The organic movement is taking a heavy hit from a new report
published in the Annals of Internal Medicine today.
Dr. Dena Bravata says organic food is no more nutritious
than regular food and that much of what’s marketed in the United States has
never been properly inspected to ensure it is meeting organic-movement
standards.
Mischa Popoff, a former organic farmer and
organic-organization inspector, commented on the study for the Heartland
Institute of Stanford University, said the "dirty little secret" about inspection is now out of the bag.
Dr. Bravata found that some organic foods had marginally
more nutrients than conventional and genetically-modified crop varieties.
She also found that the organic food had slightly lower
pesticide residues and fewer antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
But her main finding “flies in the face of claims being made by organic
activists that organic food is always much more nutritious, purer, and hence
safer, than conventional and biotech food,” the Heartland Institute said in an
e-mail sent to me.
The e-mail also says “Heartland supports the principles and philosophy
of organic food production and is always quick to stress that honest organic
farmers – of which there are many across America – support the concept of
organic field testing because they have nothing to hide, and everything to
gain.
“Sadly though, domestic organic farmers fill only a small and
ever-shrinking minority share of the $30-billion-per-annum market for organic
food in the United States. The rest is imported from countries with notoriously
lax environmental standards, such as China, Mexico, and Brazil. And that food
always, believe it or not, comes with the USDA’s good name on the label. And
it’s all based on paperwork, without a single test to verify purity or
nutritional value.
“No wonder Dr. Bravata’s study reads like a bad report card your kids
would rather you didn’t see. We hate to mix metaphors at Heartland, but it
would appear the organic cat is well on its way out of the bag.”
