Ethical Gardening Contest!

Only people over 18 and a UK resident or eligible to win prizes in this contest.

Do you have an Ethical Garden?  Let the Observer Organic Allotment people know and maybe you can win a £500 gift voucher.

All environmental ideas recently published in gardening blogs from the UK and elsewhere eagerly considered!  For more ideas, have a look at the 20 big green ideas linked to in the post above.

Entries have to be submitted before March 9, 2009.

Avoiding Seeds from Monsanto

I’ve recently published some posts pointing out a very high percentage of garden seeds come from the ‘big six’ seed companies, and how it’s very important to buy your seeds from a trustworthy source or you won’t know where they come from.  Retailers that sell any seeds from large seed companies are almost always required to enter into very extensive marketing agreements.  These usually make it impossible to label the origin or F1/OP status of any seeds they sell.

You can be sure any company that sells seeds from Monsanto will be bound by such an agreement, as it’s a well publicized tactic of Monsanto to hire private investigators to track down and sue, or even just threaten to sue, farmers and others who Monsanto suspects are using their seeds in violation of these agreements.

Remember too this is the company that prevented the retail labelling of dairy products containing their rGBH hormone, and their GMO products.

Do you think Monsanto wants their garden seeds labelled for what they are?!

So how do you know what seed companies can be trusted to sell you seeds that don’t come from the agricultural giants?  In the case of Monsanto, most of their garden seeds in North America are sold through a subsidiary called Seminis.  The Seminis web page has a useful list of seed companies that retail their seeds:

http://us.seminis.com/products/hg_dealer.asp  (sorry no link, cut and paste into your browser)

As of the time of making this post the list included the following (with some very familiar names!):

Burpee, W Atlee
Warminster, PA 18974

Dege Garden Center
St Paul, MN 55119

E & R Seed Co.
Monroe, IN 46772

Earl May Seed
Shenandoah, IA 51603

Garden Trends
Rochester, NY 14624

Gardens Alive
Lawrenceberg, IN 47025

Germania Seed Co.
Chicago, IL 60631

Johnnys Selected Seeds
Winslow, ME 04901

J.W. Jung Seed Co.
Randolph, WI 53956

Lindenberg Seeds
Brandon, Manitoba

Mountain Valley Seed
Salt Lake City, UT 84115

Nichols Garden Nursery
Albany, OR 97321

Park Seed
Greenwood, SC 29647

Rocky Mountain Seed Co.
Denver, CO 80229

T & T Seeds, Ltd.
Winnipeg, Manitoba

Tomato Growers Supply
Fort Myers, FL 33902

Willhite Seed Co.
Poolville, TX 76487

When you buy garden seeds, and you want to save and regrow them, it’s very important to buy them from somewhere that doesn’t sell any F1s at all, because otherwise they won’t be honestly labelled for what they are!

Likewise, if you want to buy garden seeds that don’t come from the large seed companies like Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, etc., it’s very important to buy your seeds from some place that doesn’t sell any seeds from these companies, because they won’t honestly label them for what they are!

Sustainable Seed Company

A new seed company will soon open it’s doors in Northern California, the Sustainable Seed Company.  Opening day is February 15th, but you can start placing orders now.  You might be thinking why a new seed company is such a big deal, but this one has a few interesting things going for it.

Some of you reading this will know some of the seed growers, in particular Sarah and Andrew also known as the Seed Ambassadors, who travelled through Europe recently collecting and sharing seeds.

Their philosophy is to try to source their seeds from as sustainable as possible places and to provide good information on how the seeds you buy were produced.  Of course all of their seeds are heirloom and/or open pollinated, so you can save and regrow your own seeds if you want.

One of the neat things about this seed company, is their offer for you to participate in their business:

Looking for new heirloom vegetable seed for our catalog is a passion for us. Do you have a vegetable seed that would like to see saved? Send that heirloom seed to us, with it’s complete story so that we can propagate it and share it with the world.

Products from small companies are always something to be treasured.  People who start new businesses are full of energy and motivation, and they really appreciate your patronage in order to get a good start in the world.  I think this seed company is going to be a valuable resource in the coming years, and I would really encourage anyone who is looking for garden seeds to browse through their online catalog and consider buying from them.

The Great British Food Fight

Free-Range Chickens

Since I’m pretty much vegetarian, an issue like free-range chickens doesn’t often get my attention.  Honestly, animal welfare is always in the back of my head somewhere, but not a top priority.  Free-range or no, there’s little chance of me eating a chicken, unless it was raised by a friend, but really I’m not very likely to eat chicken at all.

In fact, I should make clear to people reading this who don’t already know, the term ‘free-range’ has very little meaning when it comes to chickens.  Here in the Netherlands free-range is exactly the same as standard factory farm chickens except for half of the life of the chicken, it has to have the ability to walk outside if it wants to.  So free-range chickens have the benefit of a little door on the side of their factory farm enclosure, but the breed of chicken involved is not predisposed to wanting to go outside anyway.  Even if it did, the area outside is generally only large enough for a very small percentage of the birds, should a number of them choose to go outside all at once.  Not really a big improvement over standard chickens, and not a reason in my opinion to pay any extra for.

In fact, during bird flu outbreaks, all chickens here are required to be kept indoors, so the doors on these free-range farms have to be kept closed.  In order to protect the ‘investments’ of farmers who maintain free-range farms, these chickens are allowed to be labelled and sold as free-range chickens even though they are never allowed outside!

Bird Flu

I’ve posted before a couple of times about bird flu, in 2007 and 2008.  The most important thing to understand about bird flu is the public is being lied to and given a distorted picture of the situation.

We are all told that wild migrating birds and privately held small outdoor flocks of chickens and other fowl are to blame for the bird flu problem, as they are what causes the spread of bird flu.  These outdoor birds are quickly targeted during bird flu outbreaks, as a means to contain the situation.  Especially in developing countries, small farmers and families trying to support themselves often pay a heavy price as their flocks are destroyed without any compensation paid.

The truth of the matter is large factory chicken farms are very unsanitary, and breeding grounds for diseases like bird flu.  Not only has nearly every outbreak of bird flu been tied to a particular factory farm, but once an outbreak occurs the logistics of managing it are mind boggling.  Bird flu spreads very quickly, and factory farms can have in excess of 100,000 chickens.  Once a farm becomes infected, these birds have to be killed and destroyed in order to prevent further spreading to animals and people.  Killing this many birds so quickly is a huge undertaking, and is very dangerous for the workers involved.  This generally involves burning the birds, which can have a big impact on nearby air quality.  In all it’s a dangerous, tragic and wasteful situation that no one wants.

The Food Fight

As we come up on bird flu season again this year, there’s a really interesting battle taking place in the UK.  Hugh Fearnley–Whittingstall, himself a celebrity chef and chicken raiser, has teamed up with other celebrity chefs in the UK to try to get the worst factory farm chickens out of the supermarkets.  He is proposing the minimum standard for supermarket chickens should be that set by the British RSPCA.  Hugh himself admits he would not eat chickens raised to the RSPCA standard, and it’s only a little better than standard factory farm chickens, but besides quality the cost difference to the consumer is not great and farmers are better paid for this type of bird.  The RSPCA standard is undeniably an improvement, and an important place to start.

Last year Hugh was successful in getting most of the large UK supermarkets to stop carrying the worst of the factory farm chickens, with one important exception.  The largest UK supermarket chain Tesco continues to offer their so-called Value line of chickens.

Tesco’s position is basically they feel many of their customers want inexpensive chickens, and so are serving their customers wishes.  Hugh has pointed out a number of problems with this argument, for example when their stores offer alternative products they are often sold out, Tesco’s marketing of the chickens includes things like a picture of a farmer standing outdoors and the company has a policy statement on animal welfare that is inconsistent with the way their Value line of chickens is raised.  How can consumers express their preference for the type of chicken they buy when there are no alternatives and there isn’t accurate information available?

For more than a year now Hugh has been trying to arrange various meetings and on camera interviews with people at Tesco, but this has met with very limited success.  Finally he used a technique apparently borrowed from Michael Moore, someone I greatly admire, and Hugh purchased 1 share of Tesco stock.  This gave Hugh access to the shareholders meeting.

Further, after obtaining the signatures of 100 other shareholders, he was able to oblige Tesco to hold a special vote on a proposal of Hugh’s.  Hugh proposed Tesco should either stop selling their Value line of chickens, or change their animal welfare statement to accurately reflect how these chickens are raised.

Tesco put a couple of last minute obstacles in his way.  They said he would both have to get a 75% yes vote for the measure to pass, and he would have to pay the equivalent to about US$100,000 for the cost of mailing the voting materials to the shareholders.  Tesco gave Hugh two days to raise the money.  While Hugh could have paid for part of the costs himself, he launched an Internet appeal and raised all the money from personal donations.

Hugh lost the vote, getting roughly 10% saying yes.  Since a further 10% abstained, this left 20% of shareholders refusing to back the position of the company.  This was a large enough figure that Hugh finally got Tesco’s attention, and the meeting he’s been trying to arrange for more than a year now has been scheduled.  Tesco is finally willing to talk to Hugh!

To sign up as a supporter and/or view some the of the past episodes online, have a look at Hugh’s Chicken Out website.

Even if you aren’t interested in UK chickens, this whole debacle offers fascinating insight into the unsavory business practices of food giants like Tesco, and is really an excellent example of the true price of cheap supermarket foods.  Every country has their own Tesco, in the US Walmart could be compared to them.  Understanding how these retail giants work is important for everyone.

If you live in the UK, think twice about shopping at Tesco!