The Soil Association has stated (for a long time) that organic food is healthier and more nutritious. Shouldn’t they have evidence to prove that?

Absolutely they should. I didn’t say otherwise.

The whole disproving argument is the fallback of those with no other argument. It’s the ‘faith’ argument. It’s the Celestial Teapot argument.

I’m not arguing in favour of organics. I don’t buy them and think they’re a waste of money. I just think research should be described properly. Bonkers, innit?

“He merely noted that if you claim something has been disproven, it’s traditional to actually have evidence disproving it first.”

The Soil Association has stated (for a long time) that organic food is healthier and more nutritious. Shouldn’t they have evidence to prove that?

Studies have been done to try to prove their assertion. Many people eat organic food. Surely it wouldn’t be that hard to find conclusive evidence, and if the evidence is so small that it can’t be found, it’s not even worth bothering about (and perhaps doesn’t even exist).

The whole disproving argument is the fallback of those with no other argument. It’s the ‘faith’ argument. It’s the Celestial Teapot argument.

And as for the “it tastes better” difference – do the Pepsi Challenge. Most people have such rubbish tastes that they couldn’t tell the difference if challenged, and base their ‘taste buds’ on knowledge.

Always follow the money. I do not know how much money the UK spends on food every year compared with the £2 billion that the organic market is said to be worth. I do know that according to Chartered Institute of Environmental Health UK consumers throw away over £10 billion worth of perfectly edible food every year.

So it follows that the organic food industry at £2 billion per year, of mainly small producers, is less likely to have influence with the FSA than say a certain burger company that UK consumers spent £10 billion with in 2006. That is one company. £10 billion. I also recognise that some in the organic food industry are full blown knit your own yoghurt members. But not all.

The point I’m getting at is that suppose it had been found inconclusively that organic food was better. What chance would there be that the information would get out?

This report is that the FSA can find ‘no evidence’ that organic food is better. But I have heard reports like this for years. No evidence that vitamin C is beneficial to humans until they find it. Bees are too heavy to fly until slow motion photography shows they fly like a helicopter rather than fixed wing. No evidence that omega fatty acids are good for you until they find it. What do you mean there is more omegas in organic milk and eggs. Hmm! We better prove omegas are unhealthy then.

Funnily enough something beneficial usually gets discovered about the time that some multi-national food / drug / supply company has a process in place to make it. It takes about 17 years for fringe ideas to become adopted by mainstream. Naturally of course some fringe ideas are total bollox. Bits of coloured glass as crystal therapy spring to mind. However some mainstream ideas are total bollox also like Religion and global warming.

So you do your own research (and you better do because people with a vested interest do not have YOUR interests at heart) and pays your money and makes your choice.

What the FSA report, by implication, is suggesting is that if they can find ‘no evidence’ that organic is better, it does not matter if you eat any old shit because it is all the same. Now because the organic food business is tiny compared to other food business, will this ‘revelation’ be more of a benefit to ‘big processed food’ and ‘big fast food’ or organic?

In the meantime the UK population is killing itself with obesity. So if it does not matter what you eat why is this happening? You can’t see what you don’t want to see. It would cost too many vested interests too much. After all even after multiple law suits to the contrary the tobacco industry will still try to claim there is no conclusive evidence of a link between smoking and cancer. And the new consumers of tobacco, people in the third world, are not likely to live long enough to complain.

So what do I think I know.

Farmland no longer sits fallow. In order to get high food production massive amounts of synthetically produced fertiliser (The Aggro (sic) chemical industry benefits from this) are used producing food with lower amounts of vitamins and minerals than some 50 years ago.

Farmers

Farmers have a 70% greater risk of developing prostate cancer than non-farmers.

Compared with older men in the general population, older farmers were found to have a higher rate of skin cancer, high blood pressure, arthritis, and hearing problems.

Now which part of the population handles a higher proportion of organophosphates as fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides in their day-to-day life?

I’ve seen what modern farming does to the land and how what is produced is processed close at hand. I married a farmer’s daughter. If it makes no difference how the food is produced or what chemicals are used on the land or what drugs are pumped into animals why do we set limits about what is safe for humans to ingest?

Are we living longer? Well that is a debatable question. Visit any cemetery and you will see people lived long lives 100 and 200 years ago. Infant mortality was massive though, which meant the average life span was shorter. A child dies at 6 months and an adult lives to 90. Average life span 45 years. So because we are improving infant mortality the average life span is increasing and because of this the overall population is bigger and so more people are reaching 100. But not as a percentage of the population. In Africa average life span is declining. Not because of AIDS (although that is not helping) but still because of infant mortality.

So you do your own research (and you better do because people with a vested interest do not have YOUR interests at heart) and pays your money and makes your choice.

I’ve done my research. I believe organic food tastes better, I believe organic has more nutrients; I believe organic seems expensive because we don’t yet realise the true cost of mass production. I believe the newspaper headlines do not reflect what the FSA have actually said. I think some organic info is bollox. But not all.

You believe what you think. It’s your life and your body.

Also, the “cui bono” question is always a very important one, so when Ben mentions “the £2bn industry represented by the Soil Association” it is worth saying that even so they are still minnows in the big agro industry landscape.

Likewise there are many other subjective reasons why people might prefer organic food. Eg: Better living conditions for livestock, a more aesthetically pleasing countryside with hedgerows, benefit to wildlife from land left fallow, a yearning to protect traditional ways of life.

The soil association was formed by people who feel passionately about the benefits of organic food. Surely it is perfectly valid for them to use “Bad Science” to defend what has been attacked by “Good science”.

“Good science” in this case garners spurious authority from its scientific rigor when in fact its insights are qualified and only partially relevent.

If you’re objecting to the Soil Association’s dissembling stance, fine. They are indeed highly annoying. But you didn’t reply to the SA; you replied to someone who was saying something quite different, with a post that was almost completely irrelevant to what they actually said.

For a school project we raised a couple dozen chickens. Getting to 10% mortality was easy; 90% a little challenging; the final percentile required the help of a friendly (sadistic? merciful?) volunteer since we singled one poor, sick, limping, sleepy cluck out of the flock to avoid “processing.” So, my personal observation supports your “naive” view that chicken-qua-food mortality approaches 100%.