Transition Island Blog

The Soil Association’s definitive annual Organic Market Report in 2007 showed continued strong growth and increasing public support for organic food, drink, textiles and health and beauty products.

beyond food

Organic textiles and the booming organic health and beauty sector are experiencing particularly strong growth. In 2006, they had already increased by 30 per cent in the number licensed with the Soil Association.

beyond supermarkets

Retail sales of organic products through organic box and mail order schemes and other direct routes increased from £95 million in 2005 to £146 million in 2006 - a staggering 53 per cent growth, more than double that experienced by the major supermarkets.

One reason may be that organic farmers are three times as likely to market their products locally or directly as non-organic farmers in the UK. People like local. People buy from people they like. Local growers are easier to like than supermarkets, even though many of us are gripped by the habit of the once-weekly supermarket-dash.

organic fakes?

But we’ve heard a rumour that not all supermarket food labelled ‘organic’ actually comes from organic sources. It has been said that while the room that does the packaging may be certified organic, the food can come from anywhere. And because the ‘assembly room’ is organic, the packaged food can legally be labelled ‘organic’.

Can this be true?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Eco-News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.