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Since its establishment more than a decade ago, the reputation of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has been as spotless as the consciences of shoppers who buy fish bearing its blue "tick" logo in the expectation it has been sustainably caught. Until now.

In a trenchant attack on the world's biggest certifier of ethical fish, a group of six marine experts have accused the MSC of giving in too readily to the demands of big trawler organisations and endorsing fisheries racked by overfishing. Unless the organisation takes more care over its approval process, it risks losing credibility, they warn.

Making their case in an opinion piece in the journal Nature, headed "Seafood stewardship in crisis", the authors point to steep falls in MSC-certified fisheries, such as pollock in the eastern Bering Sea off the US, whose total estimated biomass fell by 64 per cent between 2004 and 2009, and the Pacific hake, which was awarded certification last year despite its population plummeting by 89 per cent since the 1980s.

They also question why the MSC is certifying the catching of wild fish ground up into feed for domesticated livestock, and why it tolerates bottom trawling, which can damage the seabed.

"Scores of scientists (including ourselves) and many conservation groups, including Greenpeace, the Pew Environment Group and some national branches of WWF, have protested over various MSC procedures or certifications. We believe that, as the MSC increasingly risks its credibility, the planet risks losing more wild fish," wrote the authors, who include Jennifer Jacquet and Daniel Pauly of British Columbia University and Paul Dayton and Jeremy Jackson of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California.

David Ainley, a marine ecologist in California, and Sidney Holt, a marine ecologist from Umbria in Italy, were the other signatories.

The MSC, which has been backed by major seafood producers and retailers including Marks & Spencer and Waitrose, and examined the problems of overfishing in the docu-film End of the Line, has vigorously denied the criticism. "Every fish certified to the MSC standard is sustainable and well-managed and fisheries are not, as the authors assert, certified before they can demonstrate their sustainability," it said, adding that the scientists had chosen peaks in naturally fluctuating fish populations from which to draw their sharp populations declines.

The MSC did not mind what purpose the catch was used for, it added, so long as the fishing was sustainable; something which did not necessarily preclude bottom trawling.

The attack is of particular relevance to the UK because Britain has 13 MSC-certified fisheries, including Hastings Dover sole and South-west handline mackerel, more than any other country except the US, which has 25. British shops have enthusiastically adopted the programme.

Founded by the Anglo-Dutch food and household giant Unilever and the environmental group WWF in 1997, the non-profit-making organisation is based in London. Globally it certifies 94 fisheries, which account for 7 per cent of the global catch, a share worth around £1bn a year. A further 133 fisheries are currently undergoing certification.

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They suffered more than most bird species during the unusually cold snap in January.

But these long-tailed tits, which need to find food almost continually throughout the winter to survive, appear to be flourishing at the RSPB's nature reserve at Fairburn Ings in West Yorkshire, despite the mother having 11 hungry mouths to feed.

The long-tailed tit is sometimes described as "a ball of fluff on a stick" because of its long tail and relatively small body.

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It's hard to be long in the tooth when you've got no teeth, because they've all fallen out. At least you don't have to remember to brush them – not because you don't have any teeth, but because you've lost your memory because your teeth have fallen out. And, anyway, you're more worried about the condition of your heart and your lungs; the risk of developing disease in your vital organs has increased, because your teeth have fallen out.

We all know to look after our teeth lest they become yellow and unhealthy and require painful trips to the dreaded dentist. But how many of us would take more care if we realised how much the state of our mouths can affect our overall health. "People think of the mouth as some kind of compartment that's independent from the rest of the body," says Ian Needleman, professor of restorative dentistry at the UCL Eastman Dental Institute in London. "But that doesn't really make a lot of sense."

A study published last month suggests there could be a link between low tooth count, and poor memory. Scientists at the University of Kentucky in America put people aged between 75 and 90 through a test in which they were asked to recall 10 words they had been presented with five minutes earlier. All the participants, who repeated the test over three consecutive years, were from similar educational backgrounds, but there was variation in their results. People with fewer teeth scored lower than those with more teeth in the first test – and their scores declined far quicker thereafter.

Dr Nigel Carter, head of the British Dental Health Foundation, which has called the University of Kentucky findings "breakthrough scientific research", says the memory tests "add to a growing list of evidence of the wide-ranging systemic links relating to poor oral health". Previous studies have linked bad teeth to Alzheimer's, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, lung disease and even miscarriage and premature birth.

In many cases, including the memory study, Carter says the precise nature of the links remains to be identified – but the association of oral and overall health is increasingly an area of concern among doctors as well as dentists. If our mouths are the entrances to our bodies, perhaps it's logical that we should keep the gates – our teeth – in good working order, but how do bad teeth lead to bad health? "Bacteria," says Needleman (yes, he's heard the jokes). And he doesn't mean the friendly ones. "The problem is dental plaque, the soft, white, sticky deposits that can build up around your teeth."

If left to accumulate, the 700 strains of bacteria that can exist in plaque can cause gum disease, or gingivitis, which affects an estimated 50-90 per cent of the adult population. Gums become swollen and red and can bleed during brushing. Left to get worse, gum disease can become periodontitis, where inflammation also affects the tissue between tooth and jaw. Avoid treating that and you could end up with acute necrotising ulcerative gingivitis, which is as awful as it sounds.

Once swelling starts in the mouth, it can quickly cause problems elsewhere, including the heart. "The mouth can increase inflammation throughout the body," Needleman says. "It can trigger the release of a large number of chemicals known as mediators, which are the same causes of the inflammation implicated in heart disease." A 2008 study by scientists at the University of Bristol found that, when bacteria in the mouth get into the bloodstream through the gums, it can combine with platelets in the blood to create blood clots. If these reach the heart, they can cause heart attacks in people who are otherwise fit and healthy.

Needleman identifies a second route for bacteria invading the body from their bunkers in the mouth. "Research by us and other groups clearly shows that, among patients in intensive-care units, poor oral health can lead to a very serious condition called ventilator- associated pneumonia," he says. "Dental plaque can cause the mouth to become a reservoir for pneumonia-causing organisms that can pass through the airways and the tubes of a ventilator. There is also evidence of a risk of more standard forms of pneumonia."

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Boris Johnson and Kelly Brook linked arms yesterday to launch the 2010 Mayor of London's Sky Ride, a free mass-participation cycling event to be held in the capital this weekend. Speaking to James O'Brien of LBC Radio, Mr Johnson mentioned that a "very vociferous heckler" had done their utmost to disrupt the event. "But Kelly... showed the sangfroid worthy of a Napoleonic battlefield in the face of the hurly-burly of British politics." Having consulted a linguist, I shall attempt to deconstruct Mr Johnson's convoluted simile: I believe "sangfroid" refers to the "cold-bloodedness" of the troops who suffered through the emperor's many violent campaigns, and to the calmness of the Mayor's comely companion. One imagines that, while considering Ms Brook's suitability for 19th-century warfare, he was thinking of the bitterly cold, featureless landscapes of Russia, as opposed to, say, the battlefield of Napoleon's greatest victory – at Austerlitz, the location of which is famed for its twin mounds, Santon Hill (700ft) and Zuran Hill (850ft).

* It's been a long August of wheelie bins and parasailing donkeys, and as the last of the tumbleweed rolls through the newsrooms of the land, word reaches me that Number 10 didn't even bother to hold its regular briefing for Westminster's lobby journalists yesterday, so little news was there to report. The reason given – in a last-minute email to journalists cancelling the briefing – was that the Prime Minister's official spokesman, Steve Field, had been taken ill, while his deputy, Vickie Sheriff, is away on annual leave. "We will do our very best to hold a lobby briefing later this week," the apologetic missive went on, "provided Steve is back in shape, and there is appetite for one among the members of the lobby." I tried to call Downing Street to convey my hopes for Mr Field's speedy recovery, but there seemed not to be anybody manning the phones. I blame the cuts.
* It would never have happened in Alastair Campbell's day. Field's predecessor remains reluctant to let go of his old role, taking to his blog yesterday to defend his former boss Tony Blair from the criticisms surrounding today's publication of Blair's memoir, A Journey . "Hatred of TB re his book," Campbell argues, "is a form of media madness." He also took a moment to describe his old mucker Lord Mandelson's contribution to the Labour leadership debate as "as unwise as it was unwelcome". He refers, presumably, to Mandelson's recent slights on Ed Miliband, the candidate whom Campbell himself implied (all of three months ago) would make Labour "feel OK about losing again" and was not up to "taking difficult decisions".

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There are many monikers attached to Mao Zedong. Mao the supreme leader; Mao the chairman; Mao the messiah; Mao the manipulator; Mao the one-time acceptable face of communist tyranny. By contrast, his balding pate was rendered in propaganda images with little variation. In badges, posters, paintings, wood carvings: the same half-smile, the sagging throat, the splash of red.

Unlike the Great Wall of China, Mao's chief legacy does not curve over hillsides or tower into the sky. The fear in people's eyes, the manipulation of history, ancient philosophy making way for political posturing – these things are not measurable. Estimates of deaths under his rule vary widely but even the most conservative soar into the tens of millions. And for his 10-year curtain call prior to his 1976 demise, Mao set about reorganising Chinese culture, annihilating, then re-building, a state from scratch. This "Cultural Revolution" saw public properties and cultural relics razed; religious architecture, frescoes, books and statues scorched; intellectuals and "counter-revolutionary" bourgeoisie persecuted. Meanwhile, Mao's all-seeing eye looked down, as reproduced in millions of posters and billions of pin badges. While condemning capitalism with one hand and embracing its mass reproduction techniques with the other, the Chairman made sure no home, school or workplace was free from his perennial gaze.

The face of Chinese communism may have changed, but Mao's features have become an unshakable part of the cultural landscape. From Andy Warhol's 1972 silk-screen portrait of Mao to the thousands of pieces of Cultural Revolution memorabilia now trading hands on the internet, the demagogue eventually won a place in the West's art history textbooks. Much of this arrived in this one historical period. A forthcoming publication, by the Birmingham-based academic Jiang Jiehong, called Red: China's Cultural Revolution, features previously-unseen reportage and hyper-real political pictures from the time. Such photographs, often taken in extremely trying circumstances, go some way to explain how the Cultural Revolution came to pass, and how its chief perpetrator cast such a long shadow over so many for so long.

"You look at a picture of Britain 30 years ago, and relatively speaking, it's not that different," says Jiehong. "But photographs taken during the Cultural Revolution seem like they're taken in a completely different world. That revolution proceeded like a tidal wave. You couldn't get away from its effects even if you tried. Whether you thought its repercussions were good or bad: this was not as important to me as how it was portrayed through the widespread employment of visuals and colour."

And what visuals. Black-and-white shots of teenage students holding Mao's writings aloft; Tibetan children shuffling through the pages of the chairman's Little Red Book of quotations; photographs of Party members smashing a Catholic church or pulling down a temple dedicated to Confucius; state-sanctioned plays and demonstrations. Then, the many portraits of Mao, often afloat on background seas of red. Whether walking to galvanise workforces, or addressing thousands at Tiananmen Square, his veneration is rendered absolute. People wore a total of two billion pin badges in 10,000 different designs to exhibit their allegiance (the bigger, the better). Children traded them as a kind of currency.

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Mobile phone image of the plane crash scene in Yichun, China. Photograph: Xinhua/Reuters

A Chinese passenger jet broke apart as it approached a fog-shrouded runway in the country's north-east and burst into flames as it hit the ground yesterday, killing 43 people and injuring 53 others, state media said.

The Henan Airlines plane with 91 passengers and five crew crashed in a grassy area near the Lindu airport on the outskirts of Yichun, in Heilongjiang province, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Xinhua quoted Hua Jingwei, a Yichun publicity official, as saying that some passengers were thrown from the cabin before the broken plane hit the ground.

The Brazilian-made plane had taken off from Heilongjiang's capital of Harbin shortly before 9pm local time and crashed a little more than an hour later, Xinhua said. China Central Television showed firefighters dousing the burning plane with hoses and later digging through the wreckage of the jet.

Xinhua said 43 bodies were recovered within hours of the disaster and 53 people were taken to hospital, most with broken bones. Wang Xuemei, vice-mayor of Yichun, told CCTV that three survivors were in critical condition but he gave no more details.

Henan Airlines is based in the central Chinese province of the same name and flies smaller regional jets, mainly on routes in north and north-east China. Previously known as Kunpeng Airlines, the carrier was relaunched as Henan Airlines earlier this year.

Henan Airlines and many other regional Chinese airlines flying shorter routes have struggled amid stiff competition in the past years, losing passengers to high-speed trains.

An American company, Phoenix-based Mesa Air Group Inc, was an original investor in Henan's predecessor company, Kunpeng, but divested its stake last year. Mesa operates regional services in the US for Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and other carriers and is undergoing bankruptcy reorganisation.

Expansion of air traffic in the 1990s led to a series of crashes that gave China the reputation of being unsafe. This prompted the government to improve safety, from airlines to air traffic management systems at airports.

The last major passenger jet crash in China was in November 2004, when an China Eastern plane plunged into a lake in northern China shortly, killing all 53 on board and two on the ground.

An MD-11 cargo plane operated by Zimbabwe-based Avient Aviation crashed during takeoff from Shanghai's main airport last November. Three American crew members died while four others on board were injured.

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Jamie Oliver is urging ministers to put more money into school meals as official figures show growing numbers of pupils are eating the healthy dinners his campaign inspired.

The benefits to children's health should prompt more government investment, said Oliver. Short-term financial pressures should not threaten the provision of nutritious school food, he added.

He spoke out after data from the government's School Food Trust showed the number of pupils in England eating a hot lunch at school had risen by 320,000 in the past year – an increase for the third consecutive year.

The figures contradicted health secretary Andrew Lansley's assertion last week that take-up had fallen since the quality of school meals was radically overhauled after Oliver's Jamie's School Dinners series in 2005. The programme revealed that many children were being fed chips and Turkey Twizzlers.

"Some people in government might look at the figures and think that it's now time to take the foot off the gas because it's a success story. That would be completely wrong," said Oliver. "Now is the time to move up a gear. This is the time for education and health departments to invest in those schools who still have problems with lack of training for dinner ladies or who suffer from having a dining area that's too small or uninviting."

He asked ministers not to let the progress made in pupils' eating habits be lost. "Investment now saves lives and [the] NHS billions in the future. We're on the right track with school meals. We can't allow anything to slow this down," he said.

But the Department for Education has refused to promise to extend the £80m-a-year subsidy, the school lunch grant, it gives local councils to help them provide the healthy school meals Labour introduced. It is guaranteed until the end of March 2011.

"All future spending decisions for after 2011 will be part of the comprehensive spending review in the autumn and we can't pre-empt the decisions or content," a spokeswoman said.

"Ministers want school in food to remain healthy and will set out decisions in due course."

The Liberal Democrat children and families minister, Sarah Teather, added: "We welcome the increase in the number of children getting a healthy meal in schools. We want to ensure school meals continue to be healthy and will set out the next steps for school food policy in due course."

The Children's Food Campaign wais concerned that widespread cost-cutting in Whitehall could risk future funding, making it difficult for councils to produce healthy meals at affordable prices.

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The government has acceded to the wishes of shooting groups and scrapped plans that would have freed millions of pheasants from small cages.

Jim Paice, the new farming minister, withdrew a new code of practice for the welfare of Britain's 40 million game birds last month after pressure from country sports organisations including the Game Farmers' Association and the Countryside Alliance.

His predecessor Jim Fitzpatrick placed the code before Parliament in May, in one of the last acts of the Labour government. It set out minimum space requirements for breeding birds.

Mr Paice, who killed it off days before it would have come into force, is expected to introduce a revised code within two months, without rules that would force farmers to use larger ground pens instead of raised wire cages.

Pro-hunting groups welcomed the move, saying they were confident the revised code would "address welfare concerns without imposing unjustified restrictions on game farmers". The RSPCA complained that the move meant birds would remain in cramped, unnatural conditions and is urging its members to protest to MPs.

Mr Paice's decision is the latest twist in a long-running controversy over the intensive rearing of pheasants and partridges for shooting. Although many people assume the semi-wild animals are reared on farmland, they only spend their last few weeks roaming around on moors after being bred and kept on specialist farms.

Two years ago the Farm Animal Welfare Council, the Government's veterinary advisers, expressed concern about breeding birds in barren wire mesh cages suspended from the ground. It also criticised the placing in their mouths of plastic "bits" to stop cannibalistic behaviour in the confined space and especially the use of mask-like contraptions called "bumpa-bits". "Birds were kept in a barren environment on wire floors, with minimal opportunity for seclusion," the report said. "Design appeared to be influenced more by cost and manufacturing requirements than welfare."

In March the Labour government published a Code of Practice for the Welfare of Game Birds that dropped a requirement to ban the cages, but specified a pheasant must have a square metre of space and a grey partridge half a square metre, together with guidance on space for perches and exercise. It also banned "bumpa-bits".

The RSPCA said, in effect, the code would have banned small cages and exposed any farmer using them to potential prosecution under the 2006 Animal Welfare Act. Farmers would have had to keep pheasants and partidges in larger pens built over natural ground.

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It's called Mett," one of my new German friends offers up helpfully as I prod tentatively with a fork at a mound of raw, pink pork meat surrounded by chopped onions. "Germans like to eat it for breakfast."

I have encountered many strange foods on my journeys around the globe, but I strongly suspect that, at this point, I am the subject of an elaborate Teutonic joke – that is, until my friend pushes past me and dives in. He helps himself to large spoonfuls of the meat, spreading it thickly on warm crusty rolls and then layering it with the chopped onions. His eyes roll back with pleasure as he takes his first mouthful, and he is soon returning for second helpings.

It may not have been my first choice for a morning meal, but in the spirit of "Go everywhere, eat everything" on which I have based the second half of my life, I think I should give it a go. I begin to fashion my own. My first bite tells me that the Germans are on to something. The crunch of the bread and the sharpness of the crisp onions is a perfect counterpoint to the creaminess the seasoned meat has taken on when minced so finely. It is not long before I am joining my friend to construct another Mettbrötchen.

One thing is for certain, however: if you are going to eat a breakfast made of raw pork, you had better be pretty damn sure where the pig comes from. And that, in fact, is the reason why I find myself sharing an unusual breakfast with total strangers some 100kms outside Berlin.

Porkcamp is the brainchild of Florian Siepert, a computer whizz who creates real-life happenings for internet communities. He has combined his knowledge of the online world with his passion for food to bring "friends" from all over Germany to the small town of Neuruppin-Lichtenberg, to experience at first hand the process of taking a pig to plate. "I want transparency," he tells me as I smear meat on to my second Mettbrötchen. "I want people to connect the fact that for us to eat meat, something has to die – to experience that at first hand and, of course, then to eat some great food."

More than 40 people are now gathered round the breakfast table of the Gut Hesterberg estate, where the inaugural Porkcamp is being held. They come from all walks of life. "Chefs, farmers and writers, most of them sturdy meat-eaters trying to get a bit closer to their schnitzel," as Florian put it when he emailed me my own invitation. We are split into teams: at one table is the "wurst" group; at another those who are going to make roast meats and head cheese (brawn); and at another, a group who have researched the perfect "Britisher Pork Pie". There is, however, only one choice for me, and I take a seat with five people who are already chattering excitedly about what culinary wonders can be created with pig blood.

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Should you be at a loose end in the country next Saturday night, in a field in Higher Ashton, not far from Exeter, you'll find a storyteller named Martin Shaw. He will be giving a rendition of the 13th-century European masterpiece Parzival – a tale of knights, loyalty, romance and the search for that pesky, elusive Grail. He plans to start his yarn before midnight and finish some time around daybreak. Bring coffee and a warm blanket, advises Shaw; it's an all-nighter, but not as you know it.

Shaw's marathon tale is one of the highlights of next weekend's Westcountry Storytelling Festival, a three-day extravaganza of myth, saga, epic and plain-old fairy story told by the top tale-spinners on the circuit. While it's not quite Glastonbury, it has slowly been gathering followers. "We started out nine years ago with a group of about 100 people gathered in a meadow in Devon," says artistic director Chris Salisbury. "Since then it has grown exponentially." It's a similar tale in South Wales at the Beyond the Border festival, which takes place against the dramatic medieval backdrop of St Donat's castle, perched on a cliff-edge. When it started in 1993, a humble three storytellers featured on the bill. Now there is a cast of 90 telling tales to an audience of a few thousand. It is the biggest festival of its kind in the world.

"Storytelling is an art form with deep integrity," says Salisbury. "It is so simple and stripped-down. A good tale well told doesn't need set design or costume. It's as if our lives have all become a bit complicated and this is what we seek."

The revival of interest in the art form can be traced to the mid-1980s when Hugh Lupton, Ben Haggarty and Sally Pomme Clayton formed a collective called the Company of Storytellers. The group spent the next decade tirelessly promoting its craft, teaching new blood how to spin a yarn and, crucially, persuading people that storytelling was a valid adult art form. "There was a misconception that stories were to be told only to people under the age of six," says Salisbury. "People began to realise this wasn't necessarily so."

Prior to this revival, the oral tradition had undoubtedly been on its last legs. One of the last remaining troubadours was Duncan Williamson, a Scottish traveller who had a repertoire of 3,000 riddles, tales and ballads he'd learnt at his grandmother's knee. He took to the road at the age of 14 to share his extraordinary knowledge, but died three years ago at the age of 79. "It really was a forgotten art form," says David Ambrose, festival director of Beyond the Border. "Our forebears knew all about it but we forgot how vital it was. I think it was a social thing, to do with the fragmentation of the family unit. I'm sure TV played a part, and the rise of literacy – we live in a world where things can be written down so we no longer have need to remember them."

Although storytelling occupies a territory somewhere between comedy, poetry and theatre, its reputation also suffered due to an association with crusty old men telling tales of goblins and dragons. "When it gets done badly, and it does, it is truly awful," says Salisbury. "It's a folk tradition which comes from the heart so you do get a right old mixture. At least at festivals there is a quality-control filter in place."

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