Three leading supermarket chains were accused of importing cheap organic meat and salads produced to a lower standards than required in Britain to satisfy their organic quotas.
The policies of Tesco, Asda, Morrison-Safeway are damaging British farmers, by offering consumers meat produced at welfare standards and polluting the environment by creating extra food miles, the Soil Association claimed.
Helen Browning, Food and Farming director, says: “We really need to get long-term commitment from supermarkets to buy products grown in the UK.”
Figures from the association show that the organic sector is booming with the weekly vegetable box emerging as the biggest growth market.
In just one-year sales from these box schemes and direct mail order from farms has grown 51.7 per cent.
But the association was concerned at the “worrying and unnecessary” one per cent increase in imports. The key factor, it said, was a switch from British-produced organic pork and beef by some supermarkets.
Many consumers are bypassing supermarkets for the first time and are sourcing their own food from farms.
This trend has helped drive up the value of the whole UK organic food sector to £1.2 billion, an overall increase of 11 per cent, the equivalent of an extra £2.3 million a week.
Supermarkets still sold the most organic food a year, but their share of the overall market fell from 81 per cent to 75 per cent.
Helen Browning, the association’s food and farming spokesman identifies Tesco as the main offender. It sources only 52 per cent of its organic beef from the UK and the rest came from South America, mainly Argentina. Tesco also imported about half of its organic pork.
Asda sourced 20 per cent of its organic pork from British farmers, while Morrison-Safeway managed 18 per cent.
Most of the imported pork comes from Germany and Denmark, whose pork industry now has a major stake in Britain’s supply chain.
Sainsbury’s and Waitrose on the other get all their organic pork and beef from Britain.
The main increase in sales was in non-supermarket forms of retailing, with more buyers of organic food doing their shopping locally.
Growers-turned-entrepreneurs such as Guy Watson, who runs River ford Organic Farm in Devon, are now benefiting from this shift in behaviour. He said: “We now have a lot of young families on our books who are not high earners and a growing number of empty nesters.”
A typical vegetable box may include potatoes, carrots, red onions, leeks, brussel sprouts, Swiss chard, red cabbage, mushrooms, spinach, cauliflower, carnival squash, aubergines and cherry tomatoes.
Box prices vary from £7 to £12.50 and some will include fresh herbs and less familiar vegetables such as celeriac and Jerusalem artichokes. The value of box schemes and mail order sales is now £78.1 million, compared with £51.5 million a year ago.
Patrick Holden, the director of the Soil Association, said: “This report shows the popularity of organic food is growing steadily and the organic market has a bright future.”
However the figures showed, that the Government plans to help reduce the amount of imported organic food were not being taken seriously enough by retailers.
A spokesman for Tesco said: “We are committed to sourcing organic meat in the UK wherever possible. However, to assure availability we do at times source from outside the UK. , Whenever we do we insist on equivalent standards.”
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