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Researcher struggles to show any benefit of "organic"
farming to human health
Dr James Irvine
Teviot Scientific at Comrie & Edinburgh
Filed 19 Jan 04
© www.land-care.org.uk
Kirsten Brandt is a Senior Lecturer at the School
of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle. During her
paper at the annual conference of the Soil Association that was
held in Edinburgh on 9 - 10th January she was hard put to it to
demonstrate any benefit of organic farming to human health.
She tried her best to please the 350 gathering
of the organic faithful by talking about averages and wide variations,
all of which amounted of course to conclusions with no statistical
significance. She was clearly in an unfortunate situation whereby
her work at Newcastle was funded by a massive grant from the politically
green orientated EU and she was talking to an audience of believers
in the organic movement who were not going to be interested in an
objective assessment of their faith unless it was to their advantage.
However, if she had really come up to the mark
as a scientist she should have uttered the words - not statistically
significant with regard to all the findings that she reported. Somehow
one had the feeling that the extremely efficient public relations
machine of the Soil Association may have prevented her from doing
so - or was she just scared of what the reaction from this less
than discerning audience might be?
Science to day is being much criticised
by the public for being less than trustworthy - too easily bought
when funds are short, and declining academic standards in many of
the UK's Universities. Dr Brandt could have enhanced her reputation
in the eyes of the general public - and scored a blow for science
in general - if she had demonstrated the integrity to state that
there was no statistically significant benefit in relation to human
health for food produced organically compared to that produced by
conventional farming methods. After all, she would have been simply
reiterating the same message as the Food Standards Agency had previously
reported (1), namely that:
"I consider that there is not enough information available
to say that organic foods are significantly different in terms
of their safety and nutritional content to those produced by conventional
farming"
Sir John Krebs, Chairman Food Standards
Agency
© www.land-care.org.uk
References
1. Editorial (2002). Food Standards
Agency does not Provide Support for Organic Farming.
See Environment Homepage, filed 14 Nov 02, www.land-care.org.uk
Click
Here to View
Postscript
The word "organic" in the title of this
article is put in inverted commas as fundamentally all farming is
in fact organic rather than physical as far as the growth process
of production is concerned. The lobby group, that believes in a
certain form of farming that discourages the use prophylactic veterinary
medicines and prefers homeopathy to veterinary science, cleverly
commandeered the name "organic" for themselves as part
of their superb marketing strategy. But, however good their marketing,
it does not detract from concerns about its validity.
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