ORGANIC FARMING:
“There is no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic foods” declared Jill Fine the Food Standard� Agency director of dietary health� according to an in depth article by Chris Gourlay� in the Sunday Times (2nd August 2009) .
A different view was expressed by Richard Dunn of Chew Stoke Somerset (letter Times 1st August) who points out that the author of the report, Alan Dangour, is reported as saying he was not qualified to look at pesticides.� Dunn writes, “I cannot but wonder why he was chosen to undertake a study where a key argument is that pesticide residues in non-organic food are detrimental to health”!
It does make you wonder why the FSA commissioned this report specifically into “public heath”, when organic farming is about the soil and freedom from pesticides and not about nutritional benefits which may or may not be there.
None the less lets look at the report. The objective declared in the paper (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, July 29 - why was it published in an American Journal?) was “We sought to quantitatively assess the differences in reported nutrient content between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs”.
Nutrition is not just about individual nutrients but about the interaction of nutrients. In Table 1 they report the differences between individual nutrients and their significance but not the difference in the cluster.� All quoted are positive for organic with the exception of nitrogen which fits with the use of nitrate in chemical fertilisers which could have been treated by cluster analysis that would have included vitamins and anti-oxidants. ���So they are examining the differences of individual nutrients, not as stated in the “objective” nutrient content which is a holistic concept.
They claim to have analysed 52,471 articles, identified 162 studies (137 crops and 25 livestock products); of which only 55 were of satisfactory quality. What they are really should be saying is that they could not find enough evidence to make an analysis worth while and research needs to be done.� �If you can only use 55 studies out of 52,471 articles then the topic is insufficiently researched. This is hardly surprising as I happen to know a serious farming community which proposed to DEFRA to conduct a serious analysis of the organic and free-range versus non-organic outcomes and it was turned down.�
Moreover, how many of these studies examined “health benefits”? None I would guess.� To support a claim for health benefits, you need a randomised clinical trial with specified outcomes in identified health benefits.� So if there are no specific randomised clinical trials on specific health benefits of course it would be true for the FSA to say that “There is no evidence of additional health benefits “. The FSA knew the answer before it commissioned the work.
Organic farming is about a means of caring for the plants and soil: hence the name “Soil Association”.� �Recently the Soil Association has taken on board the certification of animal production and here one can see where the fallacy lies. �The Sunday Times article, provides a set of guidelines on what counts as “organic” (a silly name as all food is organic). One �of the questions is “is free-range organic”. The answer is only if the hens are fed certified organic food.
Here lies the problem where intrinsically organic farming is not about human nutrition and never was. You can have organic sugar but does that make it any better for you? If you feed chickens on organic corn and have that available all night long in the hen house then even if you open the doors to acres of woodland,the chickens will have stuffed themselves , �and be reluctant to venture outside and work fpr their food. �Hence they end up being grossly over fattened if not obese and moreover because they have been eating organic corn they will only get the omega 6 fatty acids and lose out on the omega 3.� The primary source of omega 3 fatty acids is green food such as grass, clover, �and tiny animals that live on green foods. The omega 3 fatty acids are the ones your brain needs to function and to protect against heart disease.
So the difference between organic chickens and genuine free range chickens is a strong case in point where organic is unlikely to be better from a nutritional view point.
On the other hand David Thomas reported a serious decline in the trace element content of fruits and vegetables since the 1940s. [The mineral depletion of foods available to us as a nation (1940-2002)--a review of the 6th Edition of McCance and Widdowson. Thomas D. Nutr Health. 2007; 19(1-2):21-55].� This analysis was criticised because of changing analytical methods. However, that criticism was uninformed as the most precise method in biology is measuring weights which is the�� starting point for quantisation of any metal.� The precision in weighing in this dimension was as good at the turn of last century as it is today. What has changed is clever ways to read and printout the results.
The point about Thomas’s analysis is that such changes in basic foods that are not processed, must� have been derived from changes in farming methods.� This is where care for the soils whether by organic or good farming practices would be expected to make a difference. �The AJCN paper� does mention magnesium, copper and zinc .� However, they do not deal with the wider issue of trace elements which includes not just the individual� amount but balance of trace elements such as cobalt, chromium, manganese, iodine, copper, iron, selenium, zinc and boron. They were not examined in the paper which is understandable as the data is not there. The research has not been done. DEFRA turned it down!�
To my mind what this paper does is to make a case for research but research properly done and analysed not on just individual micronutrients but also on the balance for optimum efficacy and the effects on fats and fatty acids which vary widely depending on method of husbandry. When it comes to animals there is need for research on free range and extensive methods of husbandry not just on organic. Again, a serious proposition was put to the EU about 4 years ago but like DEFRA, they turned it down. With rising brain disorders overtaking all other burdens of ill health and BSE as a clarion symptom of bad production methods, a proper, scientific investigation into food production methods is long over due.
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