Blogs

Infant formula is the only processed food which humans are encouraged to consume, several times a day during a critical period of growth and development. It’s time to start thinking outside of the bottle, says Pat Thomas A new report out this week has highlighted how far we have failed to come in the last […]

Ben & Jerry’s announcement that it is to launch an organic ice cream line in 2018 is basically a ‘spoiler’ timed to deflect attention away from the fact that many of its products have been found to contain traces of the herbicide glyphosate, writes Pat Thomas The announcement that Ben & Jerry’s will be bringing […]

World events are conspiring to make the unthinkable thinkable. Genetically modified foods (GMOs) are coming to the UK. Quietly but determinedly the UK government is pushing forward with its plans to open up the UK’s farms, fields and kitchens to GM technology. The recent approval of a new open air trial for genetically modified wheat in the […]

On November 18th we – Joanna Blythman, Lynda Brown, Pat Thomas and Andrew Whitley – resigned as trustees of the Soil Association We expect fellow members of the Soil Association will wonder why. In a democratic organisation they certainly have a right to be told without delay. Below is an edited version of our resignation […]

We do a lot of ugly things in the name of beauty. Those nips, tucks and injections sit at the extreme end of things. But even in everyday beauty products you’ll find a range of chemicals that belong on the factory floor and not on your face. Unless, of course, you choose organic . Although […]

News of the measles outbreak in Wales in the UK has sparked yet another heated conversation about vaccination. On the one hand, officialdom claims that Andrew Wakefield’s work linking MMR with autism is completely discredited by the medical profession and in the media; on the other it claims that the work, first published in 1998, […]

“We’re busy doing nothing, working the whole day through, trying to find lots of things not to do…” Imagine that chorus being sung by an admixture of government ministers, supermarket supremos, catering conglomerates and meat-packers and you have the essence of the official response to the the horsegate scandal. Today it emerges that the Government […]

A personal reflection on the Ecologist/Resurgence ‘merger’ – and the end of an era

The annual Soil Association conference set a blistering pace this morning with an opening shot across the bow of its own occasionally enclosed world view. Chief Executive Helen Browning, in her opening remarks, said the Association needed to aim high in order to face the future. Visionary economist and Director of the economic think tank […]

In her talk his morning Ann Petifor talked a great deal about how we define ourselves. If we define ourselves simply as consumers is it any wonder that we have a food system that is based on consumption – of land, of chemicals of resources, and of money that could be invested in change? She […]