In August 2006, German chemicals company BASF applied to start GM potato field trials
in Cambridge and Derbyshire as early as next spring. The GM industry is making many
claims about this product, but are these based on the truth? Andy Rees investigates
Is it worse than Mc Donalds? The BLT sandwich is an icon, the ultimate symbol of convenience culture. Tesco alone sells 5 million a year. This is what the £1.80 you pay for your BLT buys...
The exuberance of childhood celebrated in books such as Just William is now frowned upon as inappropriate behaviour, resulting in more and more children being prescribed behavioural drugs. Rachel Ragg investigates
By radically changing the way we acquire our food, the development of agriculture has condemned us to live worse than ever before. Not only that, agriculture has led to the first significant instances of large-scale war, inequality, poverty, crime, famine and human induced climate change and mass extinction.
By Clive W. Dennis (winner of the Ecologist/Coady International Institute 2006 Essay Competition)
‘OK then,’ I say to Fergus, with a challenge in my voice, ‘what about badger?’ ‘Badger?’ says Fergus, his eyes on the road as he drives me into the Kent countryside. ‘Many times. There’s no rhyme or reason to badger. Sometimes it tastes really gamey and uriney, even if it’s fresh. It can be excellent though.’ I look at him as he drives. He’s definitely serious.
Biodegradeable Waste (BDW), ‘plants and animals’, comprises an amazing 59 per cent of your household waste. Do you simply throw yours in the bin? If so you...
You do if… you live in an area where healthy food is either non-existent or too expensive. This is likely to be the case if your only ‘local’ food shopping option is a supermarket, and you have no good small independent local shops, farmers’ markets or box schemes serving your area.
As the supermarket doors glide open there they are – cosmetically perfect, irresistibly firm, brilliantly coloured fruit and vegetables. And yet, when you get them home, they taste of nothing. Is it the way you cooked them, or have you just selected badly? No, you’ve been conned.
The mainstream farming media dismiss biodynamics as a fad affordable only by the wealthy – so why are big arable farmers sowing seeds under full moons?
Wander down the meat aisle of any supermarket and you will find mountains of chicken being sold at unbelievably cheap prices. The real reasons for this cannot be found on the label.
We were being given 20 to 21 pence a kilo, they were selling them in the stores at twice that, and we needed 32 pence to break even. The prices would change by the day, and then they’d take 60 to 90 days to pay you.
At Slow Food’s international fair in Turin last year, organic delicacies included Irish wild salmon and moon-like rounds of Somerset cheddar made to a 13th century recipe. But the star of the show was a cheese brought over illegally by shepherds from Poland’s Tatra Mountains. Hilary Davies reports
As the people of Argentina are driven by economic collapse to the point of starvation, a new solution is being imposed upon them. Ben Backwell reports on a country being force fed genetically modified soya designed not for humans, but for cattle
