In message , Alan Gould
writes
In article , martin
writes

What is important, is what consumers think they are buying in
supermarkets when they buy organic. Perhaps a bit of publicity is
needed to clarify this for the woman with the shopping trolley.

The woman and the man buying organic produce are protected by laws which
ensure that they are sold food of the approved organic standards. That
is of course organic as applied to food production, strictly regulated
and monitored. I agree that more publicity for it would be welcome.

That's why there are middle men doing dodgy deals to rebadge ordinary
produce with fake Organic(TM) credentials. There are several such
prosecutions in progress in Belgium at the moment for large scale
flouting of the laws related to selling on conventional produce as
Organic(TM).

This is inevitable since some conventional produce may be essentially
identical to the Organic(TM) stuff if it can be fitted up with suitable
false documentation the fraud is virtually impossible to detect
analytically. And the high premium that it commands encourages such
fakery.

Incidentally is Organic(TM) produce air freighted from Africa still
Organic(TM) when it reaches the UK ? By that point it will have used an
order of magnitude more petrochemicals getting it here than would be
applied to grow it locally even under the worst conventional farming
regimes...

The main problem with Organic(TM) is that it fails to solve the problem
of supermarket customers demanding cosmetically perfect fruit and
vegetables all year round. And the customer is always right.

Organic(TM) is a religion and not a rational way to proceed. Its entry
costs are too high and products are too expensive to make a major
impact.

Which is better for the environment ?

Getting 5% of farmers to use "no chemicals at all" and go Organic(TM)
or
Getting the other 95% to use say 50% less chemicals and accept slightly
lower yields.

I am no fan of over intensive farming. And the UK has a rather bad
public attitude to food as crude "fuel" which has put emphasis on
quantity over quality. In mainland Europe good food is seen as an
essential part of life - a viewpoint I subscribe to. You are after all
what you eat.

Minimum inputs is a far more reasonable approach but much much harder to
sell to the consumer than the Organic(TM) "no chemicals" slogan.

Regards,
--
Martin Brown