Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 1 August 2009
This week the Food Standards Agency published 2 review papers showing that organic food is no better than normal food, in terms of composition, or health benefits. The Soil Association’s response has been swift, receiving prominent and blanket right of reply: this is testament to the lobbying power of this £2bn industry, and the cultural values of people who work in the media. I don’t care about organic food. I am interested in bad arguments. Theirs has three components.
Firstly, they say that the important issue with organic food is not personal health benefits, but rather benefit to the environment. This is a popular strategy from losing positions: “don’t talk about that, talk about this“. It is diversionary, and we can separately talk about the environmental issues with organic food, but right now, we are talking about the health benefits.
Secondly, they say that the health benefits of organic food are related to pesticides, are positive, and cannot be measured by the evidence that has been identified and summarised in the FSA paper. This, again, is gamesmanship.
Either you are proposing that there are health benefits which cannot ever be measured (because it is too hard to disentangle the health benefits of eating organic food from other beneficial features of peoples’ lives, for example, when you measure their health in a 30 year study). In this case you have faith, which is not a matter of evidence.
Or you are proposing that there are health benefits which could be measured, but have not been yet. In this case, again, you have faith rather than evidence, but you could at least start recruiting researchers now, using your £2bn, to investigate your beliefs with fair tests.
And thirdly, sadly, like many industries in a corner, the Soil Association seek to undermine the public’s understanding of what a “systematic review” is (which itself causes collateral damage to everybody’s ability to engage in debates on evidence).
They say that the report has deliberately excluded evidence to produce the answer that organic food is no better. The accusation is one of “cherry-picking”, and it is hard to see how it can be valid in the kind of study conducted by the FSA, because in a “systematic review”, before you begin collecting papers, you specify how you will search for evidence, what databases you will use, what types of studies you will use, how you will grade the quality of the evidence (to see if it was a “fair test”), and so on.
Now: what are the Soil Association angry about the FSA report ignoring? As an example, from their press release, they are “disappointed that the FSA failed to include the results of a major European Union-funded study involving 31 research and university institutes and the publication, so far, of more than 100 scientific papers, at a cost of 18million Euros, which ended in April this year”. They gave the link to www.qlif.org.
I followed this link and found the QLIF list of 120 papers. Almost all are irrelevant. The first 14 are on “consumer expectations and attitudes”, which are correctly not included in a systematic review of the evidence on food composition. Then there are 22 on “effects of production methods”: here you might expect to find more relevant research, but no.
The first paper (“The effect of medium term feeding with organic, low input and conventional diet on selected immune parameters in rat“) while interesting, will plainly not be relevant to a systematic review on nutrient content. The same is true of the next paper, “Salmonella Infection Level in Danish Indoor and Outdoor Pig Production Systems measured by Antbodies in Meat Juice and Faecal Shedding on-farm and at Slaughter“: it is not relevant.
Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of these are unpublished conference papers, and some of them are just a description of the fact that somebody made an oral presentation at a meeting. The systematic review correctly only looked at good quality data published in peer reviewed academic journals, and with good reason: we know that conference papers are unreliable sources of information, often change between conference and publication, and, in fact, we know that conference papers are often never published at all.
This raises the issue of transparency: we want the methods and results of scientific research to be formally presented, and accessible by all. If a government report on anything relies substantially on unpublished and inaccessible research then we are correctly concerned: in fact, I raised such concerns, two weeks ago, because the key piece of evidence presented by the Home Office to justify retaining DNA from innocent people who have been arrested was an incompetently presented piece of unpublished and incomplete research.
I could go on, but in reality, this is not about organic food. The emotive commentary in favour of organic farming bundles together diverse and legitimate concerns about unchecked capitalism in our food supply: battery farming, corruptible regulators, or reckless destruction of the environment, where the producer’s costs do not reflect the true full costs of their activities to society, to name just a few. Each of these problems deserve individual attention.
But just as we do not solve the problems of deceitfulness in the pharmaceutical industry by buying homeopathic sugar pills, so we may not resolve the undoubted problems of unchecked capitalism in industrial food production by giving money to the £2bn industry represented by the Soil Association.
irishaxeman said,
August 4, 2009 at 12:29 am
Just distinguish between the so-called organic movement (a business) and the local production and consumption of naturally produced food. The local stuff generally tastes better, costs less, has no air-miles and supports local producers. The only place where this is otherwise an issue is London (where many journos and suchlike live artificial lives) or when some of these get out into the real world and have a Sunday supplement epiphany.
I also suggest that as far as intensive farming is concerned, the principle is ‘put crap in, get crap out’. That is not the same thing at all as a marginal organic/non organic argument.
adrian said,
August 4, 2009 at 9:58 am
GidAbove is right: the FSA website claims that there are “no important differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health benefits, of organic food when compared with conventionally produced food”.
However the research on which this claim is based does support this statement. Its conclusions say that there is “no evidence of health benefits from consuming organic compared to conventionally produced foods” and that “no evidence was detected” of differences between organic and conventional foods in respect of the majority of nutrients . It also laments the absence of high quality studies on these subjects.
It is a shame, then, that the FSA claims it does not have an axe to grind, being “neither pro nor anti organic food”. If that were the case, wouldn’t the proper headline be something like “we just don’t know whether organic food makes any difference – and we would like to find out”?
Could it be that the FSA has been leant on by…someone?
JimCooper said,
August 4, 2009 at 11:33 am
I generally like your work, Ben, but I’m going to call you on this one. Like the entire rest of the media, you’re claiming things that the study doesn’t say.
The study quite clearly states that it has a narrow focus:
“The focus of the review was the nutritional content of foodstuffs”
From there, all the media, including you, sadly, trumpet that organic food has no health benefits.
Now, I fully agree that the Soil Association have always been on a hiding to nothing with their claims of better nutrition (and taste, too, I seem to recall). Their responses to the research have been as you say, largely based on faith rather than evidence.
But jumping from “no nutritional difference” to “no health benefit” is just plain dishonest. Especially as the report makes clear it does not claim any such thing.
I had expected better.
Dead Badger said,
August 4, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Totally agreed, Ben. I was more irked with the FSA for overstating the research’s findings than anything, seeing as how it gives the Soil Association a (semi-)genuine reason to bash the review. It absolutely doesn’t excuse the SA’s own misrepresentations, which are both more egregious and more varied. It really is depressing to see how much the beta-carotene figure is being bandied around, as if it had been proven that organics contain more.
I agree also with the last two paras; by making environmental ethics marketable, what you’re really selling is not environmental policy, but peace of mind. Once the consumer gets the warm fuzzies from buying what they perceive as “organic” (however that’s defined), it becomes a race to the bottom: who can provide this label for the least cost? Undoubtedly a lot of organic producers are indeed conscientious types who put genuine effort into their certification, and genuine thought into their environmental impact. Many more, however, will simply be trying to churn out the most produce with that green “O” on it, collecting the increased margins with the least possible effort.
Evidenced-based policy really shouldn’t have a cycle of marketing and consumer consciousness inserted in the loop. This is a system that induces us to spend tens of billions of dollars a year on tap water; do we really want to leave custody of the environment to a body that is just as much a marketing entity as Coca-Cola?
“Irrigate your crops with cool, refreshing Dasani – it’s Nature’s choice!”
minime said,
August 4, 2009 at 1:29 pm
@benko
Thank you Benko, you have helped to solve a problem that I have been restling with some time now.
I have a theory about how the force of gravity is implimented: When I let go of an object, let’s say it’s a tennis ball, my theory is that an invisible green monster grabs it from my hand and drags it to the floor.
Although my theory fits all the observational data, my problem is that I can’t find any evidence to support it. And although I beleive it most sincerely, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that I might have to concede that my theory is fanciful based on the lack of evidence.
Your assertion, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, is of course a great help. I shall ignore my inner doubts that my position for what is no more (currently) than a leap of faith is possibly floored. I can now confidently assert that my theory is worthy of deeper consideration by the scientific community and I shall pursue my theory with renewed viggor.
Thanks you again.
Dead Badger said,
August 4, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Could someone (minime, for example) point out to me where benko said “…and in the absence of evidence, we should all believe whatever bollocks we want”? Because I think I must have missed that bit.
jonnie falafel said,
August 4, 2009 at 3:01 pm
@staphyolcoccus#39… I appreciate Bens point I was only arguing that to keep the argument on these narrow nutritionist grounds is to perpertuate a misunderstanding about the benefits of organic food… as I wrote I don’t care about minor differences or similarities in nutritional content…. and that it doesn’t follow from this report that organics are bunkum. It even irritates me when Rennee What’shername (founder of Organic Planet) gets a spot on the news and simply insists that Organic is better nutritionally as if that was all there was to recommend these production methods.
A digression – I’ve never found organic box schemes to be pricey and wondered if anyone had actually done the comparison. There’s a supplier in the North (won’t say which one as I’m not here to push anything) that does a comparison on their website and that suggests it’s actually cheaper.
MedsVsTherapy said,
August 4, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Here would be my reason for buying organic, if I were to bother: from WWII, the chemical industry became a great deal more advanced, and so did money-lending, here in the U.S. The chemical companies figured out two ways to sell more chemicals: fertilizers and pesticides. These were increasingly marketed to farmers, who did realize greater yields. The outcomes from pesticides are debatable, but the fertilizer results were bounteous. As humans are wont, farmers devoted time and space to the more bounteous, profitable crops. They became very good at this. Because of increased yields, they moved toward mono-culture. Monoculture favors bugs, so they needed the pesticides, too. At the same time, they decreased the style of farming varied crops, which is called “putting all of your eggs in one basket.” They also began to borrow money for things such as seed, fertilizer, pesticide, and equipment (tractors, etc.) because this was a time of monoculture bounty. You need a wider tractor, and bigger silo, to harvest a bigger crop. No problem: borrow. The chemical company reps (is this beginning to sound familiar?) heavily promoted fertilizer, and pesticides. On shaky evidence. Yields were good. So good in fact that the cost of grown/harveted food (fruits, veg, pulse) in our U.S. diet fell drastically. However, as nature is wont, weather, bugs, sun, etc. introduced something called “variability,” the enemy of borrowing-against-anticipated-yields. Farmers went broke by the scores in the 1970s. This was too much for even Willie Nelson or Neil Young to rescue. They did not go broke because they were no longer able to grow things. They went broke because they borrowed against expected future yields. Farmers have known for all civilized time that nature involves variability (this wisdm reflected in Ecclesiastes and Solomon’s Proverbs is probably quite late documentation of this common knowledge). Farmers from 1950s to 1970s believed that chemicals, as touted by the chemical companies, could defy age-old wisdom. There is a word for farmers who believe they can defy age-old wisdom. It is called “unemployed.” I have heard it said, although I have no evidence, that before pesticides, farmers lost 1/3 of crops to pests, and after pesticides, farmers lost…1/3 of crops to pesticides. That would be my motivation to avoid pesticide-laden foods: these are the same chemical companies that have convinced 10% of us here in the U.S. that things are so bad that we need to be on psych meds.
MedsVsTherapy said,
August 4, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Doughboy: this was funny!
“call me naive but isn’t the mortality rates in both free range and intensive methods of poultry production running at around the 100% mark.”
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%.
minime said,
August 4, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Well, to be fair Dead Badger, I haven’t had the resources to look for my invisible green monster or to trawl the scientific literature, studies and papers to see if anybody else has. Yet when faced with a well researched study which fails to find any evidence, The Soil Association, which can lay its hands on ample resources should it wish to, chooses to find questionable ways of dismissing it. Although I still hope and beleive that I will find my invisible green monster one day, I’m not so sure which one of us is taking the most ludicrous position.
Dead Badger said,
August 4, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Again, benko made no reference to what one should assume in the absence of evidence. He merely noted that if you claim something has been disproven, it’s traditional to actually have evidence disproving it first. Given the study’s numerous caveats regarding the quality of available evidence and the massive error bars on several of the results, this seems a perfectly reasonable point to make.
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.
lasker said,
August 5, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Organic food tastes better.
(To me, yes. But even a double blind study showing no taste benefit would have no relevence – To me!)
So it is more nourishing – to my psyche.
(Well that’s that one sorted.)
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.
Clam77 said,
August 5, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Ah, I think I just fell in love. Finally Ben a reasoned argument about the actual matter in hand, the robustness of the evidence base, without the emotional ranting on the subject matter. Although I notices you couldn’t resist a last dig at the homeopaths, shame on you.
mb said,
August 5, 2009 at 7:49 pm
The question of pesticides and their effect on health is a serious one. The problem with the evidence is that what we need are long term studies, and in addition we need studies that do not focus on a single product but look also at interactions. These are difficult studies at the best of time, but who is going to fund them, especially when vested interests are threatened? In the meantime people will have to make their own judgement. Not so long ago there was no clear evidence that smoking was bad for you, and tobacco industries fought hard to keep things that way, so people had to make their own judgement. If they decided that they did not want to smoke or to spend time with smokers, they probably were mocked as being “posh”.
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.
Litesp33d said,
August 6, 2009 at 6:42 pm
I am educated with a science bias and think homeopathy and anthropomorphic global warming is bollox. So much for some background. I also read a lot and try to filter information to see what lies behind the headlines. However that does not mean that I think everything that touches this area is also bollox.
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.
lasker said,
August 7, 2009 at 5:33 pm
New study. So what?
Rigorous maybe. So what?
Unscientific response by the soil association.
Well really, what do you expect?
Many people defending organic produce do so on the simple basis that it tastes better.
They want to enjoy their food. End of.
Why the fuck should they care about some new study?
Caledonian1976 said,
August 11, 2009 at 5:03 pm
So many people using the argument along the lines of Dead Badger’s at 61.
“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.
Dead Badger said,
August 14, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Absolutely they should. I didn’t say otherwise.
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?
Dead Badger said,
August 15, 2009 at 10:58 am
Weird – my above comment only appears when I’m logged in. Testing, testing, one two one two.
loening said,
August 20, 2009 at 10:41 pm
“No difference” may be the answer, but what was the question? I would have put it the other way before starting the review: Is it possible that ‘conventionally’ produced food is as good as organic? Then the answer comes out as ,Yes, even if suprisingly. But even that is not sound science. Since we do not know why fruit and veg are good for you, only that they are (from long experience?), it makes no sense to measure just a few known nutrient contents. You can conclude , as the FSA did, that they are no different in the chosen nutrients, but whether the health-promoting product are similar remains an open question. The onus is on the conventional to show that we can get away with it. (What are the “diseases of civilisation”?)
I would like to see some proper repeats of Sir Albert Howard’s experiments with oxen in India between the wars, and I’d like to see this done on soils that have been organically husbanded for at least 5, maybe 10 years, before they can be called truly organic. This is because soluble added nutrients/fertilisers inhibit mycorrhiza and probably some other soil micro-organisms which create the conditions for healthy crops, leading to healthy animals and presumably healthy humans. There are good and documented biochemical reasons for this and it take time to re-develop the soil eco-systems. There was a lost opportunity to get some statistics during the foot and mouth epidemic; to see whether long-term organic farms suffered less. Meanwhile, I grow and eat organically; perhaps I’m reasonably healthy only because I don’t eat ‘junk food!’ We do have some pests in the garden, mainly mice and jackdaws – they like the food too!
loening said,
August 21, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Also weird – I have the same problem as Dead Badger, my comment appears only when I’m logged in. So you won’t be able to read my wisdom either!
What’s wrong?
loening said,
August 21, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Something was wrong in transmission: I’ve copied my comments and am submitting again.
“No difference” may be the answer, but what was the question? I would have put it the other way before starting the review: Is it possible that ‘conventionally’ produced food is as good as organic? Then the answer comes out as ,Yes, even if suprisingly. But even that is not sound science. Since we do not know why fruit and veg are good for you, only that they are (from long experience?), it makes no sense to measure just a few known nutrient contents. You can conclude , as the FSA did, that they are no different in the chosen nutrients, but whether the health-promoting product are similar remains an open question. The onus is on the conventional to show that we can get away with it. (What are the “diseases of civilisation”?)
I would like to see some proper repeats of Sir Albert Howard’s experiments with oxen in India between the wars, and I’d like to see this done on soils that have been organically husbanded for at least 5, maybe 10 years, before they can be called truly organic. This is because soluble added nutrients/fertilisers inhibit mycorrhiza and probably some other soil micro-organisms which create the conditions for healthy crops, leading to healthy animals and presumably healthy humans. There are good and documented biochemical reasons for this and it take time to re-develop the soil eco-systems. There was a lost opportunity to get some statistics during the foot and mouth epidemic; to see whether long-term organic farms suffered less. Meanwhile, I grow and eat organically; perhaps I’m reasonably healthy only because I don’t eat ‘junk food!’ We do have some pests in the garden, mainly mice and jackdaws – they like the food too!
loening said,
August 21, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Curioser and weirder – my re-try only appears when logged in, whereas these little weird comments including Dead Badger’s, appear without log in . See what this one does.
loening said,
August 21, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Still trying – maybe both opur comments were too long. Here is the first half of mine:
Something was wrong in transmission: I’ve copied my comments and am submitting again.
“No difference” may be the answer, but what was the question? I would have put it the other way before starting the review: Is it possible that ‘conventionally’ produced food is as good as organic? Then the answer comes out as ,Yes, even if suprisingly. But even that is not sound science. Since we do not know why fruit and veg are good for you, only that they are (from long experience?), it makes no sense to measure just a few known nutrient contents. You can conclude , as the FSA did, that they are no different in the chosen nutrients, but whether the health-promoting product are similar remains an open question. The onus is on the conventional to show that we can get away with it. (What are the “diseases of civilisation”?)
person22 said,
September 2, 2009 at 10:22 am
Fair enough they shouldn’t be making claims about health benefit if there aren’t any; but it is relevant that “the important issue with organic food is not personal health benefits, but rather benefit to the environment” and also the health of the workers. The problem here is that a moral issue is getting confused with an issue of personal health and the soil association isn’t helping by continuing to argue on the wrong grounds- I certainly never heard anyone arguing that organic is healthier on the grounds of there being stuff in organic that isn’t in non-organic food-rather that all the pestecides herbecides etc. aren’t good for our health- which, stupidly, isn’t adreesed in these reviews.The soil association isn’t great but neither are chemicals in our food, the environment, or workers bodies. The moral imperative has always been greater than the health side.
nickuk72 said,
September 8, 2009 at 8:00 am
SteveGJ – The Phonetic pronunciation of Loch is not Lock. Talk about making a bad situation worse. Surely this forum is about dispelling ignorance?
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Jack McStewart said,
February 5, 2014 at 6:53 pm
Ben Goldacre, this is a poor and unhelpful article. You say:
‘Secondly, they say that the health benefits of organic food are related to pesticides, are positive, and cannot be measured by the evidence that has been identified and summarised in the FSA paper. This, again, is gamesmanship.’
But the FSA article clearly states in the Executive Summary: ‘This review does not address contaminant content (such as herbicide, pesticide and fungicide residues) of organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs.’
Furthermore, you simply can’t separate the issues of organic food for human health and for the health of the environment. Human health is inextricably linked to the health of the environment. Your article is a symbolic case study for how reductive thinking is not always the most logical.