OF&G :: The Blog

Sometimes you’re just left scratching your head.

Here’s a simple scenario: BBC One’s Countryfile does a piece looking at the state of the market for organic food. Fair enough.

In it they talk to people involved in organic food and get a rather perceptive take from a marketer on how the sector could be pushing itself (putting aside, for a moment, the fierce and constant opposition from the ASA and FSA to even the most innocuous claim made by organics).

You wouldn’t think there was anything more controversial than normal in any of that. But no. Wait a moment. Who’s this galloping over the horizon waving a red biro and a flag saying “I’m a licence payer too!”? Aha, tis the Crop Protection Association, which, according to Farmers Guardian, has complained to the BBC Trust because the programme didn’t include any representatives of non-organic food and farming…………………………………….

Can you hear that? It’s the sound of a gentle wind blowing tumble weed down the street as everyone stands still and tries to figure out what on earth the CPA people can have been thinking.

It seems the best they can come up with is that Countryfile was ‘favourable’ to organic farming while portraying non-organic farming ‘neutrally’. Yes, well, that would be neutral as in not part of the report in the first place.

Honestly, that fact that word had gone around the organic community that a piece was going to be on Countryfile should be an indicator  that it’s still rare enough to be noteworthy, so why the CPA’s Dominic Dyer is so rattled about non-organic farming not being part of the report is baffling.

At OF&G we have every respect for all UK farmers, which is probably why we WON’T be writing to the chairman of the BBC Trust demanding that organic farming is mentioned every time there is a report on non-organic farming on the BBC. Can’t say fairer than that.

Taiwan is marking its Organic Agriculture Day today and there are some comments from the Speaker of the country’s legislature that sum up a few key issues, as reported in the Taiwan News.

Much like what we heard at our Selling Organics: What’s the Story? conference last month, he’s talking about the growing scarcity of resources and the need to capitalise on forward planning and better explanation of what ‘organic’ means with regard to food.

And while organic is only a tiny, tiny part of the farming picture in Taiwan right now, they obviously have ambition and pro-active plans (is Australia listening?).

Here are some of today’s more interesting and useful news and opinion pieces we’ve been looking at:

• Saudia Arabia is in the process of setting up an organic farming structure and, judging by this piece, they’re going about it in all the right ways.
• The Evening Standard’s Jonathan Prynn notes Liz Hurley’s emphatic comments about the FSA report on organic food (of earlier this year) as she launched her own organic snack range.
• Farmers Weekly highlights the message from Natural England that environmental farming schemes must continue to be supported as the current arrangements approach the end of their life.

Somewhat strangely, the Food Standards Agency has felt the need to publicly dismiss the findings of a French study that called into question its own recently published and controversial report.

The FSA-funded research by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine made the claim that organic food was no more nutritious than non-organic. This has been disputed heavily by some heavyweight scientists around the world but, even so, led to some very damaging and misleading headlines about organic food.

Last week we highlighted here a French study that called the FSA/LSHTP findings into further question. That French report has since been highlighted by a number of media outlets and the FSA has come out fighting, claiming that the French used ‘diluted data’. Take a look at this piece by The Ecologist.

What seems immediately strange is that the FSA feels the need not only to defend its own report, but to attack the French one in the process. Why is a body that should be agnostic on such issues coming across as desperate to avoid having to officially recognise any empirical benefit to organic food and farming? Your thoughts on a postcard – or a comment below…

There’s an interesting study on organic food, including nutrition, that seems to run counter to the report published a few weeks ago on behalf of the Food Standards Agency.

The French Agency for Food Safety (AFSSA) begs to differ with the findings that proved so controversial in this country.

You can view the report, led by Denis Lairon, by downloading the PDF document here. It’s language is pretty accessible even for us non-scientists and it makes for an interesting counterpoint to the findings of the UK ’study’ that the FSA will no doubt lean on for years to come.

Just spotted this piece from Farmers Guardian flagging up a new round of funding from the Welsh Assembly Government for organic conversion.

That’s good to see, though there are a couple of caveats:

1. There is a small application window – 15 September to the end of the month
2. The available funding is limited to £700,000

That said, we’re pleased to see that arable conversion will be at the top of the priority list. More homegrown organic cereals are badly needed, hence our focus on an annual organic arable event.

Much more detail is available in the very comprehensive FG piece…

Once again the Food Standards Agency has managed to garner a boat load of silly season headlines for a report on organic food that tells us little but is likely to damage sales.

“No additional health benefits of organic food” is the gist of the coverage of this latest publication by the FSA. It’s the kind of headline that many people will take at face value – and that’s a huge shame.

The report is an analysis of a variety of studies from the last 50 years on organic food and nutrition. However, you could argue it’s flawed in a number of ways, not least because it deliberately ignores any study that doesn’t have an abstract in English. Given that a lot of work has been done by researchers outside of the UK, particularly elsewhere in Europe, this could lead to big holes in it.

In fact, look at the title: Comparison of putative health effects of organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs: a systematic review.

“Putative”. Take a look at this definition. It means “supposed”. So they’re comparing “supposed” health effects, not scientifically proven ones???

Now take a look at this from the report’s own executive summary:

In conclusion, because of the limited and highly variable data available, and concerns over the reliability of some reported findings, there is currently no evidence of a health benefit from consuming organic compared to conventionally produced foodstuffs.  It should be noted that this conclusion relates to the evidence base currently available on the nutrient content of foodstuffs, which contains limitations in the design and in the comparability of
studies.

So, what they’re saying is they have compared “limited and highly variable” data and they have concerns over the “reliability” of some of the findings. And there are “limitations” in the way some of those studies were designed and can be compared.

In addition, we’d say this report is somewhat unfairly jumping the gun. Very thorough research now being done will show some very clear nutritional benefits of organic food, maybe even by later this year. You can already read about some of the findings from the QLIF project here (in an article from 2007!). But of course by then the damage will have been done, if it hasn’t been already. As I write, this story is the ‘most emailed’ and second ‘most read’ on the BBC News website. That’s no doubt an awful lot of people getting this very negative message.

In essence the FSA has published a report that tells it nothing it hasn’t already said publicly. We can only hope it will find the funds to revisit this topic when we have heard from the very extensive, Europe-wide Quality Low Input Food study, currently under way and led by Carlo Leifert, at Newcastle University.

It’s not even that we’re being prickly and defensive for the sake of it here. If there are really no nutritional benefits to organic food (unlikely), and we can be told that as a fact, fine. But please, Powers-that-Be, don’t damage an already disproportionately credit crunch-affected sector with what can only be seen as a premature report based on, by the author’s own admission, unreliable data.

Organics does not sell itself on nutritional benefits. The key points of organic food and farming are that it has animal welfare at its heart, protects and enhances the finite resource that is our soil, doesn’t rely on chemical inputs or routine antibiotics for animals and has clearly proven benefits for wildlife. The FSA itself even says on its website:

“Eating organic food is one way to reduce consumption of pesticide residues and additives”

Of course we can argue until we’re blue in the face about the real benefits of organic food and farming. The truth is that the headlines alone will damage the livelihoods of hard working organic farmers and food producers. The FSA has an awful lot of power and responsibility in this respect. We wouldn’t ask it to sit on a report just because it was negative, but perhaps more thought should go into what it studies in the first place. Looking back at 50 years of data is going to skew anyone’s results. Science has moved on in just the last five years and will tell us more than we have ever known about organic food in the next couple of years. Perhaps they could have waited while a major project was completed?

Roll on the day that good, strong, scientific evidence emerges. It will.

In approximately half an hour OF&Gs’ Chief Executive, Richard Jacobs, will be delivering a speech to an audience at the

OF&G Chief Executive, Richard Jacobs

Royal Show which will include EU Commissioners.

Richard was invited to do this by Defra, in order to present a view from a certifier. His presentation will be entitled ‘Organic food and farming: setting the tone for a sustainable future‘.

It will address the capability of organic farming to meet the needs of the world food supply (as supported by more than one recent research study) and what organic practices have to offer to all farming in a future where circumstances are likely to dictate reduced reliance on agricultural chemicals and lower GHG emissions.