Growers and Grocers

Lawrence Woodward, the former head of the organic watchdog group The Soil Association, has alerted one of Britain’s major newspapers that “supermarkets are putting pressure on organic food watchdogs to lower standards so they can fully exploit a billion-pound industry which is growing by 30% a year.”
Sandra Laville and John Vidal discuss the accusations in […]

Here in France, I always buy my tomatoes in season, never letting myself be tempted by a pale hothouse variety in Winter; so I’m not surprised to learn that heirloom tomatoes are a hit in the USA.
“Heirloom tomatoes with names like Marcel Stripe and Black Krim have been the late summer favorites of Northern California’s […]

You may not realize it as you grimly plow through the Saturday afternoon crowd at your local Safeway, but supermarkets are struggling. Superstores such as Wal-Mart and Target, specialty markets, Costco-style club stores and Internet shopping are attracting more and more customers. In fact, reports Kim Severson in Wednesday’s New York Times, traditional supermarkets stand […]

All over the USA, consumers now know that E.coli bacteria can be found in foods other than ground meat – even in vegetables. A major outbreak of E.coli has been traced to pre-packaged spinach. Although initial analysis has linked the illness to “Natural Selection Foods” spinach, marketed by Earthbound Farms, as of Friday, FDA officials […]

The European Union continues its genetically-modified rice woes. After having banned the importation of US rice, China could be the new GMO culprit. The EU fears that GMO rice has been used in processed products imported from China, such as vermicelli and rice sticks. China denies the allegations.
Not that European food merchants are above […]

As I pore over food news every week, I am struck by the number of downers. Pesticides and mercury in food, battles over GMOs, disease in livestock…be warned, this week is no exception!
Sheryl Kirby reported a few weeks back on the Indian Cola Wars; six Indian states have banned Pepsi and Coca-Cola products over […]

Hello to Growers and Grocers readers! I’m back home in France after spending 6 weeks in Washington State. Here in France it’s almost la rentrée – time to go back to school and to get back to work. It’s also time for making resolutions — perhaps a more suitable moment than New Year’s – so […]

For this week’s news, it will be pretty hard to beat Sheryl Kirby’s post about bugs in food coloring. I’m still wondering about what this means for vegetarians.
In fact, food production news this week seems to be dominated by the question of what is really in our food, and whether said food lives up […]

When José Bové and members of the French farmers’ union the Confédération Paysanne attacked a McDonald’s restaurant in August 1999, the whole world watched. Few know, however, that similar actions continue in France, especially destruction of testing fields for genetically modified crops. These events don’t get a lot of publicity in the USA, but […]

I took a trip to London in April, and I can tell you that the British are on top of food-related issues. All over the city, food purveyors tout dishes as organic, vegetarian, this-free and that-enriched. And Prime Minister Tony Blair does have good table manners at international summits. But he is not so popular […]