I arrived at Guelph Friday night, what a drive, i was delayed in Madoc and therefore hit traffic at 4 pm going over Toronto. None the less i arrived at my friends house by 6 pm. We went out to diner to the Fat Duck where an organic menu was offered in support of the the Organic Conference being held. this is the first time that 7 restaurants in the city are working with local meat and veggy suppliers`and teh conference committe. After the meal a ballot was filled out on what we thought of the meal and that is submitted to the conference commmitee to review. Also, there was a coloring contest for kids under 12. the kids had to answer the question similar to"What does local food mean to you?" Not a hard question for my 11 year old to answer! local means support to farmers! there are monetary prizes for the best submission.
I did not atttend any workshops at the conference this year. I was helping out with our coop both, the
Quinte Organic Farmers Coop. On Saturday, Ken, Lorrain and Aric manned the booth. On Sunday Ken and Idid. We talked a lot about ourselves and how we support each other within the coop. One topic that came up a lot was the lack of Provincial governement support in enforcing the language use of òrganic` in labelling. In Ontario, anyone can use the word organic and not necessarily be Certified. this is worrisome since then anyone can claim organic farming methods but Don`t have third party inspection to prove it.
Of course there were lots of discussion about global food policies, distribution and environment issues. A book called `
let them eat junk` How capitalism create hunger and obesity written by Robert Albritton was offered for sale at our table. there are still some left if anyone wants a copy.
The trade show was amazing with many businesses promoting organic products. Mapleton organic ice cream was to die for! A new product I noticed was a organic bouillon stock in the dried form, vegetable, beef and chicken and other variation of flavours was on offer. Ilike to use these products when i don`thave time to make my own stock, it`s nice to see something that isn`t laoded with artificail flavours, MSG and salt!
On Saturday I took the opportunity to visite St Jacobs farmers market. I was disappointed. there was nothing that i could see that is Organic. Lots of hormone, antibiotic free and `naturally`raised meats! Again for those products there are no third party inspection and one could say anything about the meats. The mennonites had a table of veggies obviously for the toronto food terminal, no one grows asparagus in the winter! there were some homemade baking, pickles, pasta and prepared foods. Idid also see some `real`crafts, but not much, a lot of cheap imported junk, the same you can find in many dollar stores! It was an experience, i would like to go in the summer and see what there is in local produce ect. I suppose its an income for these vendors and they`ll do what they need to.
