In This Issue:
Organic Farming
Plastic Sea
Bottled Water
GM Honesty
Humane Eggs

Organic Farming – more than just a nice idea

Organic agriculture holds real promise as a sustainable alternative to synthetic fertiliser and pesticide intensive farming. Two recent reports indicate that organic farming may offer even more than its adherents had hoped for.

Enough to feed a hungry world

The view propagated by certain sectors that organic agriculture cannot match the yields of conventional agriculture has been dispelled in a new study from the University of Michigan. Researchers found that “organic methods could produce enough food on a global per capita basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an even larger population, without increasing the agricultural land base”.

The authors also found that those yields could be accomplished using existing quantities of organic fertilisers derived from “leguminous cover crops”.

The paper concludes that “organic agriculture has the potential to contribute quite substantially to the global food supply, while reducing the detrimental environmental impacts of conventional agriculture”.

Create thousands of jobs

Closer to home, David Wolstenholme, MD of the non-profit Organic Freedom Project, believes organic farming holds enormous potential for job creation:

Talking to The Sunday Times, Wolstenholme said: “We have one million hectares of unused farm land in South Africa. Under organic production, that’s 10 jobs a hectare”.

In a country where demand for organic produce way outstrips local supply, and given global trends of increased demand for organic wine, fibres and plant-derived essential oils, South Africa has been slow to exploit the opportunities presented by organic farming.

A mass of plastic junk, weighing some three million tons and about the size of South Africa, is swirling in the North Pacific Ocean. Scientists refer to it as the “Eastern Garbage Patch” and it is a trail of plastic that goes on for hundreds of kilometres – testament to the billions of kilograms of plastic produced annually and to the fact that less than 5% of it is ever recycled.

“Except for the small amount that’s been incinerated – and it’s a very small amount – every bit of plastic ever made still exists.”

While historically the debris dumped into the oceans has biodegraded, the waste now trapped in the circular currents of the North Pacific has accumulated to astounding proportions. Rather than biodegrading, plastic disintegrates in the ocean into ever smaller pieces. These pieces eventually become individual molecules, but are still not easily digested.

Plastic ingested by animals results in the death of over 1 million sea birds, 100 000 marine animals and millions of fish in the North Pacific every year.

Read an article about Charles Moore, the man who discovered this "stew of plastic crap".

When researchers tested the ocean water they found that it contained six times as much plastic, by weight, than plankton. With these levels of plastic pollution entering the food chain, humans are by no means immune from its effects.

Some of the toxic plastic chemicals we are exposed to daily include:

• PFOAs – used in non-stick cookware
• PBDEs – a flame retardant used in fabrics and furniture
• Phthalates – chemicals used to make plastics more flexible
• BPA – used in the production of a wide range of consumer products, including sunglasses, CDs and water and food containers

The obesity epidemic in the West, reproductive disorders and a range of cancers can all be attributed to our immersion in petro-based plastics.

What to do?

Our petrol-driven civilisation must wean itself off plastics. We need to replace plastic packaging with glass or plant-based, biodegradable alternatives.

For now make reduce, re-use, recycle your mantra. Put pressure on retailers to use less packaging, especially PVC cling wrap that leaches toxins into your food. Send excess packaging back to manufacturers and retailers and put the disposal problem in their court. Become a no-plastic activist.

A life without plastic may seem inconvenient, but it’s a lot less inconvenient than a dead planet.

Tide turns against bottled water

Suddenly, going around clutching a bottle of branded water seems so nineties. Once the talisman of the trendy, bottled water is starting to be shunned by eco-minded consumers.

• Americans consumed about 31.4 billion litres of bottled water last year - about 98 litres per person. Bottled water is a $15 billion industry in the US.

• The two top US brands – Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coke’s Dasani - are nothing more than municipal tap water.

• Packaging and shipping water pushes up costs, consumes energy and contributes to global warming.

• Environmental-unfriendly plastic bottles do not biodegrade and contribute to overflowing landfills.

• In general, bottled water is no safer or healthier than municipal supplies in developed countries.(South Africa’s tap water is pretty good by world standards).

Conclusion: can the bottled water and get yourself a good water filter. Need to take it with you? Re-use a glass bottle with a screw-on cap. Now that’s really cool!

Thanks for your honesty, but no thanks!

Some Beacon chocolates now list their emulsifier, E322, as a ‘Genetically Modified’ ingredient.

E322 refers to partially hydrolysed lecithin, a compound that is commercially isolated mainly from soybeans and egg yolk. The lecithin acts as an emulsifier and stabiliser of water-oil/fat mixtures and is used to soften chocolate.

The soybeans are no doubt the source of the GMOs in the Beacon chocolate.

E numbers are codes for food additives and are usually found on food labels throughout the European Union.

At present there is no legislation in South Africa that compels food manufacturers to list GMOs in their ingredients. Disclosure is completely voluntary.

Beacon is to be commended for giving consumers a choice, but it would be best if they refrained from using genetically modified ingredients at all. Science has yet to demonstrate conclusively that these organisms are safe for human consumption in the long term.

For now it’s probably safer to stick with organic choccie as organic standards preclude the use of any GM ingredients.

For more on Genetically Modified Organisms, visit the Biowatch website. Biowatch South Africa is a NGO that monitors and researches issues of genetic modification.

How Humane are your Eggs?

An egg is an egg is an egg, right? Not really.

If you’ve ever visited an egg factory you’ll know that egg-laying hens don’t have much of a life. Birds are crammed five into a wire cage, each with a space equivalent to the size of an A4 paper. To prevent them from pecking each other out of frustration, chicks’ beaks are cut off with a hot blade before entering their battery existence.

The hens never see sunlight and are unable to fulfil their natural instincts to forage and take dust baths. After two years of intensive egg production, the hens are exhausted and ready for the slaughterhouse where they are turned into pet food or cheap meat.

Even if you don’t care much for our feathered friends, you may want to consider the dangers to yourself. Eggs laid by caged hens in factory farms may contain growth hormones that could increase the risk of breast and prostrate cancer. Antibiotics fed to chickens give rise to antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, including salmonella.

The World Health Organisation reports that the majority of the 40 new pathogens identified since 1967 can be sourced to animals, including the deadly strain of avian flu linked to farmed poultry and wild birds.

If you are not ready to forgo eggs in your diet, make sure you choose free-range eggs, organic if possible. Ideally you would want to investigate for yourself to see that your eggs are humanely sourced. ‘Free-range’ is a broad term and is open to abuse by unscrupulous producers.

If you want better eggs, look for happy hens. It’ll leave a better taste in your mouth.

To learn more about Compassion in World Farming, click here. To add your name to the Animals Matter To Me petition campaign, click here.