food guarantees from less bureaucratic countries worth the paper they are printed on? Chris Benfield reports on a debate which could run.
Organic food and organic feed certification from some countries is so unreliable it is worthless, according to a farming engineer who has spent a lot of time abroad.
David Williams says he has seen farm workers in the Ukraine spraying random mixtures of chemicals on 'organic' cereals destined for the UK and Germany.
And there and elsewhere he has been told that organic certification can be bought for the equivalent of 10 or so.
Mr Williams, 56, based in Warwick, says his personal knowledge leads him to suspect that British farmers are facing unfair competition in all sorts of "guaranteed" produce, including meat with the Red Tractor stamp.
He outlined some of his concerns in a letter in the March edition of the NFU magazine British Farmer & Grower.
It says: "I have lived and worked in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics where I have been disappointed to find that quality certificates, including organic certification, are readily and cheaply available.
"Some years ago, I visited farms in Ukraine that were producing 'certified organic' cereals – some destined for British breakfast cereal manufacturers, some for similar German processors.
"I found large quantities of outdated and banned Soviet-era pesticides being used on those farms. The drums were rusting and without labels.
"The farm staff just tank-mixed a cocktail hoping it would cure something. But as the cost of an organic certificate was less than $20, all the production was certified as organic.
"Last year, I heard a UK producer of organic chicken stating that as he was unable to procure enough organic cereals from British farms, he was importing supplies from Kazakhstan. I have also lived and worked in Kazakhstan and I can assure him that when fallout from the Russian Baikonur space centre, the Semi-Palatinsk nuclear weapons test area, the Russian biological weapons test area, the toxic Aral Sea and the Kazakh attitude to pesticides are considered, there is very little chance of any organic cereals coming from that country."
Speaking to the Yorkshire Post this week, Mr Williams said he had worked in 20 countries over the past 18 years, mainly on crop storage installations funded by various government and international aid agencies.
Through his contacts, he knew of a prawn farm in Lithuania which boasted a high-level safety certificate (HACCP) but, on inspection, had only unopened bottles of a reagent required for a microbe test which should be performed five times a day – and furthermore, could not supply anyone who knew how to do the test.
Mr Williams said he was surprised not to see more publicity for a recent announcement by the Food Standards Agency that so-called 'organic' soya extract from China had been found to be
contaminated with melamine – a bulking agent which simulates protein content and made thousands of babies ill when it was added to milk in China.
Mr Williams said: "In my experience of questioning food importers, their criteria is to establish if the exporting trader can produce a certificate. If he can, that's okay – whether it is forged or genuine.
"All supermarkets and restaurants need to come clean with their labelling and sourcing. It's all too easy for them to fly in supplies from who knows where, with whatever fraudulent certification is necessary to prove equivalence with UK or European standards."
The Food Standards Agency confirmed that melamine was found, last year, in Chinese soya products intended for use in organic animal feed.
A feed merchant told the Yorkshire Post there was a shortage of organic feedstuffs so ingredients were commonly imported from outside the EU.
He said: "It is all certificated and tested and even stricter rules are under discussion. This chap may have seen something he didn't like but that does not mean it is happening on a large scale."
Can you add to this story? Email chris.benfield@ypn.co.uk or call 0113 238 8426.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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