As Organic Week begins, Sanjida O’Connell explores the wide range of organic goods and services now available in the UK – from food and drink, to holidays and even clothing.

The Independent - Friday 3 October 2003

Roy Cook has opened his doors to the public. He’s offering guided tours of his vineyard, a woodland nature trail and wine tasting, which includes Cuvée Pinot Noir Rosé, a pink bubbly with strawberry fruit flavours, black cherry, sparkling elderflower and apple wines. Sedlescombe vineyard was the first organic wine producer in this country; free winetasting is just one of many events held throughout the country in celebration of Organic Week from the 4th – 12th October. The week starts with Organic Experience Weekend: over a hundred organic farms will hold tours, picnics, pumpkin parties, barbecues, tractor and horse rides as well as food and drink tastings.

The sale of organic food has rocketed: almost 80 per cent of households buy organic produce, spending £920 million a year – Germany is the only other European country that spends more than us. Between 1990 and 2000 the organic market in Europe grew at a rate of 25% a year, with an annual turnover of £6 billion by April 2000. But what is organic produce, and why should we be buying it? ‘Organic farming delivers the highest quality, best-tasting food, produced without artificial chemicals or genetic modification, and with respect for animal welfare and the environment, while helping to maintain the landscape and rural communities,’ is the definition advocated by the Prince of Wales, president of the Bristol-based Soil Association, the UK’s largest promoter and certifier of organic food. According to Tony Sullivan, Organic Trading Manager for Sainsburys, the two most important reasons why his customers buy organic foods are ‘health reassurance and taste.’
Although there is no conclusive proof, some claim that spraying with pesticides and herbicides pollutes food with harmful chemicals. According to figures provided by the Ecologist, 25,000 tonnes of chemicals are used in farming in the UK each year. A report produced by DEFRA’s Pesticides Residues Committee has shown that a third of our fruit and vegetables are contaminated with pesticide residues: a Cox’s apple may have been sprayed 16 times with up to 36 different kinds of chemicals, many of which have been linked with a range of problems including cancer, decreasing male fertility, foetal abnormalities, chronic fatigue syndrome and Parkinson’s disease. ‘Traceability of meat is an important concern for me from a human consumption point of view,’ says Kathryn Francis who, with her partner, Kurt Hilder, runs a certified organic shop, Better for Organics, in Dursley, Gloucstershire. ‘There has never been a case of BSE in organic meat,’ she adds. Meat, in particular, may be contaminated with antibiotic-resistant organisms such as salmonella. This is due to the routine addition of antibiotics given to livestock raised conventionally even though a 1998 report by the House of Lords recommended that the use of antibiotics in animal feed and their ‘imprudent use’ should be banned.

As well as the potential health risks from eating non-organic food, organic food may be better for you. A study conducted over the course of 12 years and published in the scientific journal, Plantfoods for Human Nutrition, has shown that organic food has higher levels of minerals, particularly potassium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus as well as vitamin C.

Non-organic food is said to damage the environment: the widespread use of pesticides and herbicides decimates wildlife. ‘I believe the soil will be unable to sustain crops for an indefinite amount of time with the increase in the use of pesticides and herbicides,’ says Francis, ‘It makes sense to approach farming sustainably.’ Others claim that organic food, grown naturally, without recourse to chemicals, tastes better, although this is not necessarily true. Cook gives the example of a blind wine tasting held by Robert Joseph, the then Daily Telegraph’s wine correspondent. ‘We couldn’t taste the difference between conventional and organic French wines,’ says Cook, ‘but I felt at the time – this was fifteen years ago – that we had achieved something if organic wine could be comparative with conventional wine without all those chemicals.’

How can you tell, though, that organic produce is really organic? The Soil Association and a number of other organisations certify produce according to a strict and legal definition, and have the power to remove certification. Certification requires traceability showing exactly how the product has been treated from farm to table. Most manufacturers use the logo of the certification body, but there is also an EU certifier code number on the packaging. Sainsburys has developed a traceability website at www.sainsburys/organics, which allows consumers to track produce back to the farm it came from. ‘There is a dilemma here,’ says Henrietta Green, founder of the Food Lovers’ Market, ‘You find that sometimes we’re importing organic food, when we grow the same local food, not strictly organically, but in the right way.’ Soil Association certification can take time, and is expensive, hence Green’s advocation of British food of the highest quality, although in an ideal world, they would have organic certification too. ‘We wouldn’t buy from a farmer down the road, much as we’d like to,’ says Francis, ‘because we can’t guarantee that they didn’t spray their crops. There’s got to be a line drawn somewhere, and the Soil Association do have high standards.’ However, in honour of Organic Week, Green will include a number of certified organic producers at her market on Friday 10th October, such as Patisserie Organic, which sells delights like aubergine and feta tartlets in poppy seed pastry, orange and chocolate cheesecake, and specialities - vegan, gluten and sugar-free banana and cashew cake with coconut and carob icing.

Organic food, once a niche market, can now be bought at specialist shops, such as Better for Organics, at fairs and festivals like those Green organises, farmers’ markets, which now exist throughout the country, as well as at supermarkets. Sullivan believes that Sainsburys now offers the consumer, 'the full repertoire of goods’; the supermarket chain has dedicated organic buyers and is developing specific organic product lines, like the Lady Balfour potato, a strain that is well suited to organic production as it is particularly pest-resistant.

Groceries are not the only kind of organic produce available. It is now possible to eat out organically. One of the oldest organic restaurants in the country is the Watermill in Cumbria, which has been fully organic since it opened in 1975. Dating back to the eighteenth century, the mill still works traditionally, producing speciality breads and flours (for sale on-line as well as at the mill) such as ‘Miller’s magic’, a medieval mixture of wheat and rye, and a special blend that includes high protein soya flour, sesame and sunflower seeds. One of the more popular lunches at the café beneath the mill is the ‘Miller’s Lunch’ – a choice of six different breads served with Loch Arthur cheese from Dumfries, homemade chutney and locally grown salads. The café also makes energy bars for cyclists on the Sustrans route that passes the mill.

In tandem with organiceateries, there has been a growth in organic hotels and b&bs, frequently on farms. Highdown Organic Farm, above the Culm Valley in Exeter, a 450 acre family-run organic dairy farm owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, provides accomodation in a 400 year old converted cider barn and offers a complimentary pint of organic milk and half a dozen eggs from their organic chickens on your arrival. Fresh organic food, including vegetables, fruit and bread, can also be delivered.

One area of organics that is often overlooked are clothes. The amount of pesticides routinely used on cotton can put farmers into debt and damage their health; it is not known whether chemical residues remain in the fibres and affect the consumers, but certainly people with sensitive skin and highly allergic babies find organic cotton easier to wear, according to Abigail Garner. Garner, a former textile engineer, is the founder of Gossypium (pronounced go-sip-yum - it’s the botanical name for cotton), a store based near Brighton, and mail order catalogue, selling casual clothing and yoga wear. Garner spent two years in India cultivating relationships with farmers; she buys her cotton from Agrocel, a network of organic cotton producers. ‘When we first took our cotton to the mill, they laughed at us – they thought we were social workers. But when we came back the manager had a different smile on his face. He put two bobbins on the table and asked us if we could guess which one was ours. Ours was immediately obvious, it was ten times shinier, whiter and slightly waxier.’ Garner employs designers who are specifically trained to create garments from organic textiles. ‘We go that extra mile to design clothing that has a longer life, it’s less seasonal and less fashion dependent.’ Gossypium and other organic clothing manufactures, such as Green Fibres, could be accused of remaining an elite niche product but as Garner says, the clothing industry is global and few retailers can trace the their clothes back to the soil. ‘It takes 3m2 of soil for eight months to grow enough cotton to make a T-shirt,’ she says. In spite of the difficulties, Gossypium is set to go mainstream: a deal with Marks and Spencers is imminent. ‘We’ve got the farmers in the foreground,’ she says, ‘He’s the one who’s out there dealing with wind, rain and the bugs.’

Sedlescombe Vineyard http://EnglishOrganicWIne.co.uk
Tel: 01580 830 715

Henrietta Green’s Food Lover’s Market www.foodloversbritain.com
Tel: 020 7644 0455

Better for Organics www.betterfororganics.com
Tel: 01453 545 090

The Duke of Cambridge
Tel: 020 7359 3066
The Crown
Tel: 020 8981 9998

Organic Holidays www.organic-holidays.com
Highdown Organic Farm www.highdownfarm.co.uk
Tel: 01392 881028
E-mail: svallis@highdownfarm.co.uk

Gossypium www.gossypium.co.uk
Tel: 0800 0856 549

The Watermill
www.organicmill.co.uk
Tel: 01768 881 523