Looking with your eyes closed.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has not been a friend to the organic sector and it's recent rebuttal of criticism made by the Soil Association continues their antagonistic approach towards organic food.

Strange when it could be expected that the two would have a common goal: the quality of the food produced in the UK.

However the definition of quality is always the problem. The FSA take a very reductionist view of quality. For them if the matter can't be analysed to within an micrometre of its existence, they aren't interested. Conversely the claims made for organic food can be nebulous and too subjective to stand hard scrutiny.

Fortunately, the QULIF project, an EU project being co-ordinated at University of Newcastle by Carlo Leifert is starting to publish their findings. Scientifically robust, unlike somecalims made by organic advocates this work has should be taken very seriously. It has indicated that:

"organic food production methods resulted in

(a) higher levels of nutritionally desirable

compounds (e.g., vitamins/antioxidants and

poly-unsaturated fatty acids such as CLA and

omega-3) and (b) lower levels of nutritionally

undesirable compounds such as heavy

metals, mycotoxins, pesticide residues and

glyco-alkaloids in a range of crops and/or

milk.

Perhaps the FSA missed this long running EU funded study or perhaps they didn't look hard enough to find it.