After decades protecting Britain's rarest birds from extinction, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is moving into organic meat production.
The society, which has harried farmers and supermarkets over their intensive farming practices, is in talks with Marks and Spencer about an exclusive nationwide deal to sell RSPB-branded organic lamb from a hillfarm in north Wales.
The RSPB, Britain's largest mass membership organisation with more than one million supporters, is just one of a number of prominent conservation charities preparing to sell farm produce to Britain's environment-conscious middle classes.
The National Trust and the Wildlife Trusts are also planning to market organic or wildlife-friendly beef, cereals, milk and dairy products.
But the development is likely to lead to conflict with the powerful farming lobby. The charities claim they can now prove to conventional farmers that "green" farming is economically viable. The National Farmers Union derided their proposals simply as niche marketing for wealthy consumers.
If its deal with M&S succeeds, the RSPB will corner an eighth of Britain's organic lamb market, which is rapidly growing thanks to consumer panics over food safety. It has 4,000 sheep on a farm close to Lake Vyrnwy in the Cambrian mountains, which will be certified as organic this summer.
The charity is also in talks with another manufacturer to sell "skylark friendly" bread, made with cereal from farms which use strict wildlife-friendly methods, such as providing nesting spaces among the crops and natural hedgerows.
The National Trust Britain's largest private landowner, controlling roughly 500,000 acres of farmland is developing a national labelling scheme using its oak-leaf logo to endorse a range of environment-conscious beef, lamb and milk products.
The Wildlife Trusts, a network of local groups which own reserves across Britain, has plans to market endorsed milk from its tenant farmers within the next 12 months, sold at a premium price.
It already sells beef from the Ruby Red Dorset cattle which graze on the Culm grasslands in Dorset, and "Woodland pork" from a herd of pigs used to control brambles in Treswell Woods, Nottinghamshire. Its next step could be breakfast cereals.
The foot and mouth epidemic, and the series of crises which have gripped farming, are seen by greens as a perfect opportunity to push for more environment-conscious agriculture.
Some new arrivals see it as a trendy market ripe for exploitation. But Phil Rothwell of the RSPB said its intention was to allow greens to prove by example that their proposals were effective and viable. "This is a conservation tool, not a marketing tool. This isn't about raising money but to demonstrate you can have sustainable farming, using the market place rather than subsidy."
Critics within the green movement argue that moving into food production will inevitably weaken their ability to attack the farmers they hope to befriend for using unacceptable practices. But the charities' executives believe this position is too purist. "Our reserves are small islands in a great sea of conventional farming," said John Cousins, the Wildlife Trusts' farming adviser. "We have to help conventional farmers to do what we want"
David Riddle, an agriculture specialist at the National Trust, said it planned to use existing approval schemes such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals' "Freedom Foods", for the best of its 700 farm tenants. Using the trust's name would allow its tenants to charge premium prices, as a direct financial reward for improved standards.
Its sister organisation, the National Trust for Scotland, is already marketing "own brand" venison to up-market restaurants and by mail order from the 700 deer culled last year on its 72,000 acre Mar Lodge estate in the Cairngorms.
These initiatives have irritated the NFU which has launched its own Red Tractor logo to label produce that meets stricter animal welfare, food safety and industrial safety standards. A spokesman said the green initiatives would inevitably become middle class niche products, out of reach to the majority of British consumers. "While certain segments of the market will pay more, not everybody has the luxury to do that, so it has to be farmed in a cost-effective way.
"If we didn't we would become uncompetitive against foreign imports, effectively pricing ourselves out of the market."
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