Ok - I know this will not make me popular, but the organic food movement is something that I find quite frustrating. I completely understand that people want to eat well and look after themselves and their families. I also acknowledge that 'organic' as certified by the soil association is a useful
label which makes it easy to identify food that should be better for you, and you will find some organic products in my fridge too.
What I object to is that some of the claims about organic food are really not quite as straight forward as is sometimes made out, and that the organic movement is touted as the only answer to food quality, good land management and wild life conservation. I find it frustrating that it is almost impossible to begin a conversation that another approach could be equally as good, such as the 'Farm Assured' program (
http://www.igd.com/CIR.asp?menuid=115&cirid=1354) whose approved products can be found in most supermarkets with this marque:
and the LEAF program - products approved by which can be found in Waitrose with this marque:
There are also organisations such as Real Meat Company
(http://www.realmeat.co.uk/) and many others like it who are dedicated to good animal
welfare and meat production from breeds that are good for flavour and animal health rather than mass production - and making equally sure that farmers get a fair price for their product by selling direct to consumers. This is a particularly
acute issue given British farming, is in a whole pile of trouble financially, and needs the support of the British public more than ever.
There are three main claims about organic food that I have trouble with:
(1) that organic food is clearly nutritionally better for you;
(2) that no chemicals are used in organic food production; and
(3) that organic food production is better for the environment per
se.
It is sadly arguable whether any of these statements are true. Many have put the arguments as to why the above statements are weak far better than I can so I'll just pick out a few points here:
(1) On the whole there is scant scientific evidence that organic food is better for you. Recent studies have found nutritional variation between organic and non-organic, suggesting higher levels of certain micronutrients in organic foods, but the differences are small and its very hard to scientifically prove that organic is better. The Soil Association has actually got hammered by the Advertising Standards Authority for making claims that organic food is 'more healthy' because there is simply no scientific proof that this is true.
One key issue flagged up by admittedly an old, but the most comprehensive study to date:
Woese K., D.
Lange, C.
Boess & K. Werner
Böel (1997). ‘A comparison of organically and conventionally grown foods: results of a review of the relevant literature’. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 74: 281-293 ) is that production method alone is just too narrow as a basis to guarantee nutritional quality:
"Even when the sampling methods are of the same type, a great many factors have to be taken into consideration which are not directly related to the production system but which do influence food quality to a large degree."
ie just because something is produced organically or in a particular doesn't mean its going to be measurably better. There are lots of other factors to consider, storage and transport just being two.
Tellingly - overall the authors concluded:
"With regard to all other desirable nutritional values, it was either the case that no major differences were observed in physico-chemical analyses between the products from different production forms or contradictory findings did not permit any clear statements".
2. There is a permitted list of chemicals that Soil Association farmers can use for each type of crop production, needless to say only available if you apply directly to them for a copy rather than on their website (I'll confess I'm not a fan of the Soil Association!). These include copper sulphate and other really quite
unpleasant chemicals. I struggle to understand why a 'non-
synthesized' chemical that is highly toxic should be considered better than the product of over 100 years of research into pesticides and fertilisers that are designed to be as non-toxic and leave as little residue as possible.
3. British farming has some of the highest standards in the world. To suggest that you can only have good land management and wild life conservation if you are organically farming as a practical matter is simply wrong, and frankly I find makes an indefensible comment about the intelligence and skill of the 95% of farmers in Britain who are not organic certified. Rotation of crops, hedgerow management, sensitive maintenance of woodland and farm land with a view to wild life breeding seasons, good animal husbandry, limited application of pesticides and fertilisers - this is simply aspects of good farming not just organic farming. I agree that organic farming is likely to be better for the overall environment than a very intensively farmed one, but to claim that it is automatically better than the other 95% of British farming is highly questionable.
So, having passed comment on organic farming I should probably say what I think about how you can be sure your food is of good quality and well produced. This was summed up best for me by an old friend, who last year I helped set up a birthday party for some 100 guests in the Isle of Man. The family is an Isle of Man farming one, and looking at the spread of food we'd set out she commented with
satisfaction that 'its almost all Island food' in the same way that a London dinner party hostess might comment 'its all organic'. What my friend meant was that the food was produced on well run farms in strong communities, no more than one or two days ago (other than the meat which had been properly hung and delivered from a butcher down the road) and it had travelled for max 20 miles. That is something pretty easy to do on the Island, for those of us who live in London, for example, its a bit more tricky.
What you can do is look out for schemes in the supermarket where food has not travelled far or has been produced recently (the M&S Field to Fork and Best of Season schemes are quite good), buy where you can from farm shops and farmers markets, look out for rare breeds (Clarence Court eggs are a nice example
http://www.clarencecourt.co.uk/) and buy your meat from a good butcher or companies like the Real Meat company. For fish look out for the Marine Stewardship Council label (http://www.msc.org/):
and there's a great deal of information on the Marine Conservation Society's website http://www.mcsuk.org/. A good example of the difference these points can make is potatoes - freshly harvested raw potatoes have a greater level of vitamin C per gram than oranges. Stored commercially for up to a year (as is standard practice for organic and normal potatoes) that level can drop by more than 2/3
rds. So, look out for schemes that indicated how long ago said potato was in the field.
