ISIS Report 26/08/09
UK Food Standards Agency Study Proves Organic Food Is Better ###################################################
"A cancerous conspiracy to poison your faith in organic food"[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 , ISIS publication). Not to mention a major study published March 2008 [7] by scientists of The Organic Center (TOC) in the United States, which finds that organic food is superior to conventional in more than 60 percent of proper "matched pair" 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 UK [8] and in the United States [9]. Thus, the variations in both conventional and organic samples were artificially inflated, and the chance of detecting significant differences correspondingly diminished.
Read the rest of this article here:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/FSAorganicFoodBetter.php
Or read other articles about organic agriculture:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/susag.php
UK Food Standards Agency Study Proves Organic Food Is Better
###################################################
"A cancerous conspiracy to poison your faith in organic food"[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 , ISIS publication). Not to mention a major study published March 2008 [7] by scientists of The Organic Center (TOC) in the United States, which finds that organic food is superior to conventional in more than 60 percent of proper "matched pair" 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 UK [8] and in the United States [9]. Thus, the variations in both conventional and organic samples were artificially inflated, and the chance of detecting significant differences correspondingly diminished.
Read the rest of this article here:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/FSAorganicFoodBetter.php
Or read other articles about organic agriculture:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/susag.php