Simon Wright
This years Biofach opening ceremony got off to a slow start when Keynote Speaker Gerard Depadieu’s train was delayed. The opening address from IFOAM President Gerald A. Herrmann also struck an odd note. He seemed to be saying “We were right when we went organic 30 years ago and the world laughed: now the world is coming to us all we have to do is carry on with what we’re doing and the global organic sector will carry on growing by 20% every year”.

Such naïve sentiments were thankfully absent from the trade show itself, with suits increasingly replacing Hungarian peasant costume. There was innovation to be found if you looked hard. ICAM had the world’s first natural dark cocoa powder produced without alkalization. Angius Organics were promoting candied tomato and crystallised carrots – truly a unique taste! I was impressed with the beautifully-presented Vosges beribboned chocolate gift box, available in Selfridges and containing bars such as Woolloomooloo (macademias and hemp), Red Fire (chipotle chillies), Barcelona Bar (hickory smoked almonds) and Naga (curry powder).

Of the UK companies that exhibited, Community showed their new range of Fairtrade non-foods such as footballs and shoes, Alara launched their organic gluten free muesli with Goji and Yacon, Clearspring had their new packaging on display (such as the Snack Organic Tamari Roasted Sicilian Almonds, totally yummy), King Soba launched Organic Mighty Miso Soups and Organic Gluten Free Ramen Noodles and The Organic Spirits Company launched the worlds first Organic and Fairtrade Golden Rum. Companies making their debut in Germany included Green & Black’s and Duchy Originals, where high prices did not put people off from the shortbread, marmalade and lemon curd.

Top gossip in the Hotel Maritim bar top was the ever increasing cost of organic ingredients with rises of 40 – 100% being regularly quoted. Scarcity is also a problem, one trader telling of a container of organic Chinese sunflower kernels sold for domestic bio-fuel production. Other topics of conversation included the rumour that the new compulsory EU Bio organic logo was so close to the Aldi organic logo that lawyers are now involved, that everyone is going to have to bake with organic yeast from January 2009 and how difficult it is to find ingredients that are both organic and Fairtrade, although Jamie at URENbio is working hard on it. Organic fraud was much discussed , with meetings taking place in Holland and Switzerland between key traders and certification bodies to draft a new code of conduct.

For another view of Biofach I talked to Al Overton, non-foods buyer at Planet Organic and a first-time visitor. “Other than the whole ‘oh my god it’s huge’ thing, I was very impressed, mainly by the breadth of products available and the obvious size of the organic food industry in Europe, which is heartening for anyone from the UK.  The show on the whole was well laid out and spacious, the atmosphere was fairly relaxed and the majority of the exhibitors were very friendly, patient and open-minded.” Al spent time at the sister show Vivaness which features organic beauty products, household products and textiles and here he was less impressed. “There was little I had not already seen, and it did not seem nearly as international as the rest of the show.  Coming from the UK I also found the lack of supplements a surprise”.

Also memorable was the Rolling Stones-themed rock cafe Brown Sugar and Vapiano, a very cool cashless Italian restaurant and bar with its own credit cards, well worth a visit next time you’re in Nuremburg. Which for me will be Biofach 2009, February 19 -22. See you there!

An Interview with Alison Austin, Head of Brand Policy and Sustainability, Sainsburys Supermarkets

Simon Wright, O&F Consulting

What do you do at Sainsburys ?

I head up a small team of experts who develop policy on issues such as animal welfare, farm assurance schemes, animal testing, genetic modification, sustainable product sourcing, ethical trading, Fairtrade, organics, health and nutrition, special diets, energy, waste, packaging and recycling.

Which of those do you find the most personally motivating ?

Definitely organics and Fairtrade, and then health and nutrition we feed over 16 million customers a week ! I handle organics personally and am really glad to do so, and I have been personally motivated by Fairtrade ever since I went to the Windward Islands and saw the reality of Fairtrade.

What are you doing on sustainable fish sourcing ?

What we have decided to do is to make sure we have fish for today and fish for tomorrow. Behind that simple statement is an enormous amount of work. We have developed an assessment system with the support of the Marine Conservation Society and we have a programme to put all the fish we sell through this assessment system. The first species we looked at were skate and huss, and they were so obviously unsustainable that we decided to stop selling them even though this represents 650,000 in sales per year. We trained our fish-counter colleagues to advise customers as to what other fish they could buy. We are promoting less well-known sustainable but seasonal species such as Torbay Sole and Red Mullet via our New in Season offer

A recent campaign by Friends of the Earth has drawn consumers attention to the unsustainable nature of much palm oil production. What are Sainsburys doing to address these concerns ?

We are committed to joining the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, developed and run by the World Wildlife Fund. We will be meeting lead suppliers in the major categories where palm oil is used biscuits, cakes, margarines, health and beauty, household cleaners to get a better understanding of where they source their palm oil from and how they use it. Our objective is to use certified sustainable palm oil wherever this is commercially feasible, probably early 2008.

The trade press recently picked up OMSCos disquiet about Sainsburys milk in conversion scheme. Whats going on?

We have seen market growth of organic liquid milk at Sainsburys of 80% year-on-year – as opposed to market growth of 60% – probably because it is such a good entry point into organics. So we knew we were going to exceed current supplies of organic milk but we wanted to avoid having to import organic milk as our some of competitors do. We have a clear and committed UK sourcing policy. We were concerned that there seemed to be a low level of interest from non-organic dairy farmers in converting to organic production and we needed to be pro-active to remove the concerns that farmers have in going organic. So we put together a scheme with our supplier Dairy Crest where for the period of conversion until the farm receives its organic certification, we will cover all the farmers oncosts. We also offer a guarantee that for a year from their certification date, we will buy the farmers organic milk. We have two farmers about to enter the scheme which will give us some of the extra capacity we will need in 2008. We talked to Defra and the certifying body on how to present this scheme to consumers. During conversion the milk will be clearly sold as non-organic, stating that a donation from the price goes direct to the farmer to cover all his cost of converting.

Currently supermarkets are losing market share to other channels such as box schemes. We have Wholefoods opening in London early next year. How do Sainsburys respond to these challenges?

The growth of box schemes is interesting in two ways. Firstly it is helping to drive the overall organic market and that has got to be good news. Secondly it is encouraging people to be more curious about the food they are buying. Box schemes are good at provenance, and this is something that all players in the organic sector have got to consider – deliver the story behind the product. With Wholefoods it will be interesting to see how much of what they stock is organic and how much is natural. But no-one in the UK organic market at present can afford to sit on their laurels.

For Fairtrade Fortnight this year Sainsburys converted 75% of all the roses they sell to Fairtrade. Why?

We wanted something that could really make an impact on a big scale, so we chose our 4.99 roses, where the sales are huge. We launched in January, so it would be smooth-running by the time of Fairtrade Fortnight. We promoted using Point Of Sale to say same price, same quality but Fairtrade This catapulted us into number one Fairtrade retailer with 34% market share and its going great guns and making a huge difference to the growers.

How do you react to Marks & Spencer taking a whole category like hot beverages and turning that Fairtrade?

I think it is good to see major retailers making a commitment to sizeable market changes towards Fairtrade because that makes an impact with customers. However the Co-op moved all their own-label chocolate to Fairtrade a while ago, we moved the vast majority of our roses to Fairtrade so it is unsurprising to see another retailer make a move like this.

Whats next ?

The growth of our sales in organics is really good – latest data from TNS shows that we have reclaimed the number one organic spot from Tesco with our own-brand range. We need to encourage more UK growers to convert, as we are doing with milk. It will be interesting to see how the organic and Fairtrade markets respond to the need for healthier products. Certainly some Fairtrade products such as chocolate and alcohol are indulgent and its a question of whether for example we can expand Fairtrade fruit.

Simon Wright
23.03.06

This article originally appeared in Organic and Natural Business Magazine for June / July 2006

Simon Wright
The Organic Consultancy

Trans – Essential Mediation!

Simon Wright, O&F Consulting

Kentucky Fried Chickens decision in October to stop using trans-fats has once again turned the media spotlight onto this Franken-fat. KFC are following in the footsteps of Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsburys who have all announced plans to curtail the presence of trans fats in their own-label products. But surely this is of only academic interest to the natural foods industry who would never sell a food containing trans fats?

If only it were that simple. In nature, the hydrogen atoms in a fatty acid are usually on the same side of the double bonds of the carbon chain. Hydrogenation twists the double bonds so that the hydrogen atoms end up on different sides of the chain hence trans (Latin for across). Trans fats are created when vegetable or fish oils are hydrogenated, a process which solidifies the oil and extends its shelf life. Hydrogenated fats are used to make long-life biscuits and cakes and are also used for deep fat frying (hence the KFC useage). A series of reports from the US Institute of Medicine, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and other expert committees have upheld the view that trans-fats should be considered as even more risky than saturated fats in their tendency to raise blood cholesterol levels and increase the risk of heart disease. This is because whilst both saturated fats and trans fats raise the level of LDL (bad) cholesterol, trans fats uniquely depress the levels of HDL (good) cholesterol. In the words of the NAS trans fatty acids provide no known benefit to human health.

So far, so bad. What muddies the water is that trans fats also occur naturally in meat and dairy products from ruminants such as cows and sheep at a level of 2-5% total fat. Human milk too can contain 1-7% trans fats (as a percentage of total fat). The US National Dairy Council has asserted that the trans fats present in animal foods are of a different type to those in hydrogenated oils and do not appear to exhibit the same negative effects. The principal naturally occurring trans fat (vaccenic acid) can be metabolised by humans to conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which has beneficial effects on human health. The effect of consuming trans fats from hydrogenation as opposed to consuming trans fats that occur in nature is considered by Walter Willett in The New England Journal of Medicine (April 2006) where he states that the sum of the current evidence suggests that the public health implications of consuming trans fats from ruminant products are relatively limited.

From these figures the highest levels of naturally occurring trans fats would appear to be found in butter, which could contain a 2-4g trans fats per 100g of butter. However compare these figures to margarine made with partially hydrogenated fat where the total trans fat content could be as high as 36g per 100g of margarine. So hydrogenated products can easily contain 10 times more trans fats than would be found occurring naturally: plus the naturally-occurring trans fats may not be as harmful to human health as their synthetic equivalents. No contest: Welcome Back To (Organic) Butter!

This article originally appeared in Organic and Natural Business magazine for February/March 2006

The statistics quoted by Londons Mayor Ken Livingstone were impressive: London spends 1.6 billion on food every year, 31,000 people earn a living from working with food and 25% of all HGV miles in London are food-related. But as Ken says London sucks in resources from a vast hinterland a situation that is by no means sustainable. The challenge for this 90 minute workshop was to come up with initiatives that will help the London of the future adopt a more sustainable approach.

Jenny Jones, Chair of London Food explained how the capitals new sustainable food strategy is being developed (download the pdf at http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/health/food/docs/draft_strategy_summary.pdf). Emma Hockridge and Dan Keech of Sustain talked about making London Hospiral food more sustainable. Doug Wanstall of Bank Farm Produce explained his experience of being a supplier to such projects and Kerry Rankine of Growing Communities talked about setting up Londons first organic farmers market, organic box scheme and market gardens in Stoke Newington. The rest of the session involved the 100-odd audience forming into small groups and brainstorming under the guidance of Joy Carey of the Soil Associations Local Food Links department.

Food hubs were identified as having a key role to play. These are local markets where smaller producers can meet up with and supply restaurants, hospitals, schools and colleges, caterers and food manufacturers. Hubs could involve some degree of food processing, which would help producers who wish to supply semi-processed ingredients but dont have their own processing facilities. Local, Organic and Fairtrade are seen as key elements to these hubs.

Planning was another key theme. Allotments, gardens and parks were all mentioned as key spaces where Londoners can grow their own food, but all are under pressure as the price of land continues to rise. It was felt that only by ringfencing such land in planning procedures could it be safeguarded for future generations.

Finally the need for a brokering role was mentioned by several groups. Hospitals and other institutions want to source more sustainable food and small producers want to supply them. However without an agency in the middle who can make the connection these projects have proved hard to get going.

Other ideas included using canals for food distribution, getting Londons schoolkids to visit farms and the importance of restoring food to the National Curriculum. The session could easily have lasted twice as long, but as always at the Soil Association Conference another Workshop beckoned

Town Pub, Country Pub

Simon Wright O&F Consulting

Finally in 2005 the ontrade is beginning to take organics seriously even the wine list of my local Wetherspoons pub now offers a couple of organic choices. However some pioneering London pubs are going a lot further, such as The Crown in Hackney, The Duke of Cambridge in Islington and now The White Horse in Parsons Green. Of these three The White Horse is the only one that does not set out to portray itself as an organic pub. This is because landlord Mark Dorber has entered the organic field from a different angle.The process of selecting a wine or a beer for our menu follows the same route each time it has to be outstanding in its flavour profile, well made and interesting with good story to tell. I focus primarily on the purity and quality of flavour. It just so happens that from assiduous tasting of wines from our merchants Adnams and Bibendum weve ended up with around 30 wines that happen to be organic or biodynamic. My expectation now is that when new great wines are launched, more and more they are organic.

Mark admits that the well-heeled drinkers of SW6 may appreciate the quality of his wines but they dont really understand the terminology. The majority of our customers dont really understand what an organic wine is. People are intrigued by the leaf symbol on our wine list denoting that the wine is organic or biodynamic and they want to know more. It is our job now to explain this in more detail. Best sellers on the list include Leflaive Bourgogne Chardonnay, Domaine Leflaive Puligny Montrachet Premier Cru , Domaine de Limbardie Ros and Mas de Gourgonnier.

Following his success with organic wine Mark has now extended his organic offer into non-alcoholic beverages. When I judged the Organic Food Awards in 2004 I was massively impressed with the quality of the soft drinks and as a result I have now added Rocks and Heron Valley Organic Cordials and the Grove Fresh range of organic fruit and vegetable juices to our range at both pubs. Our customers have been wowed by the quality of these soft drinks.

After this you would have thought organic beer would have been a logical step, but that has not been Marks experience. Organic beer is a trickier one. It would be great if biodynamic practices could be shown to work in the hop-field because could then make a lot of Englands hop farms viable again – the current combination of diseases and the low price achieved by hops sold as commodity means they are not cost effective. There are special flavour and aroma characteristics of English hops which make it essential that we preserve them. We stock the Duchy Original range which are excellent, and we also stock organic guest beers like St Peters and Brakespear. Overall I think organic beers are lagging a long way behind organic wines at the moment. And we havent explored organic spirits yet, thats still to come.

Monty Waldin launched his book on biodynamic wine upstairs at The White Horse and this has increased Marks enthusiasm for biodynamic production. As I start to immerse myself in the work of Rudolph Steiner I am going to have many more penetrating questions for my suppliers of drinks and food.

In addition to The White Horse Mark and his wife Sophie have also taken over The Anchor in Walberswick, Suffolk. The Anchor will have a very different theme. At The Anchor we will specialise in local and seasonal food. We will grow biodynamic vegetables, leaves and herbs on our 12 x 45 yard allotment. Its marvellous to nip out during a busy shift for spinach from the allotment the freshness aspect is there. Were also developing links with local organic producers and we hope to have an organic farmers market in the Anchors carpark. Already Mark is applying biodynamic preparations to his compost heap in the expectation of full certification in due course.

Food is a major feature of the menu at both pubs but until recently offering organic menu items has been difficult because of cumbersome EU organic legislation. At the White Horse we source organic lamb from Shropshire and occasionally our menu features organic chickens. The effective deregulation of organic catering by Brussells offers a great opportunity for us to increase the amount of organic ingredients on our menu. We are very interested in the new new Soil Association Organic Catering Code, particularly for The Anchor. But for Mark organics is not to do with legislation or ideology. Organics for me is all about provenance, authenticity and taste.

Simon Wright

01.08.05

This article originally appeared in the October / November 2005 edition of Organic and Natural Business.

Simon Wright
The Organic Consultancy

Twelve years ago I was part of the team at Whole Earth Foods who took the UK food manufacturing industry to task for their over-reliance on hydrogenated fat. By publicising the groundbreaking work done in the USA by Walter Willet I like to think that we helped contribute to todays enlightened climate, where even the FSA has begun to advise consumers to avoid eating hydrogenated fat and the trans-fats it contains. Hydrogenated fat is very appealing to the food processing industry as it is solid at room temperature, has a long shelf life and tastes of very little. In many cases the obvious alternative to hydrogenated fat is palm oil, which has these same properties but contains no trans-fats and can be declared on-pack as a natural ingredient.

As a result sales of palm oil, and its derivatives palm stearine and palm olein, have been rocketing 28 million tonnes of palm oil are produced every year, making palm oil the second most popular vegetable oil after soya oil. It is estimated that palm oil is found in every third food product including chocolate, mayonnaise, sauces, margarine, biscuits, chips and muesli. There is plenty of palm oil in the natural food industry – not just in food but also in soaps, toothpaste, shampoo, cosmetics and detergents.

Natural food companies such as Jordans use palm oil throughout their product range. NPD Manager Emma Bootman explains that we currently use a blended vegetable oil containing 60% rapeseed oil and 40% palm oil as the inclusion of the palm oil gives us an ambient stable natural vegetable oil without having to use any additives yet still giving us the shelf life quality and product texture that our consumers expect. However Emma admits that Jordans have recently reduced the level of saturated fats in their organic range by replacing organic palm oil with organic high-oleic sunflower oil.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) are not happy about our increasing reliance on palm oil and they have now issued a report entitled Greasy palms palm oil, the environment and big business calling for reform. The international trade in palm oil is held to be responsible for loss of tropical rainforest in Indonesia where palm acreage has increased by 118 percent in the past eight years. Frequently indigenous peoples land has been stolen and given to companies for the development of palm oil plantations. Human rights abuses and violent conflict are said to be commonly associated with this land theft. Biodiversity too is decimated, with 80-100% of mammals, birds and reptiles being destroyed.

Unsurprisingly the palm oil producers see things differently. They have formed the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which brings producers, food manufacturers and NGOs together to promote the growth and use of sustainable palm oil. In addition to the usual multi-national suspects members of the RSPO include The Body Shop and Oxfam and Aarhus of Kingston Upon Hull, formerly known as Anglia Oils. In response to the FoE report Tim Stephenson from Aarhus notes that Both FoE and the ethical investment organisation Isis recognised that a boycott of palm oil would be neither viable or helpful. Palm oil has a complex supply chain it is possible (but expensive) to buy identity-preserved palm oil. Perhaps this is why a FoE survey showed that 87% of UK companies dont know where their palm oil comes from.

Although there is not yet an agreed definition of what constitutes sustainability in terms of palm oil Aarhus and their sister organisation United Plantations of Malaysia have implemented an impressive list of policies including Integrated Pest Management, use of organic fertilisers and the provision of quality housing and schools for workers. Aarhus support the Word Wildlife Fund objective that by the end of 2005 high conservation value forests, freshwater ecosystems and habitats of key species will no longer be threatened by the expansion of palm oil. This is particularly important as the demand for additional land for palm plantations is expected to be a mind-boggling 6-10 million hectares over the next 20 years.

However sales of palm oil in Europe would undoubtedly be adversely affected if GM palm oil became widely available. And yet that is what Malaysian Palm Oil Association chief executive M.R. Chandran has called for, by publicly declaring that “the priority should be to develop transgenic palms for better oil quality, yield and minimal height”. To work in that direction, he added, “the industry must build alliances with established R&D institutions, universities and industry players, both locally and overseas, to make possible a quantum leap in applied and adaptive research work.”

One way of avoiding GM palm oil would be to move to organic palm oil, where GM technology would be banned as a matter of course. But would sourcing organic palm oil be any better for the environment ? The organic palms that Aarhus refine into organic palm oil are grown in Columbia, far away from the problematic plantations of Indonesia. However European demand for their Soil Association-certified product is currently very small. It seems that organic palm oil remains the best bet for the concerned manufacturer and consumer, with Aarhuss sustainable Malaysian palm oil the next best thing.

This article originally appeared in the April / May 2005 edition of Organic and Natural Business.

Simon Wright
O&F Consulting

Simon is an organic and Fairtrade consultant to a number of retailers including Planet Organic and Sainsbury’s

The media circus around the Whole Foods Kensington opening party was quite extraordinary – I have never before seen paparazzi attend the opening of a healthfood store. Three months on the dust has settled and a more balanced view is possible, revealing some good things, some less-than good.

The impact on multiple retailers was obvious long before Whole Foods opened in June. Local branches of M&S, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Tesco all sharpened up their act, and Whole Foods can take credit for prompting UK retailers to critically review and improve their organic offer. Tesco and Waitrose introduced ranges called Wholefoods. Endless newspaper articles previewing Whole Foods placed organic, Fairtrade and locally-sourced foods firmly in the public eye, again a positive effect.

Since the Kensington store opened its influence can be seen in The Natural Kitchen and the new concept-store Waitrose (both Marylebone High Street). Press coverage since the launch has been mixed, with initial praise increasingly replaced by Chris Blackhurst in the Evening Standard and now Jonanna Blythman in The Grocer attacking Whole Foods for being too glitzy, too WAGgy and ultimately too…American.

I like the fact that Whole Foods is big and makes some strong statements about what food should be. I like the attention to detail – the cheese-maturing room (with Neal’s Yard), the instore bakery, the attractive displays, the sampling programmes, the attempt to make ethical food both upscale and inviting. I applaud the boldness of the vision and the energy with which it has been executed.

However I have reservations, and they are mainly to do with the way the US format has been applied to the UK. In the last US Whole Foods I visited (Minneapolis) I found it very difficult to distinguish between which products were organic, which products were natural and which were locally-sourced. I have similar problems with the London store, where more fresh products are non-organic than I anticipated and it is difficult to identify them.

The amount of food-to-go at London Whole Foods makes it a great place to meet for a drink or something to eat but ordering something as simple as a warm bagel is a cumbersome business. The menu seems to be becoming more US-oriented, with the hot vegan menu being replaced by a burrito bar.

Another problem is portion sizes. Ready-packed olives in the London store are sold in US-sized containers, which are a lot bigger than typical UK containers. Whole Foods chocolate brownies are approximately twice the size of regular UK brownies, which makes them relatively expensive and a bit OTT in calorific terms.

Little things, but retail is detail.

When I visit Whole Foods I see plenty of customers walking around with a single product, almost like they were food-souvenir shopping at Harrods Foodhall. I see a few customers with a basket of shopping. What I don’t see are many customers buying full trolleys, that is doing a full food shop. And that is a shame because I want Whole Foods to succeed and become part of Londons vibrant food-retailing renaissance.

On the opening night I noticed that the Whole Foods ‘manifesto’ printed on the basement wall spelt ‘colors’ the American way, symptomatic of the US-approach that runs through the store. I like the shop now, but a more locally orientated approach would make Whole Foods Kensington even better.

On Being Slightly Pregnant

Simon Wright
The Organic Consultancy

This article originally appeared in the January 2004 edition of Organic Business.

The Marketing Week organic conference had a good theme, strong speakers and thoughtful, lively debates. So where was everybody? Certainly a price ticket of over 700 was off-putting but the insights offered were strong and the networking opportunities excellent.

Stan Burns from Tesco and Kevin Hawkins from Safeway presented two disparate views of how multiples now see the organic category – Tesco focussing on the opportunities that come from consumer segmentation whilst Safeway emphasised the importance of organic brands and in-store merchandising. Research from both multiples emphasised that pricing was a significant barrier to developing the market (“Don’t rely on research” Mark Palmer, Green & Black’s).

OK, you can’t be slightly pregnant but it appears that currently the vast majority of consumers are slightly organic. Several speakers made the point that encouraging these consumers to become more organic is going to require considerable ingenuity. Brand holders such as Go Organic, Green & Black’s and Rachels Dairy concentrated on promoting taste and health as a way of achieving this. Renee Elliot demonstrated that a dedicated organic retailer can effectively sell the organic proposition by explicitly criticising non-organic products. Easy to do if you’re Planet Organic, more difficult if you’re Unilever.

One way forward could be to start building alliances with other production systems. Some are obvious – Fairtrade, Farmers Markets – some less so. In my experience artisan cheese makers and micro-brewers are interested in provenance, naturalness, sourcing and sustainability, whether they are organic or not. If we add in Free From / Special Diet, Slow Food, Local, Natural Products, Local, Free Range / Cruelty Free and Fine Foods then the organic sector becomes one strand of a much broader movement, what Fresh & Wild have started calling Real Food.

Embracing our fellow travellers in this way means accepting that organics may not be the answer to everything. Rather than dividing the food chain strictly into organic and non-organic, a more sophisticated worldview would be that of a continuum. If organically-certified locally produced, Fairtrade products occupy one pole, the other would be some ghastly combination of hydrogenated fat, GM corn, refined sugar and white flour, over-packaged and overpromoted. But there is a lot of middle-ground for the organic community to go for.

Fudging The Issue

Simon Wright
The Organic Consultancy

This article originally appeared in the November 2003 edition of Organic Business.

There is currently much interest in bringing together the fairtrade and organic sectors. Key brands such as Clipper, Green & Black’s and Caf Direct already work successfully in both sectors. Consumers don’t understand why sometimes they have to chose between products which are good for the planet (organic) or good for small farmers (fairtrade). Products that embody both sets of values are popular, and I am currently chairing a Soil Association standards committee to see how we can develop this further.

I was taken aback by a new range of confectionery products on sale in my local Oxfam shop. Called Traidcraft Confections, this range claims to contain the finest fair trade ingredients. But what are these finest fair trade ingredients ? The Vanilla Fudge ingredients list reads “Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Sweetened Condensed Milk, Butter, Salt, Emulsifier (E322, E471) and Flavouring.” There is absolutely no indication as to which of these ingredients is fair traded, or indeed what percentage of the finished product is fair traded. So how does this product differ from a non-fair trade bag of toffees ? It is impossible to tell.

In commercial terms fair trade is showing the sort of impressive year-on-year growth that organic showed a couple of years ago. Launching “fair trade” products such as these runs the risk of sabotaging this growth, as consumers buy in to the proposition but are then disappointed by the reality. The sort of motivated consumer who looks out for fairly traded food is unlikely to be impressed by the presence of hydrogenated fat and of mono- and di-glycerides of fatty acids. The organic sector avoided these problems through statutory legislation that covers the entire product, including any non-organic ingredients present.

Fair trade is not defined in law, so product regulation is voluntary.It is not enough for manufacturers to focus on only the fair trade component of their products a holistic approach is essential, since the consumer buys the whole product, not just the fair trade component. The organic sector has pursued this sort of joined-up thinking to great effect. If fair trade wishes to develop the same commercial clout as organic it needs to start exhibiting the same degree of rigour.

Clear Blue Water ?

Simon Wright
The Organic Consultancy

This article originally appeared in the September 2003 edition of Organic Business.

I have been watching with both amusement and amazement as Big Food wakes up to the fact that hydrogenated fat is actually the work of the devil and has no place in foods eaten by human beings. One of the reasons I am so implacably opposed to hydrogenated fat is that the groundbreaking work done by Walter Willett at Harvard University ago clearly indicated that the trans fats produced during hydrogenation have a more negative effect on human health than even the saturated fats that occur in nature. Willett’s work was first published in 1993 and as far as I am aware has never been repudiated. So it is surprising that the likes of Unilever, Heinz and Cadbury’s (?) have taken so long to replace or reduce the foul stuff. More cynical industry observers suspect that these strategies were in place some time ago and are only now being introduced due to front page coverage by the Daily Mail.

Anything that reduces the amount of hydrogenated fat we eat is welcome. But where does this leave organic food manufacturers ? We have made much of the fact that organic food never contains hydrogenated fat. If this is also true for non-organic food, why should consumers buy organic ? One way we can preserve Clear Blue Water between organic and non-organic is to keep ratchetting up the organic standards so that non-organic never catches up. The Soil Association have taken the view that continued standards development is both inevitable and desireable in order to meet consumer expectations. Whether all Soil Association licensees welcome the inexorable rise of standards is less clear certainly I have heard the reverse in my travels.

The move away from hydrogenated fat is the latest in a long line of changes in the mainstream food industry where the organic sector showed the way and proved it could be done. It is great to be influencing the mainstream industry in this way and helping to bring about the nutritional equivalent of regime change. However in the process we may be sowing the seeds of our own decline as the organic sector becomes less differentiated. We could end up with 1% of the food market but considerable influence over the other 99%. Is that a good deal ?