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'Food miles' soared by 31% in a year, study reveals
Martin Hickman, The Independent
Almost a third more food was flown into Britain last year than in 2005, embarrassing the Government which has promised to slash the pollution and congestion from "food miles".

Air-freight rose 31 per cent in the year to 2006, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which published the figures on its website without a press notice yesterday, a day after the Soil Association decided not to implement a full ban on air-freighted food.

The importation of animal feed from Brazil and the US was blamed by Defra for the steep rise, which means that air miles have more than quadrupled - a rise of 379 per cent - since 1992.
(26 October 2007)

Soil Association fudges on air freighted food
Original: Food fights
Leader (editorial), The Guardian
The Soil Association is a small watchdog for a minuscule part of the food market - organic, which makes up under 2% of all groceries sales. And of that tiny sliver, air imports account for less than 1%. Yet this group's consultation on air-freighted food - the modest studying the minute - has been watched by big, important interests. Three Whitehall departments have been following it (and briefing journalists) as well as a number of other governments, UN agencies and major retailers. This would be a disproportionate fuss were it not for the widespread belief that the Soil Association's judgment could set the tone for food policy far further afield than the aisles marked organic.

Under all this scrutiny, after all that nail-biting, what did the organisation come up with yesterday? Fudge. Intelligent fudge, sincere fudge - but fudge all the same. In the future, the Soil Association will still give the seal of approval to air-freighted food as long as it is produced to Fairtrade standards. As compromises go, this is probably the least bad. But it is a compromise of standards nonetheless; it should simply have ruled air-freight out of bounds.
(25 October 2007)
John Vidal (Guardian) agrees: Air-freight fudge?.

Organic air-freight food to be stripped of status
Harry Wallop, The Telegraph (UK)
Three-quarters of the organic food flown in to Britain from overseas could be stripped of its valued status, as part of a plan to cut carbon emissions by eliminating air-freighted food from supermarket shelves.

Only those farmers or processors which can prove they meet stringent ethical standards would be allowed to keep their organic status, the Soil Association announced today.

The environmental charity's policy director Lord Melchett estimated that currently only about a quarter of all exporters of organic food met high enough ethical standards to keep their all-important organic label.

Farmers must start investing in local communities, allow their workers to form unions and fund education schemes by 2009 if they want to keep their status. "Some will find it impossible I suspect," he said.

Sweet potatoes and salad flown in from America would the most likely foods to be stripped of their organic status.
(24 October 2007)

Bee Specialist Eric Mussen Fingers Prime Suspects
in ‘BSI: The Case of the Disappearing Bees’
Kathy Keatley Garvey, University of California - Davis
DAVIS-Noted University of California, Davis honey bee specialist Eric Mussen fingered a line-up of prime suspects at his “BSI: The Case of the Disappearing Bees” public lecture, sponsored by the UC Davis Department of Entomology.

Mussen identified malnutrition, parasitic mites, infectious microbes and insecticide contamination as among the possible culprits. It’s a complex issue, he said, but one thing is certain: “It seems unlikely that we will find a specific, new and different reason for why bees are dying.”

Colony collapse disorder (CCD), a phenomenon where bees mysteriously abandon their hives, is not a new occurrence, said Mussen, the Extension Apiculturist at UC Davis since 1976.

“Similar phenomena have been observed since 1869,” he said. “It persisted in 1963, 1964 and 1965 and was called Spring Dwindling, Fall Collapse and Autumn Collapse. Then in 1975, it was called Disappearing Disease.”

“But the disease wasn’t what was disappearing,” Mussen quipped. “The bees were.”

Massive bee die-off also occurred during the winter of 2004-05, but only those who read bee journals knew about it, Mussen told the crowd in the campus Activities Recreation Center. The latest die-off caught the attention of the national media last fall when a Pennsylvania beekeeper asked researchers at Pennsylvania State University to look at samples of his dying bees in Pennsylvania and Florida. “The local media picked up the story and the rest is history, including yours truly on the Lehrer Hour.”

One-third of America's honey bees vanished this past year due to the mysterious CCD, characterized by almost total hive abandonment. Nearly all adult worker bees unexpectedly fly away from the hive, abandoning the stored honey, pollen, larvae and pupae. Usually they leave in less than a week, and only the queen and a few young workers remain, Mussen said.
(16 October 2007)