hi all

i ate a restaurant in the northern suburbs back in december and was disappointed to hear that their linefish was unsustainable. see my email to them, below. i won’t mention the name of the restaurant – yet. let’s first see what kind of response i get. and i encourage all of you to start doing the same. i bet many restaurants aren’t even aware that they could be making more responsible choices. they can even consider using this as a marketing gimmick… having a sign outside saying they only stock SASSI Green Fish or something (just checked SASSI website and restaurants CAN become SASSI champions, there’s a whole organised thing around it). let’s hope.

Dear Sir/Madam

I ate at your restaurant on 13 December 2008. I realise it has been a while since then, but I do not think that the time that has passed diminishes the importance of what I want to say.

I was very interested in having the linefish for dinner that night. Our waitress informed us that it was Cape Salmon. I then sms’ed SASSI (the South African Sustainable Seafood Initiative run by WWF) to see if this fish is acceptable to consume in terms of the populations remaining in our seas. SASSI classifies fish according to RED (don’t ever consume), ORANGE (perhaps acceptable to consume occasionally) or GREEN (okay to consume).

SASSI sms’ed me back instantly with the following message “Cape Salmon (Geelbek). Status: ORANGE. Important and over-exploited commercial linefish stocks in desperate need of recovery.” I changed my order based on this information. I wanted to speak to the manager about it, but was at a celebration dinner with acquaintances and did not want to make a big deal at the time.

However, I really wish to encourage you not to stock fish at your restaurant which are in ORANGE or RED categories on the SASSI list. If more people and restaurants stop accepting overexploited or endangered fish, the fishermen/fishing companies will hopefully become more responsible in what they catch.

I’d like to hear your response to this and hope that perhaps you weren’t aware of the services of SASSI or the damage you are causing to our seas by purchasing such fish.

I hope that if I visit your restaurant again I will not be offered fish on the RED or ORANGE list.

Kind regards
Candice Kelly

ladies and gentlemen, THIS is the green magazine to buy!

i received my review copy yesterday and i am blown away. it’s awesome.

reasons why i love it:

• the articles are interesting and insightful and thought-provoking
• the layout is clean and professional and inviting
• great photos and illustrations

i particularly loved the article entitled ‘Eating Well’ by Roger King. it pretty much sums up the reasons why i write this blog and (although i don’t agree with all his points, but about 95% of them) he expresses them in a more eloquent way than i ever could. here is an excerpt:

How we eat does indeed raise moral issues because of the impact our choices have on relationships with people, animals and the environment, both near at hand and far afield… Eating well means opening our eyes to the vast network of effects created by our eating practices.

i also love Pia’s article on local markets, the article about eco-communities and the one on organic veggie gardening in containers.

this really is a wonderful magazine and i will definitely be a regular buyer. go get it everyone!

yay!

finally, Woolworths has reversed their earlier position (that it is against company policy to reveal the names of their ‘free range’ auditors). they have provided me with contact details for auditors of their ‘free range’ poultry, lamb and beef. (i am not going to post that info, but if you want it, fill in the contact form on my blog and i can email them to you. i promise to follow it up and post whatever info i get out of the auditors on the site. if you can think of any questions you’d like me to ask, put a comment on here or fill in the contact form)

here is the reply from Woolworths’ Commercial Manager of Meat, Seafood and Poultry:

All of your information is correct and I am willing to provide the contact details for our auditors so you can gain clarity and peace of mind.

It is important to complete the Free range(FR) story as it goes wider than Poultry and includes Beef and Lamb. These two specie also have no FR protocols governing the requirements for production.

Woolworths has led the industry in developing FR production specifications aligned to the British and European standard. SAPA has used the Woollies specification as a guideline for their proposals to Government.

We have received many accolades for the progressive stance we have taken regarding FR and this year have been awarded a Golden Egg award by CIWF ( Compassion in World Farming) for our progressive stance in selling only Free Range Eggs.

Most recently we have also embarked on journey to protect the indiscriminate killing of problem predators in sheep farming and have worked with the Landmark Foundation in both sponsorship and in developing farmer guidelines – www.landmarkfoundation.org.za.

As you can see we are very proud of our record of doing business ethically and transparently.

In all instances we use independent auditors, both in SA and Namibia, from where we procure FR beef.

Please feel free to contact me should you require more information.

nice one Woolworths. thanks for getting back to me and other consumers via this blog.

questions for the independent auditors (feel free to contact me with any others you may have)

1. what standards do you use? i.e. what stds have to be met to qualify as ‘free range’?
2. who sets these standards? (you, WW, an international body)
3. how often do you ‘audit’ farms?
4. what happens if producers are not meeting standards?
5. how ‘independent’ are you? i mean, if there are no laws regarding ‘free range’, if a producer isn’t meeting stds, and you tell WW, and WW still puts ‘free range’ on the product, what do you do? would you raise this with someone? who?

(p.s. if any of you haven’t heard of Compassion in World Farming, please go and check out the SA website or the international one. they do great work, was planning a blog post about them sometime in the future)

hi all

good news, i got a message via my blog this morning from the manager of Woolworths’ Poultry Department! he says he wants to contact me and “resolve any concerns”. so i sent him this email:

Thank you for responding on my blog. As you no doubt have seen by now, I have a few questions about your ‘free range’ products (although this is not just restricted to poultry).

My concern is that, because the term ‘free range’ is not legislated in South Africa (or so I believe, please correct me if I am wrong), producers and retailers may use the term as they wish, with no fear of any penalty if they do. (I have been in contact with the SA Poultry Association who has sent me the draft regulations for ‘free range’ which are apparently about to be promulgated in parliament. I have not posted this information on my blog yet, because I am waiting for SAPA to get back to me on some points). Woolworths has a little logo on its free range products, claiming they are ‘audited by independent auditors’. I wanted to find out who these auditors were.

In my correspondence with Woolworths’ customer care, they informed me that it is company policy not to divulge the details of Woolworths’ free range auditors. I find this a little strange. I would like to meet with the auditors to find out about their process, what standards must be met and what the implications are if producers or retailers don’t comply with standards.

I am sure you understand my concern as an environmentalist and consumer. If a company makes a claim on a product, it should be verifiable and transparent.

I look forward to your response to clear up the confusion on this matter. I will be posting your response on my blog for the readers who have also expressed interest in this. If you can forward my email to a colleague of yours who perhaps deals with Woolworths’ other ‘free range’ products (e.g. lamb), please do so.

although it has taken a LOT of persistence on my part to get past the Customer Care dept to someone who can really answer these questions, at last it seems all will be revealed! thanks to the readers who commented on the last post. i think it helps to get a response from producers!

hi all

if you have been following what I have come to refer to as The Woolworths Saga over the last few months, you will know that i have been trying (albeit in vain) to find out from WW who their “independent auditors” are who allegedly audit all their “free range” products. there is no certification process required in SA at the moment if a retailer or producer wants to put “free range” on a product. (although apparently some laws may be about to be passed – i have been in contact with the SA Poultry Association – just waiting to hear back from them, they sent me some info on these proposed laws). the lack of certification requirement means that just about anyone can say something is “free range” and us consumers would be none the wiser…

if you buy something from WW which claims to be “free range”, you will see a little logo which says it has been certified as free range by “independent auditors”. i decided i wanted to speak to these auditors to find out more about free range etc. so i emailed WW to ask them…. and WW told me that they were “restricted by company policy not to divulge this information”.

alarm bell!!!

so i emailed them back and said this:

I am not satisified with the response that you are not allowed to give me the details of your Auditors. I cannot understand why Woolworths would want to do so – I can find the name of your financial auditors on your annual financial statements, so what reason is there for keeping the name of your free range auditors secret? If you can give me a reason which seems legitimate, maybe that will satisfy me, but at the moment this smacks of a lack of transparency. Are you telling me I must just ‘trust’ Woolworths – and believe that any kind of auditing actually occurs? If this were organic certification, I wouldn’t just believe Woolworths if they told me produce had been certified. The produce would have an organic certification number on it and I could actually check with the certification body themselves that the farm meets the organic standards.

today, i got this very unhelpful reply:

Thank you for your email. Please accept our sincere apologies for the delay on replying to you.

You are correct in saying that on organic certified products, you can check who certified the product, but as free range is not regulated in the same way as organic this does not apply.

Huh? That doesn’t answer my question, not even nearly! I am starting to get rather hacked off actually… so i sent them this reply mere moments ago:

I received your email of today, but it did not answer my question at all.

I said I wanted a legitimate reason why Woolworths won’t divulge the name of their “independent auditor” for their free range products. You replied:You are correct in saying that on organic certified products, you can check who certified the product, but as free range is not regulated in the same way as organic this does not apply.

I totally understand that free range is not regulated in the same way as organic products, and while Woolworths may not be under any LEGAL obligation to divulge this information to me, surely they have an ethical or at least a customer service obligation to do so? I pay good money for these products, and I feel I have a right to know exactly where they come from and who checks that they really are free range. I want to speak to these auditors to learn more about what they do. Surely that can’t be threatening to Woolworths in any way? Please respond and tell me who these auditors are. I am starting to find this a little annoying really.

so, what started out as me wanting to be an informed consumer has turned into a very interesting exercise. i hope others find this interesting too. and maybe agree with me that we as consumers have a right to question claims made about products and find out ALL the information we want to about how they were produced, where they come from, who checks that they meet certain standards etc?

am i a lone voice in the wilderness? i doubt it.

hi all

my review copy of the first edition of Simply Green magazine arrived in the post today. yippee!

i promise to review it soon. i have, however, flipped through it and these are my initial impressions:

• a very awesome and esteemed group of advisors and contributors (some of the top in their fields in SA on sustainable development, organics, packaging, climate change etc)
• i don’t like the layout or design at all! it just doesn’t seem professional enough for a magazine which is charging R29.95. the paper is nice, the photos are good… but the layout, fonts etc just look amateurish to me. kinda disappointing really. i have friends who could do a better job than this.
• one thing i read in the editorial which impressed me is that Simply Green doesn’t accept paid-for advertorials. this is good. it shows integrity. i like that.
• the range of articles looks pretty interesting. nothing mind-blowingly new for me. but i spose i have been immersed in all these issues while studying sustainable development over the last two years. am sure the average south african will find all of it exciting and a lot of it new. i noted about three pieces i wanted to read.

all in all, a good first attempt. and it’s good for SA to finally have a dedicated green magazine. now let’s wait for Shared Earth and see which is the best! will be good that the two of them have some competition from each other, will hopefully push them both a little harder.

hi guys

just to keep you updated – i am including here my emails sent moments ago to woolworths and the sa poultry association (who woolworths suggested i contact). this is all so interesting, am loving delving a little deeper into the claims producers/retailers are making…

to the SA Poultry Association:

I am writing to find out more information about free range standards and laws in South Africa as they relate to chickens and egg production.

I would appreciate if you could assist me with the following:
- what laws are in place which govern ‘free range’ in South Africa?
- can any chicken or egg producer put the label ‘free range’ on their products – or do they need to meet certain certification standards in order to do so?
- are there penalties if producers use the term ‘free range’ when they are not?
- what is the SA Poultry Association’s view on ‘free range’?

I write a blog which you can access at http://aspirantlocavore.wordpress.com. My aim is to find out all I can about more ethical food choices and to question producers about claims they make on their food products. I thought perhaps you, as the industry body, could help me to find out more about ‘free range’ chickens and eggs in SA. I want to know when I can trust a product that claims to be ‘free range’.

to Woolworths (in response to their email which you can see in my last post):

Thank you for replying.

However, I am not satisified with the response that you are not allowed to give me the details of your Auditors. I cannot understand why Woolworths would want to do so – I can find the name of your financial auditors on your annual financial statements, so what reason is there for keeping the name of your free range auditors secret? If you can give me a reason which seems legitimate, maybe that will satisfy me, but at the moment this smacks of a lack of transparency. Are you telling me I must just ‘trust’ Woolworths – and believe that any kind of auditing actually occurs? If this were organic certification, I wouldn’t just believe Woolworths if they told me produce had been certified. The produce would have an organic certification number on it and I could actually check with the certification body themselves that the farm meets the organic standards.

Also, you neglected to address my other question from my email which relates to your response around ‘free range’ milk. I take your lack of response to indicate that Woolworths does not wish to comment on the legality of claims made by your largest dairy supplier, Fair Cape, that their milk is free range.

hi all, so in my quest to learn more about the claims that retailers make on their foods, i emailed woolworths a while ago (like way back at the beg of september). i wanted to know who their ‘independent auditors’ are who allegedly ‘audit’ their free range products…

it seemed like they were avoiding me… but i finally got this response today. it’s very interesting:

Thank you for your email. Please accept our sincere apologies for the delay in replying to you.

We have forwarded your query to our technical manager, who has informed me that we are restricted by company policy not to divulge the details of our Auditors. As the free range standards for poultry, meat and eggs is set and governed by the Department of Agriculture, you may talk to them about your requirements.  You may also contact the SAPA (SA poultry producers) on www.sapoultry.co.za.

If we can be of assistance to you in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us as follows, call us on 0860 022 002, email custserv@woolworths.co.za or contact us online www.woolworths.co.za.

Yours sincerely

NAIELA GABIER
Customer Care Consultant

hmmm, curious. why wouldn’t woolworths want to tell me who their auditors are??? i know they wouldn’t mind telling you who audits their financial statements, so why do they feel the need to protect their free range auditors? i am going to email them and ask them. what are they trying to protect/hide?

in the meantime, i will go snooping around the Dept of Agric and SA Poultry Association to see what I can uncover.

Note that Woolworths chose to IGNORE my question as to whether they regard Fair Cape’s claim that their milk is free range as illegal — given that Woolworths told me in their last email that it is illegal in SA to claim milk is free range… (and remembering that Fair Cape is Woolworths’ largest dairy supplier!)

Will nudge them as to their opinion on that…

some of you may remember that i got all keen back in august when we had that warm snap, and planted a whole lot of summer veg (see here and here).

well, i seem to have successfully killed them all!

only two lettuce plants and a tomato actually germinated and then they pegged. i am not going to beat myself up about it. how was i to know we were about to have one of the coldest, wettest Septembers in living memory?!

and i am trying again. when i was replanting them now, i noticed some of the beans had mould on.

i have replanted into the same toilet roll seed starters i was using before (see photo below). for those of you who missed the post, i have done this because it allows me to carefully monitor what grows and what doesn;t, and how much water i am giving them. but best of all, it allows me to plant the little seedlings straight into the pots/ground – no need for messy transplanting which risks damaging their little roots. the toilet roll disintergrates into the soil and the seed grows. well, this is the theory, still keen to see it work.

and this is what i have planted:

• tomatoes (which need at least 16 degrees to germinate)
• beans (which need 10 degrees)
• lettuce (which needs 18 degrees)
• onions (which need a temp over freezing)

i can’t quite understand why the lettuce was the most prolific germinator since it needs the highest temps to germinate, but am going to continue plodding forward until i get stuff to grow. i really want to produce my own veggies. let’s hold thumbs that the warmer weather holds!

so, i handed in a major draft of my thesis on Sat and had a bit of spare time to browse through The Whole Food Almanac. what a gorgeous little book! it’s written by Michelle Matthews (of the blog Cookie… Not Cheffy)

it’s got a gorgeous cover but inside there is no colour, but it’s very well laid out. it sounds like it’s the kind of book which is going to be updated and re-released periodically, although it doesn’t say how often. so if you’re a food grower, producer, processor or supplier and you were left out this time, you can email Michelle to make sure you get into the next one.

i must admit that this book is fairly similar to the Eat In magazines… in that it showcases small-scale producers and suppliers of good food. however, the Whole Food Almanac differs in that it is focussed around Cape Town and it has a much stronger green/ethical focus than the Eat In magazines do.

the book lays out four criteria that were used to include producers/suppliers:

• focussed on food produced within 2 hour drive from Cape Town
• free range, organic or biologically farmed
• where raw materials come from further afield, processing should occur in and around Cape Town (e.g.flour from upcountry made into delicious artisanal bread in CT)
• fair labour practices, biodiversity and ‘all the rest’***

i think these are great criteria, which pretty much reflect the ideas behind this blog.

*** = i have been getting rather annoyed lately by a general ‘laidback’ attitude to green issues. have been coming across a number of blogs and magazines which have some kind of token green writer or issue which talks about doing green stuff in this way that bugs me. i don’t quite know how to express it now. will have to devote a blog post to it sometime when i have figured out how to articulate what it is that bugs me about it. anyway, using the term ‘all the rest’ to refer to some very hardcore social and environmental issues bugs me a LOT. but i guess the general public might still think that being ‘green’ is a nice hobby or something cute, so i guess writers like Michelle need to write for them… (so this is not a dig at you Michelle, just the world in general i spose

anyway, back to the book review… what i really like is that this book really focuses on the producers. there are great interviews with many very ethical and local producers, and even more important, since many of these guys do not have their own brand as such, there is info on where to find their stuff…

another bit of the book which i thought was great was Michelle’s super looking recipes on how to use up a glut of a particular fruit or vegetable which may dominate your organic box scheme for a few weeks. very useful and totally yummy looking. wasting food bugs me more than anything in the world, so i really thought this was a great idea.

i also really like the ’side panels’… there are little snippets of info here which are SO great. a lovely 7 point guide for how to eat more ethically and healthily, little interviews with famous South African foodies, wonderful recipe books to look at for seasonal eating recipes…

while i would say that in the entire book, only about 10% of what i read was new to me, i think this book will BLOW the MINDS of many people out there (people who don’t work in sustainable agriculture and stress about food everyday). if i had found this book a year ago, it would have been like opening a treasure chest.

it has just the right blend of being really informative about some of the horrors of conventional food production, interesting tidbits of info, lots of great stuff about producers, markets, farmers etc etc. really. it’s got the blend just right. well done Michelle!