More on Organic food

I've had a bit more of a think about all of this over the weekend and
read a few things and shouted at a few scientists (via the newspaper
not face to face).

My main reflection is that organic production should not be seen in
isolation. It's not just about nutrition - in fact it's about a lot
more than nutrition.

I'm actually not wholly wedded to organic production, but what I'm
interested in is a different kind of food production, which often
includes organic principles, because it makes sense in that context.

So, for example, Swillington grow organically but what's much more
interesting is the stuff that goes on around that. The relationships
between local people and the farm. The community that's built up
around it. The wildlife that thrives on a diverse farm. The money
that gets spent locally.

And lets not forget in the nutrition debate that for veg to have any
nutritional value you have to actually eat the stuff. Buying from
Swillington, or from my local (non organic) farm shop is a wholly
different experience to buying veg at the supermarket. This may be sad
but it's actually quite exciting. In comparison supermarkets are
rubbish at selling veg.

The result? I buy more veg if I feel "connected" to it. Therefore I
eat more veg. I benefit nutritionally. Which is kind of the point.

Sent from my iPhone

Rob Greenland Social Business Consulting 07905 800 710 rob@socialbusinessconsulting.co.uk

Comments

[Rob Greenland]

I know it looks a bit untidy but I quite like the way the iphone written posts end up narrower on the blog. It makes it look like poetry, even if it doesn't read like poetry.

[Ted Harvey]

I believe that the core issues in all of this are the role and motives of the UK Government’s Food Standards Authority (FSA).

I have always had a healthy (no pun intended) skepticism about the positive health claims and the provenance of some organic food. I have, however, also always believed that the strongest argument in favour of organic is the levels of adulteration and pesticide contamination of conventional foods.

The FSA published a report last week casting doubt on the health benefits of eating organic food,

Today I find that detailed reports for the UK Government's Pesticide Residues Committee show that 46% of all their food samples were found to contain detectable levels of pesticides. Just over 25% contained more than one pesticide. In 57 cases the levels of contamination were so serious that they breached the government's safety limits

Was the FSA unaware of this impending report? Why did the FSA provide its report in the format it did and present it in the way it did? Both were almost guaranteed to evoke the ill-informed and self serving responses that were duly churned out by the mainstream media and food industry. I seem to recall the BBC reporting that ‘new evidence’ discounted the health benefits of organic – when in fact there was no ‘new evidence’. The FSA report was a (somewhat pointless) review of existing evidence, and as the Soil Association pointed out, this was a selective review.

Professor Andrew Watterson, head of the Occupational and Environmental Health Research Group at the University of Stirling is quoted today as asking, "Why did the FSA apparently frame the recent research project to exclude the human and environmental health impacts of so-called food contaminants?"

The Soil Association's Scottish director, Hugh Raven, said: "Many consumers buy organic food because they're worried about pesticide residues. The FSA itself recommends buying organic food if you want to avoid residues. Yet they were specifically excluded from this study."