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The Toronto Star
Wednesday January 26, 2000
Modified food conflict grips Hong Kong; Local
demand for healthier choices growing
Hemmed in all around by surging skyscrapers, a tiny organic garden sits
defiantly in one of the most densely populated and most polluted places
in Hong Kong.
In Causeway Bay, a district often choked by auto exhaust, restaurant owner
Helen Wong hopes to make consumers see the light in healthier foods.
Her small organic garden on a balcony outside her 10th-floor restaurant,
"Vogue in Paradise," looks like a sad joke, encircled almost
entirely by a giant glass and marble tower.
But Wong's simple message could not be more serious.
"This garden is for education. I want people to know the importance
of healthy, natural foods," said Wong, whose 200,000-square-foot
organic farm in Shenzhen supplies her restaurant and some other food outlets
in Hong Kong and China.
"We have had so many food problems in the past few years: too much
pesticides in vegetables, problems with our pork, chicken, fish. If we
eat more natural foods, our health will be better protected," Wong
said.
Hong Kong, a magnet for gourmets and food lovers the world over, has been
besieged by food scares in recent years and local demand for healthier
foods is clearly growing.
Mainland Chinese vegetables, coated with excessive chemical pesticides,
have landed people in hospitals while staples of the Chinese diet such
as pork and fish have been found to be contaminated by banned growth drugs
and pollutants.
Of late, the worldwide controversy surrounding genetically modified food
has gripped the territory of 6.8 million, triggering calls from green
groups for compulsory labelling of GM food. In an effort to raise public
awareness, local Greenpeace activists stormed into some supermarkets in
recent months saying certain brands of soy and milk- chocolate products
they sold contained GM ingredients.
"More people now realize the issue and are beginning to ask questions.
We consume a lot of soybean products and a lot of it comes from Canada
and the U.S., but do we know if they are genetically modified?" Greenpeace's
Lo Sze-ping asked.
While there is no scientific evidence to prove GM food is harmful to human
health, environmentalists argue there is also not sufficient evidence
to show the release of GM organisms into the environment is safe.
Hong Kong lawmakers this month passed a motion calling for compulsory
GM food labelling and the government has said it would do a feasibility
study on setting up such a system. Labels are required in the European
Union and other countries where consumer resistance to biotech foods is
greater.
Up north in the rural New Territories and in Shenzhen, modest-sized organic
farms have been quietly sprouting up, winning a small but growing band
of faithful consumers.
Hong Kong now has nine organic farms and it is not uncommon to find vegetable
stalls in the territory selling only organic produce - at a premium of
at least twice the price of nonorganic crops.
Deep in the valleys of Hong Kong's mountainous Tai Po region, the organic
Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Gardens grows up to 140 types of vegetables
and plants.
Insect-repelling plants such as mint and rosemary help control pests.
An estimated loyal customer base of just 500 in all of Hong Kong means
farmers have to plant small amounts of everything.
"When the market is so small, you can't plant a lot of any one type,
thus ruling out economies of scale. And you have to plant many varieties,
so the cost is high," said Angus Chi Kwong Lam, 28, a horticulture
officer at the Kadoorie farm.
For now, organic farmers in Hong Kong get their naturally grown seeds
from mainland China and elsewhere, but the supply is getting short.
"Organic farming is only possible if we keep our own seeds but that's
difficult as there is never enough. We get organic seeds from the U.S.
and China but with GM seeds becoming popular in China we can't be sure
of supply in future," said Penny Chan of Produce Green Foundation,
another organic farm.
Kadoorie's Chi said: "You might be using GM seeds and you don't even
know."
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