Growing choice of health food

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-04 11:03

Zhang Shujuan, 48, buys organic food regularly.

Like many other Net-savvy Chinese, Beijinger Wu Songzhi has been shopping online for four years. Since March, the human resources manager of a multinational company has been adding something extra into her online shopping cart - organic food.

"My family likes to eat fresh tomatoes and potatoes, so it's safer to buy organic ones," said Wu, in her 30s. "They are also clean and I don't have to wash them so many times."

Every month, Wu spends about 600 yuan ($87) on organic vegetables, meat and other produce on online organic shop tootoo.cn. Her orders are delivered to her workplace.

Wu has joined a growing number of people in Beijing who are becoming more aware of what they are eating and choosing to buy organic food because it is free of chemical pesticides, fertilizers, hormone or genetic modification.

A survey conducted by environmental group Greenpeace in January last year showed that 93 percent of 300 respondents said they chose organic food primarily for safety and health reasons, while 68 percent said they bought organic food and 80 percent said they would definitely buy organic food in the future.

Safety- and health-conscious consumers in Beijing also have growing access to a variety of organic choices offered by supermarkets, franchised stores and home delivery services.

Tootoo.cn, which started its online order and home delivery service in March this year, currently has more than 2,000 members including entrepreneurs, lawyers, TV hosts and movie stars, according to Liu Jingdan, who works with the company's marketing department.

"They are better-off and care about food safety. They are interested in knowing about their food and more and more people are joining them," Liu said.

While organically grown food is being made available in more and more supermarkets, experts believe China's organic food industry still has huge potential.

China produces 3 billion yuan ($438 million) worth of organic food every year, with $200 million being exported.

Organic food accounts for only 0.02 percent of the total domestic food market, while the global average is 2 percent, according to Jiang Gaoming, a professor with the China Academy of Science's institute of botany.

Jiang said that, based on their salary, urban consumers can afford organic food with a price three times that of non-organic food, but they have little agricultural knowledge and can only distinguish organic and non-organic foods by label.

"They are unlikely to choose less-attractive, pricier organic food," he said.

Many consumers also remain skeptical about certification.

Veronica Zhao, who works with a consultancy in Beijing, is one of these. "I can afford it, but I'm not sure if they are real or not. I don't believe in organic food certification," she said.

Similarly, Jiang said organic food certification is "useless".

"Some producers run small, tightly controlled organic operations of about 2 hectares in order to gain organic certification, then package their non-organic produce as organic for more profit," he said.

"The key is to go to organic farms themselves to check."

American Liora Pearlman is head of the Beijing Organic Consumer Association (BOCA), which is an online group of about 600 members, mostly foreigners who live in Beijing.

Pearlman said the level of awareness and education on organic food is low.

"Most of the information in organic food is in English," she said.

"Visits to organic farm help people know more about organic food."