FoodNavigator.com in its Aug. 19, 2008, daily newsletter, posed the question to its readers, “Organics – fad or the future?” The Organic Center’s Chief Scientist Dr. Chuck Benbrook posted a response from his Oregon office, which we have excerpted on our blog for your review.

Organic food was once seen as a niche market but now major multinationals are offering organic products. In fact it has been one of the biggest trends in the food sector in recent years but do organics have staying power, or will consumers lose interest over time?

The scientific evidence linking organic production methods to enhanced nutrient density and lower food safety risks is growing more compelling. Two factors will define the future trajectory for organic food sales. First, whether and to what extent organic farmers and food companies focus on sustaining and expanding the inherent benefits in organic systems, e.g., by foregoing the temptation to push organic crop yields and animals beyond physiological limits where health is sacrificed to production. Second, whether and to what extent the rest of the food industry moves toward production systems and technologies that produce safer and higher quality foods.

Dr. Charles Benbrook, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, The Organic Center

A new study published in the latest issue of the Society of Chemical Industry’s (SCI) Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture claims that there is no evidence to support the argument that organic food is better than food grown with the use of pesticides and chemicals. However, The Organic Center’s Chief Scientist Chuck Benbrook, Ph.D., has the following to say about the study.

A study just out in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture is entitled “Effect of plant cultivation methods on content of major and trace elements in foodstuffs and retention in rats.” The Danish research team compared the retention of nutrients in rats fed a diet composed of organic and conventional dried fruits and vegetables. Only trace mineral levels were compared; no results were reported on vitamins, polyphenols, and antioxidants (nutrients that routinely are present at higher concentrations in organic food).

No differences were found in nutrient levels, leading the authors to suggest that such findings might dampen consumer demand for organic food. Some media outlets have picked up this finding, and have dramatically broadened it to support headlines and statements like “Organic food no more nutritious than conventional.” A review of the study’s experimental design, however, raises serious questions about whether this study’s results actually support the more narrow conclusions stated by the authors.

The team grew the fruits and vegetables in both the “conventional” and organic plots on soils that were previously managed organically. Accordingly, the conventional crops enjoyed all the nutrient-enhancing and plant-health benefits of heightened soil quality from prior organic soil management. Given the series of studies published in the U.S. in the last three years pointing to soil quality enhancement in organic systems as the major cause, or explanation of observed differences in nutritional quality, it is not surprising that this Danish study found no statistically significant difference in mineral levels in the organic and “conventional” crops that were harvested and fed to the rats.

In addition, the organic plots were grown under limited nitrogen, whereas the conventional crop was not. On the basis of the criteria the Center developed to judge the scientific validity of comparison studies, and used in completing our March 2008 report on the nutrient content of organic food, this Danish study is clearly “invalid” for purposes of comparing the nutrient content of conventional and organic foods.  

The study was carefully conducted and valid for testing the impacts of the production conditions embedded in its experimental design, but by virtue of this design, little weight should be placed on its findings in terms of the differences in conventional and organic management on crop nutritional quality. 

Source: Mette Kristensen, Lars Ostengaard, Ulrich Halekoh, Henry Jorgensen, Charlotte Lauridsen, Kirsten Brandt, and Suzanne Bugel. “Effect of plant cultivation methods on content of major and trace elements in foodstuffs and retention in rats,” Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 2008

In mid-July, the American Council for Science and Health (ACSH), an industry-funded organization that works on behalf of the pesticide, biotechnology and drug industries, issued a critique of the Center’s March 2008 report “New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods.“  The ACSH report was written by Dr. Joseph Rosen of Rutgers University.  

On July 23, Barry Estabrook of Gourmet Magazine posted a story on the critique, which provides a concise summary of Rosen’s comments.  His piece is entitled “Politics of the Plate — Fighting Words”.

The response by the five co-authors of the Center’s report covers the major points of the ACSH critique, and has been posted on the Center’s website.  Excerpts appear below.

“The American Council for Science and Health (ACSH) report by Dr. Joseph Rosen seems to accept, and does not argue with the factors we identified to screen published nutrient content studies for scientific validity. “

“But as he goes through the various sections of our report, he criticizes us for ‘cherry-picking’ results, excluding matched pairs where the results favor conventional food.  That is not what we did.  He misrepresents our methodology and offers inconsistent and illogical suggestions to correct what he perceives as ‘bias’ in our selection of the matched pairs of foods that were then used to compare nutrient concentrations. ”   

“We applied the screening method and selection criteria consistently, and in fact eliminated more results favoring the organic food in a matched pair than the conventional food.  Without our screening methods and criteria, the nutritional advantage of organic food would have been greater.”

By: Dr. Charles Benbrook, Chief Scientist, The Organic Center

Over 950 people have now gotten sick from Salmonella-tainted tomatoes, or peppers, or salsa, or who knows what.  The media have been so focused, and maybe weary of the tomato story, that a huge outbreak of E. coli O157 in processed beef products has gone largely unnoticed.  

What started out in early June as a modest recall of 531,707 pounds of beef processed by Nebraska Beef Ltd., has become a 5.3 million pound recall.  Over 40 confirmed cases of illness in Michigan and Ohio have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control.  Twenty-two people have been hospitalized, and one person has contracted the sometimes deadly complication hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS).  

The number of sick people associated with the Nebraska Beef contamination episode is sure to grow much larger because of the extraordinarily high current ratio of people hospitalized to total number of cases – 22 out of 41, or nearly 50%.  

Despite intense scientific focus on understanding the genesis of E. coli O157 and Salmonella, the many amazing steps and major investments by companies to keep these pathogens out of meat and produce, and the near constant red-alert status from FDA and CDC, the problem seems to be getting worse.  The tomatoes-or-whatever-Salmonella outbreak may prove to be the worst such outbreak in history by virtually every measure.

Perhaps changes are afoot in the food system that have fundamentally tilted the playing field in favor of these bacterial pathogens, and we had better look under some forbidden rocks if we want to reduce the frequency of illness, and human suffering associated with these major contamination episodes.

Mixing fresh produce from multiple locations in repacking sheds makes disease outbreak epidemiology extremely difficult.  Maybe it also makes disease outbreak prevention more difficult?  Is it time to rethink how produce moves from the farm to consumers, with the interests of public health driving the outcome, instead of shaving a few cents off of the way we move a case of tomatoes from Mexico, through Florida, to Boston?

Without a livestock market for the byproducts of ethanol production, the economics of corn-based ethanol goes up in smoke, and the net energy contribution goes from maybe barely positive to unspeakably disastrous, given how much taxpayers have invested in this “solution.”  But what about emerging evidence that E. coli O157 and mycotoxins are finding ways into the distillers grain byproducts of ethanol production that are fed to livestock?  Has anyone factored those costs into the net “benefit” assessment of corn-based ethanol?

The next time you see one of those sickening videos of a spent dairy cow being lifted with a front end loader, or shocked with electricity, or worse, so she can stagger onto the kill floor, think about what put her there.  

This can be, and sometimes is, one of the costs of pushing a dairy herd to produce 28,000 pounds of milk per year or more by feeding a ration so high in grain and energy, and lacking in forages and fiber, that the acid in her digestive system eats through her gut wall, creating an inside passage for bacteria that will then, in turn, challenge the best food safety systems.   

That cow gets into such run-down condition in part because of the effectiveness of the drugs that keep her producing, and bacterial counts down in her milk, despite the stresses she is under and the gradual breakdown of her body and organ systems.  

And last, think E. coli O157.  The increase in risk of E. coli O157 shedding by stressed out, sick dairy animals is well proven and may explain much of the recent increase in human cases.  The more E.coli O157 shed by stressed cattle, the more pressure on all our preventive systems and food safety technologies, from the spinach and tomato and pepper fields of the Salinas Valley and Florida, to the slaughterhouses of Nebraska.

One of the unrecognized benefits of a growing organic farming and food industry in America is that there is now close to a critical mass of people working to prevent the conditions that give rise to food safety problems.  The conventional food system and conventional farmers have accomplished much in increasing production and lowering food costs, but they have sometimes not paid enough attention to the food safety costs of doing business.  

Organic farmers and food companies do not have all the answers, and face some unique food safety problems of their own, but at least they are consciously pursuing a fundamentally different path where plant and animal health comes first, and higher production second.  

I am not alone among scientists who are convinced this is inherently the right approach to produce safe, nutritious food.  My gut sense is the big breakthroughs in advancing food safety are going to come from prevention, not better detection or more powerful chemical washes, or radiation.  

For this reason, the forces pushing and pulling organic production systems and approaches into the mainstream of the food system may do so at a pace and to a degree unimaginable a few years ago.

Note: Originally published in the July 2008 edition of The Scoop, a free monthly e-newsletter published by The Organic Center. To subscribe, visit www.organic-center.org.