Jaana Husu-Kallio, the new Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, has set her sights on improved organic food production in Finland

Jaana Husu-Kallio

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By Elina Kervinen
     
      Toxic stuffed olives, dioxins, salmonella, EHEC bacteria, mad-cow disease, avian flu...
      Jaana Husu-Kallio’s name seems inevitably to surface every time something unfortunate occurs related to food.
      And in the past few years this has happened with alarming frequency.
      Most recently Husu-Kallio has been consulted and quoted, for example, in connection with the fuss surrounding the treatment of pigs on Finnish pig farms, or the selling of contaminated kebab meat.
      “Someone has even asked me what I thought I was doing when I chose a profession where I always have to explain things when someone else has messed up”, says Husu-Kallio, the outgoing Director General of the Finnish Food Safety Authority EVIRA.
     
Well, the awkward explanations will now have to be made by someone else.
      A couple of small boxes on the floor and a painting of a pig on the wall in Husu-Kallio’s former office in the Viikki district of Helsinki await to be transported to the premises of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Kruunuhaka. From tomorrow, Wednesday, Husu-Kallio will commence her duties there as the ministry’s new Permanent Secretary.
     
”If I was ordered to name just one thing that is important in the sphere of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, it would be food production. Ensuring that we will continue to have our daily bread”, Husu-Kallio summarises.
      Until she has familiarised herself with the ministry, Husu-Kallio prefers to refrain from commenting on her concrete future tasks.
      Still, she is aware of the main guidelines. For example the renewal of the Animal Welfare Act and the EU negotiations on agriculture are among the issues currently on the table at the ministry.
      According to Husu-Kallio, the promotion of the production and availability of organic foods is also at the very top of the agenda.
     
In the course of this spring and the coming summer, an organic food programme will be prepared at the ministry. In Husu-Kallio’s view, the number one priority in this work is to establish a functioning organic food chain.
      This does not sound like a particularly novel thing.
      Husu-Kallio does not think so, either. In the opinion of the new Permanent Secretary, years have been wasted in Finland in unnecessary debating over the bottlenecks in organic food production.
      “I am sick and tired of hearing that the problem is always either with the consumers not buying enough organic food or with the inadequate supply”, Husu-Kallio says.
      “I firmly believe that we can come up with a functioning organic food chain. Let’s just quit whining.”
     
Husu-Kallio is still unable to say how organic food will be promoted.
      The Pro Luomu (“Pro Organic”) organisation financed by the government is currently preparing suggestions for concrete steps for the ministry.
      The producers, commerce, industry, and various organisations are all taking part in the effort.
     
Husu-Kallio herself is a determined supporter of organic foodstuffs. Her family’s breakfast porridge oats, milk products, and the dinner vegetables are all organic. The availability of organic meat is still unnecessarily weak, Husu-Kallio laments.
      One restrictive factor to this is that there is not enough domestic organically-produced protein feed available to facilitate the increase of production. On the other hand, some of such feed ends up in conventional food production. So, the chain is not working.
      Still, in Husu-Kallio’s view the greatest obstacle continues to remain with people’s attitudes.
      Meat processing firms lack enthusiasm, and the producers have doubts about the lucrativeness of the organic sector. The notion that organic farming can be an economically-viable alternative has not yet sunk in.
      “I do feel that the meat processors, especially the big ones, have been particularly obstinate in this.”
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 31.1.2012


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Registered customers´ database tapped to trace buyers of olives possibly tainted with botulism (31.10.2011)
  Food Safety Authority: Spanish cucumbers infected with EHEC have not been imported into Finland (30.5.2011)
  Food Authority head says salmonella found in Russia could not have come from Finnish poultry (24.5.2007)
  EVIRA: chance of contaminated Irish beef having made it into Finland non-existent (10.12.2008)

Links:
  Jaana Husu-Kallio: CV

ELINA KERVINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
elina.kervinen@hs.fi