Why Organic Meat?
" We listened to our customers and their concerns about the quality and purity of the meat they purchase. Based on their requests and our belief in the future of sustainable organic farming we decided to supply as much organic produce as possible. We hope you will join us in supporting the organic movement and ‘taste the difference’. "

What's the difference between conventional and organic meat?
When you buy organic meat, you can be assured that:

• Animals are raised in non-intensive systems and on land managed organically.
• Animal welfare is paramount; this includes extended suckling of the young, to develop optimum health.
• Depending on the species, animals are fed a minimum of 70~90 per cent organic feed.
• Manures, sawdust, fillers, solvent-extracted compounds and genetically modified foods are banned from feedstuffs'.
• Routine drugs, antibiotics, growth-promoting agents, animal byproducts and all other additives are banned.
• Antibiotics are used as and when necessary to prevent suffering; if used, withdrawal times, before the animal can enter the food chain, are a minimum of two weeks and two or three times longer than in conventional systems.
• Mutilations are banned.
• The keeping of animals on slatted concrete floors, common practice for conventional pork and beef, is banned. Permanent tethering is banned.
• Artificial fertilisers and synthetic pesticides on feed crops, grass and elsewhere, including OP insecticides for warble-fly in cattle and for sheep-dipping, are banned.
• The feeding of animal matter to ruminants is banned.

Further reading:

"The Shopper's Guide to organic food" by Lynda Brown, Forth Estate Ltd 1998

Norfolk, Eastern Daily Press, March/April 1999