One Monday night in front of the telly…

Hubby: “Let’s stop shopping at Coles, Woolworths and their subsiduaries.”

Me: “You’re on.” I said. How hard could it be?

“We barely buy anything there anyway.”

And that’s how it happened.

When the ABC ’s Four Corners aired The Price we Pay by Stephen Long, a piece on the relationship between the two major Australian supermarket groups and small local producers, we were gutted by what we saw. It added to our friend’s experiences and our own research showing that small local producers were being sent to the wall by supermarkets and their offshoots in the liquor industry.

That was only 18 days ago. So I’ve had no regrets and no trouble sticking with it. Sure, I can’t be lazy and just nip over to the nearby sexy, neon lit mega-food halls with their gleaming surfaces and pretty home brand packaging, but luckily for me there is an independent grocer another five minutes walk from our local ‘major’. Not that I’ve needed much, our fridge is always full of beautiful fresh, local tucker.

We live in a test area for the newer big supermarkets. They’re the most seductive and beautifully laid out, but they make me wander aimlessly like ‘a deer in headlights’ and compel me to spend money I don’t have, on things I don’t really need. So in a way the a pact is turning out to be much kinder on the household purse.

Some of our friends are freaked out when they find I have no packaged food in the cupboards – only condiments, seasoning, sugar and starches. I gave up packaged and processed food a little while back, but my beloved still drinks Activite and some packaged drinks. We get the majority of our food at Farmers Markets and fresh markets. The detergents, washing powder etc are bought in bulk from office cleaning suppliers.

‘Mum and Pop’ grocers are our source for seasonings, dairy, smoked meat products and the sugary drinks he loves. Our bread is sourdough and comes from local bakeries that use locally grown and milled organic whole grain flour. I buy organic flour, pulses and grains loose (unpackaged) from Rita at South Melbourne Market, home made dips from an elderly Turkish lady in Mentone and we buy our wine direct from wineries. So it really hasn’t been difficult.

It’s been a little tougher on the man about the house, as he is also turning his back on the giant ‘Man Cave’ Bunnings, petrol stations and his usual beer retailers, but by using a little lateral thinking, he’s coped well. And we’re not out of pocket either. In fact we seem to be spending less.

The Price We Pay

From the ABC Four Corners website

“…Coles and Woolworth’s sell 70 per cent of the dry groceries and half the fresh food that Australians consume – among the highest concentrations of market power in the developed world.

Last month the competition watchdog the ACCC officially ticked this arrangement, insisting the market is working.

But the growth in supermarket muscle has come at a cost to many suppliers and small retailers. “Crippling”“simply tough dealing”. is how one industry analyst terms Coles’ and Woolies’ power over food producers; the regulator calls it

“It’s just eating my farm away, we’re just finished,” says a despairing pumpkin grower whose produce retails for as much as 10 times the price he gets for it. He scoffs at the ACCC’s view that the gap between farm gate prices and the checkout isn’t growing.

Don’t like pumpkin? How about an ice-cream story to illustrate supermarkets’ throat-hold? Four Corners meets an ice-cream maker who buys a lot of milk – and bizarrely he gets it cheaper from his local supermarket than from the wholesale processor. Why? Because the wholesaler has to accept ultra low prices from the supermarket – and compensates by inflating his price to smaller buyers, says the ice-cream man.

Or try sausage. One sausage-maker explains the choice he made when the supermarket told him he had to cut his supply price or get kicked off the shelf: “The only way we would do that was by using lesser quality meat product… and adding soy proteins and what some people might call ‘fillings’ to extend the product.” He then volunteers to Four Corners that he wouldn’t even eat the product himself.

Suppliers can reel off a list of punishing “rebates” – fees – that they must pay supermarkets for product promotions, to get paid on time, or just for the privilege and opportunity of supplying goods. But few are bold enough to do so publicly.

Like suppliers to the big supermarkets, minnow retailers are fed up – but more outspoken. Small liquor merchants can get some beer and wine cheaper from supermarket-owned retail grog barns than they can from wholesalers. Some refuse to see this as competition: “In the 36 years I’ve been in our two shops I’ve had 12 armed hold-ups, 11 with a gun and one with a machete, and the biggest predator we face is this company here.”

While Coles’ and Woolies’ market clout can translate into cheap prices for consumers, there are fears it may threaten the survival of Australia’s food industry. As reporter Stephen Long reveals, these concerns are held by eminent people at the very top of the food chain.”

View the program here

Program transcript

Discuss this at SOLE Mama Forum here

]]> http://solefoodmama.wordpress.com/2008/09/19/supermarkets-vs-small-producers/feed/ 0 custardcrazy http://solefoodmama.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/this-week-at-sole-mamas-120908/ http://solefoodmama.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/this-week-at-sole-mamas-120908/#comments Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:07:03 +0000 purplegoddess http://solefoodmama.wordpress.com/?p=457 ]]>

Hi Diddely Ho, all SOLE sisters and brothers!

Sorry I didn’t get around to giving you all an update last week, but pesky real life has been getting in the way. Our poor Sticky is down with a gimpy neck, and old pg has been under the pump at work.

7 newbies this fortnight:

felhuang,

croquet1

touretro

vinaio

stephen

cookygirl

Melbgal24.

A big welcome to you all!!

Make sure you head over to The Ingredients and introduce yourselves.

Plenty going on over at SOLE Mama’s…  a book review in The Media of a Melbourne author, Angela Crocombe, who will hopefully be joining our site soon!

Ethical Eating: How to make food choices that won’t cost the earth”

Angela Crocombe

Penguin, $24.95.

“We are what we eat, so, if we devout the products of greed and cruelty, we become complicit in them. Crocombe, whose previous book was about reducing our personal global footprint, here teaches us all about food choices. In some countries, the alternative is between food and starvation: here, we have a cornucopia. That the abundance comes with a terrible price is the message of this book. Besides the sadism of the factory farm, there are sickening chemicals, unnecessary packaging and food miles. One of the best features of this book is its guide to eco-symbols, or the most pesticide-ridden produce (peaches). We also learn the facts behind fast foods: the short and brutal lives of chickens, calves and pigs. While vegan beer may not be to everyone’s taste, there is much in here to give us pause in the supermarket aisles. “

Her website: http://www.lighterfootprint.com.au/

Plenty other SOLE stuff over there to keep you amused and get you thinking.

A reminder about the SOLE Mama Facebook competition. Head over to our Facebook page and enter the “WHY is SOLE Mama wearing only her foundation garments?”

And a final note, that SOLE Mama’s is only as good as what you guys make it. I know it’s been quiet, and not a lot of discussion has been going on, but we’ve only been live a month!

Get thee over to SOLE Mama’s as soon asn you can  and help us keep the SOLE message alive!!

Have a good weekend, guys!!

Whoot Whoot!!!

Another 4 new members!

Harry’snan

Jackie79

zibet

Michelle750.

Welcome guys!

Make sure you (and any other newbies from the past few weeks) drop by the Ingredients room and give us a little bio about yourselves. Sole Mama and the gang all want to get to know you better, and we can’t very well do that without an introduction, can we?!

This week saw our very first more-than-one-page post, which is a thrill for Sole Mama and the Admin Team, as we are loving watching this place grow!

A few of you had issues with the board being slooooooooow earlier in the week. Unfortunately, that was due to server probs, and I am assured that it’s now resolved.

I know the header is a problem for some of you, and pg will get around to re-sizing it soon. Unfortunately all of the Admin Team are doing this as a labour of love, on their own time, so bear with us while we iron out any little wrinkles in the system.

Delicious dixiebelle has a great post running with fabo hints for Solution for vege garden in small area/ rental properties!  There are some great ideas/suggestion in there that we can all get into.

pg has reviewed Jells Park Farmers Market in Glen Waverley, and Zoe is interested in your True Confessions: What did you REALLY have to eat for lunch today??!!

Sticky is still making SOLE Mama snigger with her moist meat bat, and ran is on board the Tofu Shop post!

So don’t be shy…. if you’ve joined, get posting!! And if you know any other SOLE minded people, be sure to invite them!

Have a great SOLE-filled weekend!!

SOLE Mama!

2 weeks live, and we’ve got another 5 new members!
A big warm SOLE Mama welcome to:

ran
hungrygirl
james
dixiebelle
mysticmumma

Please keep spreading the word!

This week SOLE Mama wants to highlight 2 things.

Firstly, we are rallying to get everyone interested in helping to change the law in regards to allowing Cheesemakers to be able to produce Raw Milk Cheeses. Both pg and Sticky have posted about it on their blogs and are hoping other supporters of SOLE food will participate.

In order to effect change, they are asking everyone to email a submission to Food Standards Australia and New Zealand. You just need to copy and paste it into an email addressed to FSANZ. By doing this you will be helping to protect and encourage the production of traditional foods and better still you will send a message that we will not be told what we can and can’t eat.

The submission and further information can be found at SOLE Mama’s blog:

http://solefoodmama.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/raw-milk-cheese-please-act-now/

The other matter is to draw your attention to food wastage.

- Australians are still wasting $6 billion of food each year – enough to feed the entire nation for three weeks. – Current research suggests the majority of food thrown away is fresh fruit and vegetables. – Meat, fish, bread, dairy produce, rice and pasta are all in the ‘top’ most wasted foods. – The two main reasons for food wastage is that people ‘cook or prepare too much’ or ‘don’t use food before its use-by date’. – A 2005 study by The Australia Institute estimated that food waste was costing Australians $5.3 billion per year. – The Australian 2006 National Greenhouse Gas Inventory report stated methane emissions from solid waste disposal on land were equivalent to 13.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. – According to CSIRO data, dumping a kilogram of beef wastes the 50,000 litres of water it took to produce that meat; throwing out a kilogram of white rice will waste 2,385 litres and wasting a kilogram of potatoes costs 500 litres.

pg has blogged about it and you can find out more at:

http://agoddessinthekitchen.blogspot.com/2008/08/food-wastage.html

her post also includes a link to The Notebook competition, where the best suggestions on how to minimize food wastage will be published on the web site, and will go into the chance to win a prize.

In other news, 2 of our members, Gottie and Bluenose, have just returned from a SOLE Safari to Daylesford, and we’re eagerly awaiting more posts about their adventures!

Georgia has a shout out to help her design a dinner party, and Grocer has some hilarious tips on how to stop Office lunch-roaches stealing your goodies from the communal fridge!

Have a great weekend guys, and keep helping us spread the SOLE message!

SOLE Mama!

Reblochon. Copyright Adrian Lander

Our Forum Administrators Purple Goddess and Stickyfingers are rallying to get everyone interested in helping to change the law in regards to allowing Cheesemakers to be able to produce Raw Milk Cheeses. They have both posted items to their blogs on the subject and are hoping other supporters of SOLE food will participate.

In order to effect change, they are asking everyone to email a submission to Food Standards Australia and New Zealand. The submission is at the bottom of Stickyfingers’ blog post below, you just need to copy and paste it into an email addressed to FSANZ. By doing this you will be helping to protect and encourage the production of traditional foods and better still you will send a message that we will not be told what we can and can’t eat.

To read purple Goddess’s post, please visit her blog A Goddess in the Kitchen.

Roquefort from Will Studd's Cheese Slices book. Copyright Adrian Lander

Cheeses Geist!

Please submit for the sake of our Cheesemakers…

Traditional consumption of raw milk

Domesticated animals were first used for milk eight to ten thousand years ago, as a genetic change effecting mostly people in Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Africa enabled them to digest milk as adults. Milk from domesticated animals then began to become important as a human food. With domestication and settlement, fewer wild animals were available; as groups of people roamed less, they hunted less, eating more grains and vegetables. In some cultures, milk replaced animal bones as the chief source of calcium and some other minerals.

In indigenous cultures where adults used milk, often it was used as cultured or clabbered milk. This is similar to homemade raw yogurt, and it is partially predigested-much of the lactose (milk sugar) has been broken down by bacterial action. This process must be accomplished over a period of several hours in the stomach when one drinks fresh milk; yogurt or clabbered milk is much more easily digested than fresh milk.

Adaptations in evolution are always the effects of particular causes. Humans developing the ability to digest milk into adulthood possessed a survival advantage; such change is the basis of evolution. Put simply, many human beings evolved the ability to easily digest raw milk because raw milk from healthy, grass-fed animals gave them an adaptive advantage; it made them stronger and more able to reproduce. Such milk remains a wonderful food that provides us with fat-soluble nutrients, calcium, and other minerals that are by and large in short supply in the modern diet.

NOURISHED MAGAZINE

It isn’t legal to sell raw milk for consumption in Australia. It is legal to sell it for cosmetic purposes such as for taking a milk bath. It is not legal to make cheese from it, and yet some of the world’s most sought after and oldest traditional artisanal cheese are made with raw milk.

The milk we drink and use in cheesemaking in Australia is required to be heat treated in order to kill certain bacteria. Many of the foodstuffs we eat today that are produced in commercial quantities have been heat treated and processed with chemicals. There is now a growing awareness that these foodstuffs are part of the cause of the growing numbers of allergies in our children today. In fact most people who are lactose intolerant can drink raw milk and eat raw milk cheeses with no ill effects.

Why? Because the human body evolved to have various gastrointrestinal bacteria in our gut to process and digest the food we eat. In turn our bodies have acquired the ability to draw nutrients and produce disease preventing antibodies from certain food. Modern society however has taken a path whereby it polices food and tells us that we can only eat food prepared in certain ways for the benefits of our health.

However in the case of raw milk, a number of credible scientific research projects have proved that it has a beneficial effect on the body and can reduce allergies in children. Those beneficial bacteria are removed when the milk is pasteurised.

Have you noticed that our dairy corporations now offer enriched milk? They now use oil as a carrier in milk, to try to restore the nutrients killed off in pasteurisation. But added synthetic nutrients are not easily absorbed by the body. Have you seen lactobacillus, acidophilus products in stores? These are some of the healthy bacteria in raw milk, but we are now encouraged to consume them in pill form, where once they were innate in our diets and raw milk products such as yoghurts and soft cheeses.

Once you understand these things it looks like a case of the tail wagging the dog. Why would anyone in their right mind choose synthetic over natural?

Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) have finally announced a review of domestic dairy processing standards that currently ban the production and sale of raw milk and the cheeses made with it.

Will Studd, whom some of you may have seen on the TV series Cheese Slices or from his excellent Cheese books, is founding director of Fromagent Australia and Calendar Cheese Company who import and distribute many of the wonderful Cheese that comes to table in Australia. He has been leading the battle tirelessly to change the code in relation to raw milk cheeses for twelve years. That’s a hell of a lot of lobbying.

This opportunity to effect change may not come again for another ten years so it is vital that anyone who would like to liberate Australian Cheesemakers make a submission to FSANZ. That’s you, as an individual, even if you have nothing to do with the food industry, even if you (heaven forbid) don’t eat cheese. It’s about the right of the consumer to choose what they consume and the support of traditional practices such as the production of raw milk cheeses and other products to ensure that they don’t die out. So please, please, please?

Should you wish to read FSANZ discussion paper it is available to download from Will’s website – here.

To make your submission I have received the following template (see below) from Will Studd via Kelly Donati of Slow Food Victoria that you can copy and paste and email. Slow Food Victoria will make their own submission. The deadline for public submissions is September 24, 2008.

Copy and paste the following:

Send to: Submissions@foodstandards.gov.au

Re: Proposal P1007 Primary Production & Processing Requirements for Raw Milk Products (Australia only)

I would like to register my support for an amendment to the code to bring Australia into line with other major international cheese manufacturing countries. My objections to the current standards that prohibit the production and sale of most cheese made from raw milk in Australia are as follows:

1. The purpose of the Standard is to guarantee safe cheese – however the assumption that pasteurisation as a single step will guarantee safety is not scientifically valid.

2. The single critical control point that guarantees safety for all cheese varieties is starter culture activity that creates a hostile environment to pathogens in the cheese. Starter culture activity comprises two biological components, the first is primary fermentation of milk sugar to organic acids during cheese making and the second is secondary fermentation/metabolism of organic acids, fat and protein during ripening. This principal is supported by scientific studies and accepted by all of the major cheese producing countries of the world i.e. European Union (EU), USA, and Canada.

3. The standard is anti-competitive and trade restrictive. The standard does not encourage world best practice in cheese/milk production and allows the use of milk of poor microbiological quality for cheese making.

4. The microbiological standards for cheese are overly onerous in relation to E.coli and have led to very questionable practices in domestic production. The standard is out of step with scientific studies and the microbiological standards applied in overseas countries.

5. The standard is a breach of Australia’s commitment to WTO Policy, as it cannot be justified on scientific grounds for food safety. WTO Article 5.1 requires members to ‘ensure that their sanitary or phytosanitary measures are based on an assessment, as appropriate to the circumstance, of the risks to human, animal or plant life or health, taking into account risk assessment techniques developed by the relevant international organizations’. Article 5.2 states in the assessment of risks ‘Members shall take into account available scientific evidence’. Article 5.4 states ‘Members should, when determining the appropriate level of sanitary or phytosanitary protection, take into account the objective of minimizing trade effects’.

6. The Standard is overly prescriptive. It does not meet the Council of Australian Government (COAG) guidelines on primary production and processing standards that stipulate an objective of minimal effective regulation.

7. The standard is highly discriminatory. It provides for international exemptions such as Roquefort and Swiss cheese but denies Australian cheese makers a choice of making similar cheese from raw milk. Australian artisanal cheese makers deserve to have the opportunity to develop a significant point of difference to enable their products to survive in a competitive market.

8. Over the past two decades international artisan and farmhouse cheese production has enjoyed a significant growth in demand due to a revolution in consumer interest. Many of these cheeses are made from raw milk and are recognised as having an infinitely superior flavour and regional character when compared to similar cheeses made from pasteurised milk. However unlike their overseas counterparts Australian consumers have been denied a choice of cheeses made from raw milk.

9. There is no reason why cheese made from raw milk should represent a greater degree of risk than those produced from pasteurised milk provided recognised international guidelines are adopted in Australia.

Signed (Your name)

Address (Your address)

That’s right SOLE Mama and friends are now on facebook.

Join up, invite your friends and help spread the word!

Sign into facebook first and then use the button to visit us there.

]]> http://solefoodmama.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/sole-mama-is-now-on-facebook/feed/ 0 purplegoddess http://solefoodmama.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/this-week-at-sole-mamas/ http://solefoodmama.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/this-week-at-sole-mamas/#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:28:57 +0000 purplegoddess http://solefoodmama.wordpress.com/?p=356 ]]>

Well!

A hearty THANK YOU to all our friends from The Tavern who, with their
forum-sassyness, kindly BETA tested for us. Since then, we’ve had 16 new members join!

• Razzle
• furry
• banjywon
• stburns
• Kai
• Gomez
• lofty
• Zoe
• grocer
• cwackers
• Gottie
• Thermomixer
• Bluenose
• hoalyblondie
• Dani
• thetruffledog

If you haven’t done so, drop by The Ingredients and let us know a little..or a lot about yourselves!

We’ve gone from SOLE Mama, pg and sticky posting about a dozen time, to

Total posts 316 • Total topics 125!
Good work guys!

This place will always be what YOU make of it, so get to posting, reviewing, asking questions and basically getting involved!

Don’t forget to invite all your SOLE sistas and bruffas to join in the fun!

This week’s “Post of the Week” goes to Stickyfingers, for her recipe help in PG’s Stroganoff thread… and only because it contained the phrase “moist meat bat”.. and it made SOLE Mama snigger like a 10 year old boy!

And be sure to look out for the September edition of “Notebook” magazine, which features our very own pg on page 180! I am sure she’ll post a link when the mag is on line.

Have a good weekend, my lovelies!

SOLE Mama!
Spreading some of the good stuff around!

Well.. things are afoot at the Circle K, as they say in the classics!

We’ve been BETA testing our forums with a group of online friends aka “The Nanobots”! They’ve been poking around all the nooks and crannies of the forums to make sure everything works.. and after a week of feedback and scuttling around behind the scenes, we are proud to announce that out SOLE Mama’s forums are now LIVE!!

We do hope you join in the fun over there, and also drop by here for updates as we go.

Feel free to subscribe to this blog, so you won’t miss out on regular updates!