Sandra Laville and John Vidal discuss the accusations in an article entitled “Supermarkets accused over organic foods” published in Thursday’s issue of The Guardian. LaVille and Vidal report that the issue of lowering organic standards has led to a schism in the powerful Soil Association. Peter Kindersley, a former Association trustee, resigned over the issue of labelling farm salmon as organic. Woodward also rejects the decision to certify farm salmon, calling it a “’monumental symbol’ of the way the principles of organic production were being dumbed down.”

Unsurprisingly, representatives from two of Britain’s major supermarket chains, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, deny they are pressing for lower standards. And Patrick Holden, the current director of the Soil Association, claims his organization is becoming even more rigorous. One thing is certain: it will take time before Britain’s devoted organic eaters see eye-to-eye with the principles of mass distribution

“Heirloom tomatoes with names like Marcel Stripe and Black Krim have been the late summer favorites of Northern California’s backyard gardeners, farmers’ market shoppers and top chefs for nearly a decade,” writes Aleta Watson for the San Jose Mercury News. She explains that the definition of heirloom tomatoes has changed over the years. Originally, they were “open-pollinated tomatoes grown from seeds handed down from one generation to the next for at least 50 years.” This definition has broadened considerably, and now includes seed company tomatoes launched before 1940 and also some recently created cross-pollinated varieties.

Whatever the definition, the plump, tasty, and sometimes irregularly shaped fruits – or vegetables – have taken the Bay Area by storm and, predictably, are starting to appear in mainstream supermarkets. However, this is likely not the most promising place to purchase heirloom tomatoes. Farmers’ markets and specialty shops remain the best bet – unless you grow them yourself!

(Photo courtesy of tomatoseeds.net)

In her in-depth article entitled “Chains Take Inventory, Along With Some Chances,” Severson also presents innovations that traditional supermarkets are proffering in order to stay afloat. The “Shopping Buddy,” a type of caddy computer, helps guide shoppers through the store and alerts them to specials; and supermarkets are adding a myriad of services, from banking to nutrition counseling.

Food-oriented changes include grouping ingredients for a certain recipe at a kiosk so that shoppers don’t have to wander from aisle to aisle to find the ingredients, improving produce departments, and giving store brands a makeover to attract upscale, yet bargain-conscious consumers.

The article also contains a wealth of statistics about American shopping habits, and makes great reading for anyone interested in food distribution. On a similar note, you will also enjoy “ In Search of Grocery Gems” by Julia Moskin, published in the New York Times on the same day.

Finally, if you clicked on Growers and Grocers today to read the Sunday News, I’m sorry to tell you I will not be writing this feature anymore. I have decided to branch out to some of the Well Fed Network’s other great sites. You’ll be hearing from me on Paper Palate, Food Bound and Wine Sediments, but I hope to pop in to Growers and Grocers from time to time too.

So your next salad probably won’t include bagged spinach, and if you read a recent article from the Guardian, you might hold the olive oil too. In “Is it OK…to use Olive Oil”, Leo Hickman reports on the environmental side effects of European olive oil production. He cites a joint WWF and Birdlife International report which states: “Intensified olive farming is a major cause of one of the biggest environmental problems affecting the EU today: the widespread soil erosion and desertification in Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal.” Hickman suggests buying organic oil or oil from small local cooperatives.

Speaking of buying organic, Kylene Kiang of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on the use of the “organic label” for marketing purposes. Organic produce sold in supermarkets is generally fine, but buyer beware when it comes to “organic” food such as chips, burritos and frozen lasagne. The in-depth article analyzes organic labeling standards, the increased corporate presence in organic food sales, and the big supermarket chains’ rush to hop on the organic bandwagon. Kiang avoids easy conclusions and gives a balanced picture of the merging of the organic movement with corporate marketing. A must-read.

Food issues are always in the news in France, and, according to the Agence France Presse, a recent CSA-Greenpeace poll shows that 86% of French citizens favor a ban on all GMOs (link in French), although 58% would accept a temporary ban until definitive research is carried out on the subject.

Finally, and in a continuing effort to finish the Sunday News on a positive note, Wednesday’s Seattle Times features an article on how to preserve the summer’s fruit and vegetable harvest, and it’s not all about canning and making jam. From neighborhood harvest feasts to simply giving your surplus fruit to passers-by, Bill Thorness gives fresh ideas for sharing fresh food. Let them inspire you as you enjoy the last week of summer.

Not that European food merchants are above food skulduggery. Reuters reports that a German meat wholesaler sold rotten meat in eight other European countries. Authorities also found tons of spoiled meat, ready to be sold, in the company’s warehouses. In a gruesome finish to the scandal, Spiegel online announced on Wednesday that the manager of the meat distribution plant had committed suicide.

Stateside, debate is intensifying over a possible new definition of grass-fed beef. USA Today reports that the The Agriculture Department has proposed a new standard for grass-fed meat which doesn’t specify that animals need pasture and that would allow supposedly “grass-fed” animals to eat a small percentage of other types of forage such as leftover corn stalks. Organic eaters as well as many ranchers oppose the plan.

Californians are rightly proud of Laura Chenel’s Chevre Inc., which makes some of America’s best goat cheese — goat cheese which stands right up to its French counterparts. Now her cheese will be French, at least in the corporate sense. SFGate has announced that Chenel sold her company to Rians, a French family-run cheese company. Explaining the sale, Chenel said “I’ve dedicated my life wholeheartedly to my work. I’m ready for a change, and to find some balance.”

To finish on a light note – if you can call salami light –The Guardian features a story about fegatello d’oca, an Italian oven –cooked salami made from pork and goose. The Pavia province of Italy is famous for other goose-based charcuterie products , and in late September the town of Mortara will celebrate them in its annual Sagra e Palio dell’Oca Festival.

I had a little fun taking a look at all of the local festivals in that region, many of which revolve around food. If you miss the Goose Sausage Festival in September, maybe you can hit the Asparagus and Pig Festival in May!

Sheryl Kirby reported a few weeks back on the Indian Cola Wars; six Indian states have banned Pepsi and Coca-Cola products over claims they contain high levels of pesticide. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the hearings on this issue have been postponed until September 11th, so stay tuned.

In another local uprising, Agrisalon reports from France that two plots of land used for GMO experimentation were destroyed during the night of August 27th to 28th in the Massif Central region. The crops belonged to the Biogemma company, which criticized the act as “an escalation of blind and deaf violence.”

In fact, when you look around, you can find a number of food criminals. United Press International tells us that a Chicago chef was charged with selling newly-banned foie gras in his restaurant. Rick Spiros of Block 44 got off with a warning, and muses that there may be more important issues to deal with in the city.

Foie-gras-producing duck and geese should also be safe from bluetongue virus, the latest in a series of diseases that have plagued European poultry and livestock. The malady is fatal to sheep but is not known to affect humans, reports Yahoo news.

Growers and Grocers has previously reported on the mercury level in imported tuna, and a recent press release by Environment Illinois gives alarming statistics about tuna served in Chicago sushi restaurants. This adds to a recent stream of bad news about high levels of mercury in store bought tuna, locally-caught sport fish and other seafood available to Illinoisans. The organization has released a complete report on the subject in PDF format.

So what to do, what to eat? A new cookbook entitled “Real Food — What to Eat and Why,” written by former Time magazine reporter Nina Planck, has just been released by Bloomsbury. The author’s website’s contains a plethora of information about local food, farmer’s markets, and how to eat better. Her philosophy is summed up by the site’s slogan:
“REAL FOOD is Good for You; Industrial Food Isn’t.”

Thank you to the Growers and Grocers team for providing several of the above links.

The summer was scorching, and farmers all over Europe and North America are feeling the pain. For example, the honey harvest in Southern France was “catastrophique” according to the French agricultural news site Agrisalon (article in French only.) Flowers dried out and pollen grilled to death. What effect did the hot summer have on agricultural production in your area?

Global warming is hurting some agricultural sectors, but could be helping the bottled water industry – as long as water supplies hold out, at least. Sales of bottled water in US convenience stores were up 19.5% in the first quarter of 2006, reports Convenience Store News. Hey, that was winter! I imagine the trend continued through the searing summer.

I’m sorry to include another link in French, but the French press is reporting much more heavily than the American press on the European Union’s decision to suspend imports of American long grain rice as of Wednesday August 23rd. It appears that some genetically modified proteins slipped into rice exported from the US to Europe -– oops! Brussels is annoyed that American authorities took three weeks to inform the European Union of the problem, and has announced that the embargo will last at least six months.

Also from Europe, the Guardian takes a look at the new “indulgent offerings” served up by American fast food outlets. Apparently the fast-food backlash has created its own backlash, and hamburger joints are going all out to offer mega-meals again. “‘We listened to consumers who said they wanted to eat fresh fruit,” a disarmingly honest spokesman told the New York Times, “but apparently they lied.’”

But if you are reading this post, you are likely not about to snarf down a Burger King Stacker Quad, and all the news in this Sunday News column may seem a tad depressing. So take a last sip of coffee and enjoy a short video, “Beauty Food” . It’s not hard news, but it’s uplifting food for thought.

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 to its label. The Seattle Times reports that local grocery chain PCC Natural Markets will stop carrying Horizon Organic milk products because it doubts that the milk meets current organic standards. At the same time, the Organic Consumers Association is expanding its boycott of Horizon and Aurora organic dairy products to include five national “private label” organic milk brands supplied by Aurora, as well as two leading organic soy products, Silk and White Wave, owned by Horizon’s parent company, Dean Foods.

Concern over what’s really in soft drinks is also in the news. Two Indian states, Kerala and Karnataka, have banned the sale and production of sodas marketed by Coca-Cola and Pepsi because of alleged pesticides in the drinks. Debate is raging over the decision, and you can look forward to in-depth coverage of the controversy in a future Growers and Grocers post.

On a lighter note, Wired News presents a clever piece about the not-so-successful incursion of “gourmet” food into fast-food restaurant menus. Enjoy!

The French press has also extensively covered the decline in standards for the specialized high school courses that train future chefs. It used to be about learning how to simmer sauces; now the young apprentices become whizzes at reheating vacuum-packed dishes. The Observer reveals that British “food technology” classes are suffering the same fate:

“Sensibly, the vocabulary of British food education used to centre on words like sieve, scales, wooden spoon and oven gloves. Now the language that a pupil should master to ensure exam success contains a whole new lexicon of ‘key words’ such as prototype, mouthfeel, sensory profiling, test kitchen, accelerated freeze drying, conveyor belt, unit cost, designated tolerance, dextrinisation and non-enzymatic browning,” writes Joanna Blythman.

Students having taken these classes will probably become “best-before date” watchers, like the majority of Canadians, as explained in the Toronto Star. North Americans seem particularly concerned with buying foods well before their pull date, even though some items retain their quality long after. This makes inventory management a continuing challenge for store managers.

If you shop at farmers markets, however, you may not be confronted with best-before dates. But it is important to use your fresh produce quickly, before it loses its nutritional qualities. So, what to do with it? David Hagedom of the Washington Post has cooked up a number of “Farmers Market Recipes.” Don’t miss the links about local farmers markets if you live in the DC area.

Finally, remember when baby food was all strange-smelling, off-color puréed veggies? Nowadays organic, gourmet baby food is a booming business, reports the New York Times. “For years baby food changed little. Now there has been a growth spurt of alternatives, from single-ingredient purées to complete toddler meals in designer packages,” explains Dana Bowen. The dishes she describes sound good even to me! Are Americans picking up on the French concept of educating childrens’ palates? Let’s hope so!

Also from Great Britain, Felicity Lawrence of The Guardian takes a sobering look at soya. Even if you don’t use soy as a replacement for meat or dairy products, it is present in 60% of all processed food – at least in Great Britain – and largely considered healthy. But some evidence links it to disease and toxicity. Reread Kayenne So’s post on the subject and let the debate begin!

Eating local has also become a big issue in Great Britain and in the USA. Wednesday’s New York Times explains how local meats can now make their way more easily to Big Apple eateries rather than being processed for mass distribution.

Food in containers, food as containers? Smithsonian.com presents a new use for corn: PLA, or polylactic acid, a corn-based industrial resin which is already used for biodegradable packaging. The in-depth article explains the substance’s advantages and drawbacks. Thanks to GnG’s Derrick Schneider for the link.

World domination may not be as easy as it seems. Wal-Mart has just announced the sale of its 85 stores in Germany. Melissa Eddy of the Associated Press says Germans “rejected some of Wal-Mart’s signature features, like stores outside of town centers, employees required to smile and heartily greet customers, or baggers at checkouts.”

Finally, don’t think Western nations have a monopoly on organic eating. The Times of India reports that India’s middle classes are jumping on the organic bandwagon.

Have a tasty week and comment to your heart’s content!