Article on 'fixed' dairy prices.

Today I want to share an article which Matthew (my husband) found regarding price fixes in the UK by the big supermarkets and dairy industries. It seems that there is a strong reliance on dairy addiction. People will pay whatever the price is as they class milk, butter, cheese etc as essential food items.

BBC NEWS 20 Sep 07 13:56 14:56 UK

Supermarkets 'fixed dairy prices'
Milk - The UK's big four supermarkets and dairies colluded to keep the price of dairy goods artificially high, the Office of Fair Trading has claimed.

The alleged deal led to consumers overpaying for milk, cheese and butter by an estimated £270m, the OFT said.

It accused Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury's and processors including Dairy Crest and Arla of involvement. The supermarkets denied the claims.

If found guilty of price fixing, the firms could face heavy fines.

Last month, British Airways was fined almost £121.5m by the OFT after it admitted collusion in fixing the prices of fuel surcharges.

"This is a very serious case," said OFT executive director Sean Williams. "This kind of collusion on price is a very serious breach of the law."

According to the OFT, stores and processors had already been warned the practice would limit competition and raise prices.

'Deterrent'

Mr Williams added that the watchdog would ensure it used its powers to punish such behaviour and "deter other businesses from taking such actions".

The Competition Act of 1998 prohibits agreements, practices and conduct that may have a damaging effect on competition in the UK.

The OFT has written to the big four supermarkets as well as processors Arla, Dairy Crest, Lactalis McLelland, The Cheese Company - part of Milk Link - and Wiseman setting out its findings.

It is now awaiting their responses to the claims - covering 2002 and 2003 - and any objections.

Morrisons said it was too early to comment fully, but added the group had never been involved with any of the actions mentioned by the OFT.

It also said that any Safeway involvement was another issue, as it would have come before the chain's acquisition by the group.

Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's added that they would "vigorously defend" themselves against any claims they had not acted in the best interest of shoppers.

Meanwhile, trade association Dairy UK added that price rises during the period in question reflected the major costs and income problems being experienced by dairy farmers.

Director general Jim Begg said: "Dairy prices for consumers in the UK over the last 10 years have been extremely competitive and remain so.

"The competition between the main supermarkets is well-known to consumers. Price rises have generally been below the rate of inflation and dairy products continue to be very good value."

'No rip-off'

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) also insisted there had been no attempt to "rip off the public" adding prices had been raised at the time to help ease pressure on farmers hit by low milk prices.

"What we were trying to do was to ensure that at least we could get the farm gate price up a bit to help preserve the supply line," BRC director general Kevin Hawkins told the BBC.

However, Sean Rickard, a consultant to the dairy industry and former chief economist at the National Farmers' Union, questioned whether farmers had actually seen the benefit of the price increases.

"If one looks back at the data, it does appear that there does seem to have been an increase in retail prices, even an increase in processors' margins, but the dear old dairy farmers really saw no tangible benefit, no lasting benefit from any such move," Mr Rickard added.

The OFT said it was "committed to sorting out the case as soon as possible," and hoped to issue a final decision by late 2008.

This is a norwegian 'pølser'. It is a hot dog and comes in a variety of types made from various concoctions of animals and body parts. It is quite revolting. They are for sale in every petrol/gas station and newsagents. Sometimes they have bacon wrapped around them too. The smell disgusting and make me feel sick when I smell them. There is no escape from them. They are everywhere! I long for a place where I can feel at peace but outside my own home it is impossible. Everywhere I look is evidence of murdered animals. I go to friends and sit on leather sofas and watch people eat cream cakes, I see animal wagons drive past me on the roads, I see sheep huddling around hay bales in the minus temperatures and when I have to stop for petrol/gas, I get the smell of rotting flesh forced upon me.

When will the world sit up and take notice? I don't want to be angry but I can't help feel that way sometimes. It took me this long to realize my way of living was wrong and I changed it. What gets my back up are the people who know what is happening to these defenceless animals but still eat them and use them for their selfish purposes.

Why does my father in law eat Fois Gras when he knows what happens to those poor birds, why does he take pleasure in talking about it and ending the conversation with 'well, they taste so great!' Why does my Dad say that 'tofu' tastes like socks yet will eat veal, baby calf, cruelly separated from it's mother who is denied motherhood and killed before it has chance to know what life is (not infront of me though, that's the honourable thing).

Why does it hurt so much? Because I look at an animal and I believe it has a basic right to live. I believe it has feelings. I believe it has intellegence. I believe as human beings we have got it so wrong.

Peacefully yours,

Jill.

Broadband

Finallly, after three years wait, broadband is on its way to our Arctic home! I can even see the transmitter they have just put up on a nearby hill. Now we just have to wait. For so long we’ve been stuck with a poor dial up connection. I’m looking forward to getting on second life, making video calls with my family back in the UK and countless other things. It’s exciting for us, I know that may be difficult to understand but put yourselves where we are! It will be so good after not even having a net connection for the last few weeks to finally spend the time I would like on this blog, the yoga baby vlogs and other projects, as well as simply emailing and having the world at your fingertips.

I am writing this at home and will go through my routine later...stick my laptop in the car, drive to the studio, check my emails and post this up before driving for an hour to teach a yoga class in the town below us. The children are sleeping now so I have a little break in the day. Normal people would make a cup of tea and put their feet up, having a short break from two children aged 2 and 7 months but I have too many things I want to do, I never fit it all in anyhow! I’ve been scriptwriting whenever the opportunity has arisen (I have a commission for a children’s television series set on a local island – fabulous work and so much inspiration) so this is a little diversion!

Thanks for leaving comments, I’m sorry I’ve not been so pro-active in my responses – that’s mainly due to the above situation. I appreciate your feedback and suggestions. As a new vegan it’s great to get advice from other vegans and vegetarians. It’s also great to see that there are non-vegetarians visiting too. I checked the stats recently and was really surprised at how many people were visiting. Once I’m back upto speed I promise more pics and a more structured content.

On a side note, my daughter has a toy farm and I never thought anything of it until she was playing with it yesterday and I looked at it, there is a hen coup, a pigsty, a horse that can have a cart attached and fencing that comes with it to put all the animals inside. I now feel uncomfortable about her thinking that is normal and acceptable. Her grandparents bought it for her. What to do....

Til next time...

Dogs

I am still unsure of what to do regarding my dogs diet. I have been researching the issue but am just downright confused! I know of 2 companies that make vegetarian dog food, both in the UK and the US. I cannot get anything in Norway as far as I can see. I have emailed the two companies but have got no response. I know I can get it shipped here but as you can imagine with 2 Labradors and the amount they eat that is not a cheap option and I am not well off by any stretch of the imagination!

I have read that dogs do not cope very well on a meat free diet but it's really hard for me now to feed them regular dog food. There are pictures of dead animals on most of the packaging, I now know what is probably in the dog food, no matter what brand I can get here - don't forget my limitations (Friskees and Pedegree Chum being the only options) and frankly the smell of the food is just disgusting. I think about how many animals suffered every time I have to fill up their food bowls.

My solution so far and it's not really a solution is to only give then half of what I usually do and top the rest up with homemade vegetarian food. I usually make more pasta or casserole etc and give them that. They have always enjoyed raw carrots as treats and seem to enjoy this new combination.

My dogs are 10 years old and sisters. They emigrated out here with us and have been through many changes in their lives. I want what is best for them but at the same time, want an option that makes me feel that I am not adding to animal suffering.

Comments welcome!

TV show 'How to holiday greener'...

Being British there are a few things I hang onto living up here in the Arctic. One of them is British TV. We have a satellite package that includes BBC Prime. Now this is a matter of annoyance in our household as it was supposed to be the best of BBC programming but now has disintegrated into a channel that shows old repeats and utter rubbish. That’s a irrelevant rant on my part but needed to get it off my chest! Now to my point, I have found a program called ‘How to holiday greener’. It’s actually not even on Prime but on the Travel channel. It basically shows you how to lessen your carbon footprint when holidaying. This seems to boil down to taking remote camping holidays in the UK which might be well and good but personally I’d rather stay at home (sorry for being flippant but my idea of a holiday isn’t being alone in a tent in the cold with a flask and wind up torch – don’t get me wrong, I care a great deal about the environment but if everyone stopped eating meat, there would be no issue as meat eating is responsible for a huge amount of global warming..more on that in a later post). The first episode I watched had me stunned. It showed the presenter visiting a farm which had buffalo roaming around, majestic animals, the presenter was taken aback by their beauty. Cut to the same woman, eating a buffalo steak in the farm kitchen or restaurant (I can’t remember which) and salivating over the tenderness of the meat’. I called her some names I won’t repeat here and switched it off. When I saw it was on again yesterday my curiosity got the better of me. This week, they were advertising a remote Scottish village which there were no roads to, you could walk or take a boat. The presenter took the boat as it was an opportunity to go seal watching. I was ready, Seal watching, surely this would be followed by the eating of seal meat (they eat that in Norway on occasion – one comment I’ve heard is ‘It’s so hard eating them when you picture their cute faces’...). I was ready. No. Didn’t happen. Thank goodness! Two minutes later, a discussion about red deer, how they are so beautiful and many groups living in Scotland, but the numbers sometimes got too many (rather like Glaswegians) so here’s a green holiday idea, deer stalking! Yes, it’s all the rage, culls the deer and keeps the tourists happy.

So if you want to make a positive holiday choice, a green holiday choice, a carbon friendly holiday choice, then eat animals, shoot animals for pleasure... do anything other than what will really make a difference - stop breeding animals to be killed for food, therefore stopping all the methane emissions that have as much combined impact on the environment as all transport! Yes, really.

If you have time to spare please drop the travel channel a line and tell them what you think.