UK Energy Saving Comments on Air Freighted Organic Food

Air freighted organic food has been the cause of much discussion in recent weeks with environmental groups such as Greenpeace calling for produce flown into the UK to be stripped of its organic status.

[UKPRwire, Mon Jul 23 2007] Air freighted organic food has been the cause of much discussion in recent weeks with environmental groups such as Greenpeace calling for produce flown into the UK to be stripped of its organic status. This comes at a time of heightened awareness into the high levels of carbon emissions from aircraft and the Soil Association is currently conducting a consultation into this issue. UK Energy Saving has submitted their views to the consultation, and is of the opinion that, whilst the reduction of air freighting should be encouraged, whether or not produce has been flown into the UK should not be added to organic criteria.

One of the reasons that consumers are choosing organic food is due to environmental concerns about intensive farming methods. It therefore stands to reason that these same consumers may have concerns about whether the food on their table has travelled a large number of ‘food miles’ and how many of those have been in the air. For UK Energy Saving, however, this issue comes down to consumer choice, which is why they are supporting the suggestion of labelling all air freighted produce.

“Air freighting is clearly an area for concern,” comments Hayley Jones, Web Marketing Director for http://www.uk-energy-saving.com, “but this should not be a reason to strip produce of its organic status. Consumers are already making the choice about whether to eat organic food and labelling of all food would give them the further choice over whether to buy air freighted produce or not. If the choice is between non-organic or organic where both options have been air freighted, at least the buyer can make a fully informed decision”.

UK Energy Saving is a consumer website, http://www.uk-energy-saving.com, covering a wide range of topics including organic produce. For more information on the Soil Association consultation visit their website at http://www.soilassociation.org/airfreight.