 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
Down on the farm Still confused and getting nowhere fast, we thought we ought to revisit the scene of Andy's incident. So we headed for British Field Products' 4,000 acre farm with the emblem of South London…the yellow "Witness Appeal" board. Unfortunately, British Field Products' considered corporate response was "get off my land".
What next? How to track down these beans? How many unlicensed pesticides are coming into the country on seeds? What's going on? Mark discovered that British Field Products sold their beans on to Christian Salveson for freezing and distribution. He phoned their Chief Executive. Apparently the whereabouts of the beans was "commercially confidential". Obviously the cut-throat world of frozen beans was going to be a tough nut to crack. The Tescos connection? We had got to hear that Tescos might buy British Field Products' frozen beans from Christian Salveson. Flicking through his copy of Retail Week, Mark noticed that Terry Leahy, Chief Executive of Tescos, was speaking at the magazine's annual conference. Catching the eye of Michael Buerk (moonlighting from the Beeb by chairing the conference) Mark asked Sir Terry about the pesticides loophole. The Tescos press machine took over; "we don't actually take that particular bean from British Field Products".
Syngenta There are more than 800 pesticides currently licensed within the European Community. We wanted to know how many of these are not licensed in Britain but are coming in on seeds as dressings. The government couldn't tell us so we thought we'd ask Syngenta, the company that imported the seeds that had contaminated Andy Lincoln. With the list of active substances drawn up on 8 four foot boards, we visited their offices.
They kindly agreed to fill in the boards but a week later they arrived back at Mark's office, still blank. Syngenta referred us to the Crop Protection Association, an industry body. Undeterred, we phoned the CPA; "how many of the 800 pesticides on the EC Review list could be coming into the country as dressings on seeds?".
So is it Organic? Wow. Some loophole. Armed with this information we asked Sainsburys and Tescos to confirm that no seeds treated with pesticides are grown to produce their organic food? Sainsburys replied (and Tesco basically said the same thing): "In certain circumstances where organic seeds are not available, farmers may receive a derogation to permit them to use non-organic seed under UKROFS regulations and EU legislation." So that's a no, then...
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
