Sales of organic food in the UK have stabilised after falling sharply in the last quarter of 2008 when concern about recession led consumers to cut back purchases, the Soil Association said on Monday.
"There was a panic response both by the public and also by retailers and we did see some quite sharp dives in eggs, poultry and some horticultural produce at the back end of last year which seems to have stabilised now," Helen Browning, director of food and farming for the Soil Association, said.
"Retailers were removing (organic) product from the shelves to make way for other lines (in the fourth quarter)," she told a media briefing. The Soil Association said in a report issued on Monday sales of organic products in the UK slowed to 1.7 percent in 2008, well below the average annual growth rate of 26 percent over the last decade.
"What we saw last year is continued strong growth in the early part of the year followed by a pretty strong downturn in the last three months of 2008," Soil Association policy director Peter Melchett said. Sales of organic products in the UK rose to 2.1 billion pounds ($3.13 billion) in 2008, according to the report, issued by Britains largest certification body for organic food.
The fourth-quarter decline in demand hurt Britains organic producers with poultry and pork among the hardest hit. The report noted one leading processor reported a reduction in the number or organic table birds slaughtered in March to under 45,000 a month from 70,000 in the same month last year.
"Although the welfare of chicken during production is still considered to be the greatest motivator for consumers, some shoppers are trading down to free-range poultry," it said. Browning said the sector she was most concerned about was UK organic horticulture with vegetable producers suffering the two worst growing seasons for 30 years in 2007 and 2008. "A small number of growers are even pulling out of production altogether - although in most cases their land is not going out of organic production but being turned over to other crops or to livestock," the report said.