Organic and Green? It’s our bling.
Residents of Tunbridge Wells are usually acutely aware of their ‘disgusted of’ reputation. We live each day as a national joke (yes, I speak...
A price to pay
Organic retail sales in the UK are on the move again and growth, though modest, are outpacing conventional sales. But organic’s share of total...
Could your store do with a spot of re-cluttering?
Two or three years ago (just like their UK counterparts) America's biggest retailers started slimming down their inventories and clearing aisles for a cleaner,...
These GM protests were 10,000 years in the making
I'm not sure when the phrase 'reconnecting people with their food' was first coined (it began cropping up in the media around the time...
Anti-organic, moi?
I felt almost nostalgic seeing John Krebs having a go at organic on last week’s IQ2US debate in New York (see story). It was...
Signed, sealed and jiggered?
In her opening speech at last week’s Biofach exhibition and Congress, IFOAM president Katherine DiMatteo commented that organic’s future success lay “not with standards...
Regulatory threats … and opportunities
“Next week”, announced the dulcet-toned Charlotte Green, “Radio 4 will broadcast the first in a two part-series in which Lord Gus O'Donnell makes a...
Environmentally challenged
I wonder if George Osborne might come to regret the slightly self-satisfied way he told the House of Commons last week "we are not...
A precautionary tale
Environmental campaigners have for decades argued in favour of the ‘precautionary principle’. When the possible consequences of something are simply too serious to risk...
So, you think you’re normal?
Deprived of the low-hanging fruit of medical research, the drugs industry now has to spend ever more vast sums of money to research and...
But is it art?
For many people in the natural healthcare field professor Edzard Ernst is sadly best known for his criticism of complementary medicine. So much so...
Sweet spot
Last week I visited the brand new £225 million Pembury Hospital, just outside Tunbridge Wells. It's a genuinely state of the art building, and...
We need to keep the GM debate alive and urgent
In 2002 the pro-GM Labour Government held a national debate to test public opinion on GM food. When the findings of the GM Nation?...
Why real change is best served up on a plate
At the back end of last year the former director of the Soil Association, Patrick Holden, undertook a coast to coast tour of the...