UK Food Standards Agency Study Proves Organic Food Is Better

[Guest guest]

My Note: After the misleading information in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper,

I thought this important .

 

 

 

ISIS Report 26/08/09

UK Food Standards Agency Study Proves Organic Food Is Better

The results in its recent study appears to prove organic food is likely to

be better than conventional food by a probability of 99.95 percent _Dr.

Mae-Wan Ho_ (http://www.i-sis.org.uk/contact.php)

A _fully referenced version_

(http://www.i-sis.org.uk/full/FSAorganicFoodBetterFull.php) of this report has

been submitted to the Food Standards

Agency, and is available for _download here_

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(http://www.i-sis.org.uk/foodFutures.php) “A cancerous conspiracy to

poison your faith in organic foodâ€[1] was how food writer Joanna Blythman

referred to the latest report of UK Food Standards Agency (FSA that claimed to

find no nutritional difference between organic and conventional foods,

bringing to a climax the barrage of criticisms that greeted its publication

online at the end of July 2009 [3-5].

 

The FSA report is surprising, and contradicts a host of recent studies

documenting significant differences in antioxidants, vitamins and other

micronutrients, all in favour of organic food that we have reviewed in our own

report (see Chapter 20 of [6] _Food Futures Now: *Organic *Sustainable *Fossil

Fuel Free _ (http://www.i-sis.org.uk/foodFutures.php) , ISIS publication).

Not to mention a major study published March 2008 [7] by scientists of The

Organic Center (TOC) in the , ISIS publicat, which finds that organic food

is superior to conventional in more than 60 percent of proper “matched

pairâ€

comparisons, i.e., with conventional and organic crops grown side by side

at the same time. The TOC group is updating its review to include 15

studies that have appeared since.

My own reading of the FSA report uncovered its startling result - which

seems to have escaped the attention of the authors of the report and the FSA

- actually in favour of organic food, despite all the methodological

biases against such a finding. The FSA has long had an anti-organic policy, and

this latest attempt at discrediting organic food may turn out to be the

strongest endorsement of organic that anyone could have made.

Methods designed to exclude authentic studies and inflate variation

The review appears designed not to find in favour of organic in many

respects. It only looked at research papers with abstracts written in English,

and excluded the results of nearly half the papers found because they failed

to mention the organic certifying body. That would leave out all academic

studies potentially capable of providing the most rigorous and authentic

data. On top of that, it ignored more up-to-date research from the European

Union published in April this year, despite knowing this research was due

to be published [5].

What it did include were farm surveys and ‘basket studies’ of food that

can be purchased from retailers, where the crops were not at all comparable,

as they were not matched pairs (see earlier). To make matters worse, some

studies included were more than 50 years old, when nutrients in a variety

of foods were at significantly higher concentrations than they are today, as

documented for the Wh [8] and in the [8] and in [9]. Thus, the

variations in both conventional and organic samples were artificially inflated,

and

the chance of detecting significant differences correspondingly

diminished.

Results still came out clearly in favour of organic food

Despite these methodological flaws, the review did detect three highly

significant differences out of 11 nutrients that favoured the organic: a

decrease in nitrate of 6.7 percent (p = 0.003), and increases in phosphate of

8.1 percent (p = 0.009) and titratable acidity (an indication of ripeness in

fruit) of 6.8 percent (p = 0.01).

However, all eight remaining nutrients – vitamin C, phenolic compounds,

magnesium, calcium, potassium, zinc, total soluble solids, and copper -

appeared positive in favour of organic, even though they did not reach

statistical significance. If there were truly no significant differences

between

organic and conventional, one would expect half of the difference to be in

favour of conventional and half in favour of organic; the probability of

getting 11 out of 11 in favour of organic, according to the ‘sign test’ in

statistics, is (0.5)11, giving p <0.0005, which is miniscule. We can therefore

firmly reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference between

organic and conventional food. Contrary to what is claimed by the report and

the FSA, organic is really better, despite all attempts at fudging the issue.

The results are fully in line with successive reviews and studies [6, 7]

after all.

A lot missing in the FSA review

The review is very unbalanced as far as organic agriculture is concerned,

and extremely worrying if it is to be used by the Th government as a guide

to its food policy; especially as an excuse to promote genetically modified

(GM) food and feed. The T government is reported to be investing up to

£ 100 m in GM research projects in the developing world [10], when it has

singularly failed to convince its own citizens to accept GM food and feed.

The FSA review specifically did not look at levels of herbicides,

fungicides and insecticides or their proven negative impacts on human and

animal

health. It did not deal with the environmental consequences of conventional

agricultural practices in reducing biodiversity, increasing soil erosion,

destroying soil fertility and depleting water. Nor did it address animal

welfare, social benefits to local communities, or the significant contributions

organic localised agriculture can make to mitigating climate change, all

of which we have documented in detail [6, 10] (_Organic Agriculture and

Localized Food & Energy Systems for Mitigating Climate Change_

(http://www.i-sis.org.uk/OAMCC.php) , SiS 40). And our findings have been fully

confirmed in

other important publications such as the International Assessment on

Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development [11],

representing the scientific consensus across the globe that small scale local

organic

agro-ecological farming is the way ahead to sustainable food production,

in which GM has no place.

_http://www.i-sis.org.uk'>http://www.i-sis.org.uk/FSAorganicFoodBetter.php_

(http://www.i-sis.org.uk/FSAorganicFoodBetter.php)

Comment

_susan rigali_

(http://health./mc/compose?to=rbssj ) Comment left

26th August 2009 15:03:03

One of the most important and marketable traits of organic agriculture is

the flavor. It has been the basis of success in my 30 years as a

professional chef.