Organic Farming

What's the difference between organic and free range?

Organic will always mean that the animals have been able to free range, but organic also means a lot more. With free range products, there are no limits on the amount of birds that can be kept in a house. You can have tens of thousands of birds in a house,and as long as there are some pop-holes for the birds to go outside, they can technically be deemed as free range. The term "pecking order" comes from chickens, whereby some hens will go out the entrance to the pop-holes to the free range area, and won't allow other birds to go outside. Chickens originally were jungle fowl so they're used to being and living in the jungle. As such, they're quite timid birds, and unless there is tree cover and shelter for them outside in the 'free range' area, they don't really like the outside as their natural instinct tells them that a great, big vulture might come in and sweep them up. They need to be coaxed outside. Organic standards would mean we encourage birds outside by planting the range and making sure there's troughs out there, etc. Unlike organic, there's nothing to ensure that happens under free range standards. When birds are kept in huge numbers, as can happen with free range, they start displaying strange behaviour; they can start pecking at each other, feather-pecking. A way to get around that under free range standards is just clip their beak. Free range farmers trim their beaks so they're not able to do that and there are animal welfare implications of that. Free range, unlike organic, also means that when you're keeping birds in huge numbers together, they're quite stressed out and their immune systems are lower, so they're much more susceptible to diseases. As an insurance policy, the farmer would give the birds low doses of antibiotics to ensure that they don't get ill, and there are some real concerns about antibiotic resistance in human health. For example, we've got the MRSA bug and hospital bugs that we have no antibiotics for, and links are being made with the amount of antibiotics that are being consumed by farm animals as we are consuming the produce of these farm animals. Under organic standards, routine antibiotics are not allowed. There is also a lot of GM feed coming into this country. Although no GM crops are being grown commercially at the moment, the GM is coming in through the back door in animal feed, allowed under free range regulations. Organic standards, however, ban the use of GM feed.

Are animals raised to organic standards slaughtered in the same way as other animals?

Organic animals are slaughtered in the same way as non-organic animals but we ensure that the animal must be stunned before it's killed. The other main thing is that the animal must not be able to see other animals being killed. So, there are two extra things that we've definitely got to have.

Could organic farming solve the world's food problems?

The world's food problem is not that there isn't enough food. The problem lies within the distribution of the food. Arguably, you could say there are food problems in this country with obesity, but generally, food problems occur where there isn't enough food, typically in poorer countries and developing countries. It is much more sustainable to have farmers using nature and organic food as a way of building fertility and controlling pests, than getting them dependent on pesitcides and other chemicals. What happened in India, during the green revolution, was that chemical companies marketed their products to these poor, poverty stricken farmers, promising them increased yeild. Actually, the result was a food problem: they then got locked into this cycle of dependence on chemicals and they couldn't afford to buy them. They couldn't afford to feed their families and send their children to school. It is a much more sustainable way of farming to use organic farming and natural methods. Certainly, what's happening in Ethiopia - the poster boy of poverty and famine - is that the agriculture minister is encouraging the farmers to use organic methods because they see that as most important, surefire way to feed their population.

Can you still get BSE from organic beef?

We've never, never had a case of BSE in an organically raised and reared animal. That's because way before there was even a hint of BSE, our organic standards banned the feeding of animal ruminants to cows. It just wouldn't happen in nature, so it was banned in organic farming way before BSE even raised it's head.

In what ways does organic farming improve animal welfare?

Organic standards aim to allow animals to express their natural behaviour and maintain a high standard of animal welfare. Anything that they would usually be able to do in the wild, organic farming tries to allow. They must be able to free range. They're kept in small numbers, small flocks and small herds. Animals are not routinely fed antibiotics on organic farms because we're all about preventing disease rather than curing it. We maintain animal welfare by making sure the pasture has to be rested for a certain amount of time to prevent parasites don't actually build up in the soil. Non-organic farmers don't have to do that because they rely on antibiotics to kill any diseases in animals, but in organic farming, pasture has to be rested. We don't allow any sort of mutilation, including beak trimming to prevent feather pecking, which can be a result of stress. We try to address the effects of stress in organic farming rather than addressing the causes of stress. Ringing of pigs is not allowed. They do that to prevent them from digging up their land, but that's what pigs do. They love to do that, so we allow that to happen on organic farms.