by Mallen Baker
The UK's Soil Association has announced that it will remove its organic certification from any foods which have been transported by air freight except for those whose production meets Fairtrade requirements.The move has created huge controversy, and with justification.
The organisation had been considering a blanket ban on any air-freighted goods, but had also heard the pleas of some of those that pointed out the impact a blanket ban would have on developing countries, where organic produce is a significant component of processes for economic development.
Unfortunately, the move suffers a similar downside to a number of policy initiatives taken at speed in the face of outside pressure, which is the potential for serious unintended consequences. It is what happens when campaigns become focused on a symbol - such as air travel has become for the climate change campaigners - rather than the real issue, which in this case is the overall contribution to climate change emissions produced by the product in question.
New Zealand butter, for instance, sold all the way round the world in the UK, has less carbon emitted per kilogram of butter than English butter, even taking its shipment into account. How can this be so? Because New Zealand cows are able to eat grass, which grows all year round. In the UK they eat artificial feeds for part of the year, and are kept in heated accommodation.
There are plenty of other examples - this is not a one-off. Italian tomatoes are less carbon intensive than British tomatoes outside of a fairly short season, when the British tomatoes need to be in a heated greenhouse. Likewise, Kenyan flowers may be better than similar flowers grown in Holland, and so on.
The disappointment is that a good, rigorous certification symbol that covered how foods were grown, has now been rendered completely unrigorous by taking in outside factors in a poorly considered way. Just what is the organic certification now supposed to mean?
The aim, of course, is that it would become a single more all-encompassing green label, enabling consumers to establish that the produce they are purchasing has the best performance in terms of its environmental impact.
Many people who buy organic food, the argument goes, do so not just because of the health issues around pesticides on food, but because they care about the environmental impact. But the new criteria now fail to do that. Produce is not rated on its carbon emissions, but on an arbitrary measure of how it has been transported. People conscious of their health may find that food that has no pesticides will not carry the label.
People conscious of the environment may find that produce that may have had a higher environmental impact will carry the label. In one dramatic move, the label has been rendered all but useless for its original, and its claimed new, role.
In addition, the unintended consequences include real hardship for some of the poorest people in the world. A study by the Danish Institute of International Studies found that the poorest countries make up just under 80 percent of imported organic foods air-freighted into the UK. Many of these will not fulfil the technical requirements of Fairtrade certification, and so will have lost their selling power.
The depressing thing is that some of the other certification schemes around the world may now follow suit. The glimmer of hope is that the Soil Association will be holding further consultations during the coming year, with changes taking place in January 2009. That gives time for a change.
What should happen instead? First of all, we need to be clear what the different policy devices are for. Food labels have only one role which they can fulfil well, that is to give the consumer clear information on the basis that there is a choice. The current organic label fulfils that function well - it is about food grown naturally without pesticides.
Likewise, supermarkets such as Tesco and bodies such as the Carbon Trust have begun looking at how carbon labelling could be introduced onto products to give relevant and useful information about the real impact of products. Each of these should be supported as a means to helping identify impacts, and build capacity for alternatives. But they measure separate things, and they should be kept separate.
Ultimately, of course, there are certain consumption patterns that may become seen as non-valid choices. We are some way away from this yet, but as the consensus for reduced carbon impacts grows, it may be that legislation will be used to set standards for different products, in the way that the European Commission is doing on car emissions. Or certain products may even become banned, because the impact is too great. These are areas that need to be well considered, and well flagged in advance.
When governments around the world agreed that chlorofluorocarbons were such potent destroyers of the ozone layer that they would all sign up to the Montreal Protocol phasing them out, companies were given notice that they had a few years to work on better alternatives. Such pressures, applied through a consensus of action, can spark innovation through necessity. Undoubtedly, such action will become a feature of the response to climate change as well.
What simply does not help, however, is knee-jerk action clutching at symbolic gestures. Confusing labels (information) with regulation (banning or restricting) on the basis of popular reactions to one single factor (air-freight) is as good an example of this as we have seen. The consumer is confused, developing world producers are denied, and the environment is not protected.
It is all very well to say, as the Soil Association has, that it is better for developing world farmers not to be encouraged to depend on markets that require air freight. There is nothing to stop anyone from working to achieve such aims, provided that this is done on a basis of rigorous analysis of the best and worst environmental options. But denying the organic label to properly produced organic food is not the tool to do it.
It is to be hoped that the Soil Association reconsiders its position during the coming months. Otherwise, someone will simply have to invent a new label that did what the old one did for those consumers who still need the information it provided. That will seem like a colossal waste of time and energy when there are more important battles to be won.
Ethical Corporation
