Finns show little stomach for organically-reared meat

Processing firms grind some of the organic meat into normal sausages and mince

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By Tapio Mainio
     
      Pigs raised for the table and their smaller brothers and sisters stretch their legs in an outdoor yard at the organic farm in Sievi owned by Tarmo Leppälä. The pigs eat barley, oats, and wheat from the farm's own fields. The fields have not been treated with artificial fertiliser or any pesticides. And as for GM fodder, well, you shouldn't even need to ask.
      But things are not quite as pastorally blissful as they might look.
     
"There have been times when I nearly threw my hands up and quit. Marketing organic meat is a laborious business. Last year was particularly tough", sighs 53-year-old Leppälä.
      "Hopefully all this fuss about genetically-modified crops and animal feed will bring about a change so that people start to think a bit about what they put into their mouths", he goes on.
      Leppälä has raised pigs here since 1980. In 1995 he decided to switch over to the organic side after returning home from a course on pesticides.
      "The kids were little back then. I thought to myself - why am I spraying stalk stabilizer onto the fields, heavy-duty chemicals? After the treatment, the stalks were not recommended for feeding to pigs", says Leppälä.
      In intensive arable farming, the stalks of grain grow tall, such that they have to be strengthened with chemical additives to stay upright for harvesting. The active ingredients of the plant growth regulators used for this purpose have been shown to have some unpleasant side-effects, for example on the fertility of pigs. Organic farmers cannot use stalk stabilizers.
     
Leppälä runs Finland's northernmost organic pig farm. Sievi is a small place to the east of the coastal town of Kokkola, around 500 km north of Helsinki. There were three organic pig-rearing operations in Sievi at one time, but the other two have thrown in the towel.
      "I guess I'm the last of the Mohicans or something. The nearest organic pig farm to here is somewhere down near Vaasa, but the meat they raise doesn't go into the stores as organic produce, but instead the processing company [Atria] adds it to its normal production", Leppälä says.
     
This may sound like an odd idea, but there is nothing unique about it. A fair proportion of the organic beef and pork produced in Finland is ground up and put with non-organic sausage and mince, because the demand for the real thing is simply not sufficient.
      Finland's largest meat processing company Atria, for instance, stopped processing organic meat for retail consumer sales two years ago. The company delivers slaughtered organic pigs to smaller downstream meat processing firms if the producer so wishes. Leppälä, for example, has his organic pork made into joints by a Helsinki-based firm.
      "When you think about it, there's no cause to be so surprised that organic meat costs that bit more. Shipping small batches of meat from the cutting plant to the supermarket is always going to add to the cost", explains Leppälä.
     
"The general public interest in organic meat started to wane. It simply didn't sell as well as it should have. Apparently your everyday Finnish meat is seen as being safe enough for regular consumption", says the Atria Finland CEO Juha Gröhn, by way of an explanation for the company's decision to give up processing for the retail market.
      This large meat processor's decision was also determined in part by the fact that last year there were just 1,872 pigs and 2,111 beef cattle being raised for slaughter on Finnish organic farms. At the turn of the millennium these numbers were 4,700 and 4,800 respectively.
     
"Things went well at the end of the 90s. After some lengthy arm-wrestling, we managed to persuade Atria to start up processing of organic meat. In addition, the farms that had gone organic got special support, but after that the market didn't pull its own weight and the demand did not take off", says Paula Vierto-Jern of the Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners (MTK).
      At the time, she was active advising farmers and campaigning on behalf of organic farming in the Swedish-speaking areas of Ostrobothnia, in Western Finland.
      There has been a failure in the marketing of organic meats, says Risto Pitkänen, the Unit Manager for Finnfood Luomu, an independent arm of Finfood Finnish Food Information that works on behalf of the nationwide promotion of the organic food chain.
      "The foodstuffs industry has carried out a successful campaign testifying to the purity of Finnish food. It looks as if the message of organic produce has been drowned out by this."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 26.8.2007


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Farmers´ union wants labels on food indicating use of GM products (15.8.2007)
  Genetically modified feed to be introduced to Finnish pig farms (8.8.2007)

Links:
  Atria Group - Atria Finland
  Finfood Luomu
  Finnish Food Safety Authority (EVIRA)
  Information Centre of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (TIKE)
  Organic Food (Wikipedia)

TAPIO MAINIO / Helsingin Sanomat
tapio.mainio@hs.fi