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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 justifiably being much
criticised by the public for being less than trustworthy - too easily
bought when funds are short, and declining academic standards in
some 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 demonstrated the integrity to state
that there was no statistically significant benefit 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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