Stanford Organics Study Misses the Point

While the lim­ited nutri­tion fac­tors the study com­pares showed mar­ginal dif­fer­ences at best, that’s a moot point. It’s not the nutri­tional fea­tures that dis­tin­guish organic from con­ven­tional food that are most rel­e­vant; it’s the safer, health­ier grow­ing prac­tices that define the organ­ics sec­tor that deserve focus. Safer and health­ier for the envi­ron­ment, farm­work­ers and wildlife. Safer and health­ier for human con­sump­tion. While the study’s con­clu­sion offers a pass­ing nod to this dif­fer­ence, its authors fail to rec­og­nize the over­whelm­ing impor­tance of the qual­ity of grow­ing prac­tices as the defin­ing dif­fer­ence between the two pro­duc­tion meth­ods. Their conclusion?

The evi­dence does not sug­gest marked health ben­e­fits from con­sum­ing organic ver­sus con­ven­tional foods although organic pro­duce may reduce expo­sure to pes­ti­cide residues and organic chicken and pork may reduce expo­sure to antibi­otic resistant-bacteria. [empha­sis added]

In the stud­ies they exam­ined, pes­ti­cide residues were found on 7% of organic pro­duce sam­ples, ver­sus residues on 38% of con­ven­tional pro­duce sam­ples. Given this one piece of data alone, their con­clu­sion is baf­fling. According to Dr. Charles Benbrook’s cal­cu­la­tions, using the same data used by Stanford researchers, the risk is even lower. His cal­cu­la­tions show “an over­all 81% lower risk or inci­dence of one or more pes­ti­cide residues in the organic sam­ples com­pared to the con­ven­tional sam­ples.” Wouldn’t such a dra­matic reduc­tion of ingested pes­ti­cides rep­re­sent “marked health ben­e­fits”? Based upon the study’s own review of what con­sti­tutes “organic,” con­sumers who buy organic are assured that they will avoid toxic chem­i­cals in their food, water, air and land. Exactly who doesn’t think that sounds like a safer, health­ier eat­ing experience?

The qual­ity and com­po­si­tion of the meat we con­sume is another crit­i­cal com­po­nent of the organic food land­scape. Antibiotic resis­tance is a huge pub­lic health con­cern, and it’s another rea­son why peo­ple buy organic meat. A recent Consumer Reports pub­lic opin­ion poll found that 72% of those asked responded that they were either “very con­cerned” or “extremely con­cerned” that wide­spread use of antibi­otics would lead to antibiotic-resistant super­bugs. The good news for organic con­sumers is that the Stanford study con­firms that organic food is safer in this regard. Where was that mean­ing­ful fac­toid in the head­lines we’ve seen in the media? Researchers actu­ally found that the risk of find­ing bac­te­r­ial resis­tance to three or more antibi­otics was 33% higher in con­ven­tion­ally raised grown chick­ens and pigs than in those that are organ­i­cally raised.

Putting their unre­mark­able basic nutri­tional eval­u­a­tions aside, the real ques­tion Stanford researchers needed to ask and answer is: What are the health con­cerns that moti­vate peo­ple to choose organic over con­ven­tion­ally grown foods? People eat organic fruits and veg­eta­bles because they are grown with­out the use of syn­thetic pes­ti­cides, her­bi­cides, genet­i­cally engi­neered seed, and sewage sludge. They buy organic meat and dairy because organ­i­cally raised farm ani­mals are not rou­tinely admin­is­tered syn­thetic growth hor­mones or antibi­otics, like their con­ven­tional counterparts.

Other ben­e­fits include the fact that these ani­mals are required to be pas­tured and fed a 100% organic diet, which can­not include poul­try lit­ter or ani­mal by-products. Certified organic prac­tices also require the humane treat­ment of ani­mals, which is not the real­ity for con­ven­tion­ally reared ani­mals. Moreover, all organic food must be cer­ti­fied by an inde­pen­dent third-party cer­ti­fi­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tion, which means that USDA-deputized agents annu­ally inspect organic farms and their records to ensure com­pli­ance with the Organic Food Production Act.

For peo­ple who reg­u­larly pur­chase organic food, it is incon­ceiv­able that food repeat­edly sprayed with toxic chem­i­cals has no long-lasting, detri­men­tal effects on their health. They under­stand that agro­chem­i­cals kill most, if not all, of the liv­ing organ­isms in the soil, and that adding syn­thetic fer­til­iz­ers to feed crops depletes rather than builds soil, as required in organic farm­ing sys­tems. Agrochemicals can leach into the ground­wa­ter, rivers, streams, and the ocean, dis­rupt­ing nat­ural ecosys­tems, killing aquatic life and caus­ing eutrophic “dead zones.” Organic con­sumers sup­port ecological-based farm­ing meth­ods that enhance the soil’s own nat­ural fer­til­ity through the use of good farm stew­ard­ship prac­tices, includ­ing com­post­ing, crop rota­tions and inter­crop­ping to attract ben­e­fi­cial insects and fix atmos­pheric nitro­gen into the soil. That way, plants uptake nutri­ents from the soil, and not from syn­thetic chemicals.

Despite some of the mis­lead­ing, shock head­lines that appeared when the study was first released, includ­ing, Stanford Scientists Cast Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Poultry (The New York Times) and Little evi­dence of health ben­e­fits from organic foods, Stanford study finds, (Stanford School of Medicine web­site), a more accu­rate and informed one came from the Organic Trade Association’s response, Stanford research con­firms health ben­e­fits dri­ving con­sumers to organic. This is good news for organic con­sumers and any­body who wants to join them. Good news that seems to have been hid­den from view in the Stanford report. In the end, the head­line we should be see­ing more and more came from Consumer Reports: Don’t Give Up on Organic Food.

Source: Center for Food Safety release