I am enclosing a letter we received from the Soil Association yesterday which makes for depressing reading.

I believe that these "Government rules and regulations should be made public

For anyone who wishes to preserve the availability of "REAL FOOD", especially organically produced, which must be at least an option in the future, keep Britain's small farms and abattoirs local to the farms so that animals are subjected to the minimum stress on their last journey, with choice in the shops, and reduce the powers of Big business, especially supermarkets, this must be worrying reading.

I am absolutely serious when I say that between these directives from UK and European Governments, and G.M.O's there will be no organic food at all in a few years.

For those of you who are reading this and have not yet tasted an organic lettuce or carrot, and buy your meat and veg in the local supermarket, try them.

You have forgotten what real food tastes like, and be aware of the chemical cocktail you are eating! It is time to stand up and fight for the good things in life! Please write to your M.P. if you feel strongly about these issues.

ANTHEA LIBBY

Liskeard

The letter follows on

The threat to organic farming

I am sure you will be aware of the extremely serious problems facing small and medium-sized abattoirs at the present time. Increased inspection charges by the Meat Hygiene Service and also increased red tape are raising costs to such an extent the businesses are rapidly becoming no-viable. There are also impending problems for small cutting plants with the proposal to move towards daily veterinary supervision. Some of you may have first hand experience of this. You will probably also know that the situation is likely to get worse still in the coming months, if the government goes ahead with its plan to move to full-time veterinary supervision in all abattoirs and also continues to base charges on hourly rates rather than on throughput.

Forty abattoirs have already given up the struggle this year, making nearly 1000 that have closed in the UK over the last 10 years. Industry experts are predicting that we may very soon have no more than 75 abattoirs left in the whole country.

We believe this will create a potentially disastrous situation for many organic and small-scale meat producers who supply local markets. It will hit farm shops, farmers markets and independent butchers particularly hard. Since livestock is an integral part of most organic farming systems this could also have a knock-on effect throughout the organic farming industry. The large slaughterhouses that may be the only ones to survive the governments action may be unable to slaughter organic animals, unwilling to take small quantities and finally may not even be able to slaughter all types of animals.

Although the problem will affect organic producers supplying the supermarkets much less than organic producer-retailers, even here increased inspection charges will tend to make UK meat less competitive than imports. If there are no alternative outlets for organic meat, producers' bargaining power may be eroded in much the same way as has happened in the conventional meat industry. Additionally, the increased transport times for animals and the demise of local meat marketing initiative runs entirely against the ethos of organic production and marketing.

We urgently need your help to fight this issue and ensure that small abattoirs survive. The enclosed sheet sets out what we are proposing to do to counter the problem and tells you what you can do to help.

We apologise if this issue does not affect you, however, we thought that you should be aware of the problems that we are now facing.

SIMON BRENMAN

Agriculture Development Director.

Soil Association