Large meat packers give up on organic meat due to weak demand
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Low demand for organically grown foods has led large meat packing companies to sharply reduce their output of organic meat products.
One major meat producer, Atria, has announced that from the beginning of next year it will stop packing organically grown meat into consumer retail units, and will supply smaller packers with entire carcasses of organic meat. The company also decided to cut the extra fee that it pays producers of organic beef from 50 cents to just five cents per kilo.
Atria's decision to stop packaging organic cold cuts, meat strips, and ground meat means that consumers who prefer organic meat will find it more difficult to get what they need in stores, as Atria has been the only meat packer that operates on a national level to offer organic products.
Atria's deputy CEO Juha Gröhn says that his company had tried to develop its range of organic products, but that demand was insufficient. He also notes that public interest in organically grown food has waned in the past two years.
Meanwhile, the dairy company Valio is not planning to take on any more producers of organic milk, in addition to the 152 organic dairy farms that it has contracts with.
Because of weak demand for organic milk products, much of the organic milk is mixed into ordinary milk.
Minna Kantén, head of the organic foods unit at the Finnish Food Information Service Finnfood, says that the waning of interest in organic foods on the part of large manufacturers does not mean that organic food production is in jeopardy.
"Organic food seems to be increasingly a matter for smaller companies which focus on organic production. I do not believe that the large companies will give up completely, but now the time is clearly one of re-evaluation", Kantén says.
She adds that a number of smaller entrepreneurs are experiencing a growth in sales, and that restaurants are increasingly using organically grown products in their cooking.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 20.12.2004 - TODAY |
 Large meat packers give up on organic meat due to weak demand |
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