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The Government's food watchdog today hit back at critics after its findings revealed organic food gives no additional health benefits.
The Food Standards Agency has been deluged by complaints since its claim last week. So extreme was the response that hate mail was sent to Dr Alan Dangour, the expert behind the 12-month study.
Now, in an unprecedented fightback, FSA chief executive Tim Smith has issued an open letter defending the research.
He said the study commissioned from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine was the "most scientifically rigorous" and independent review ever carried out into the nutrition benefits of organic produce.
In the letter, published on the FSA's website, Mr Smith added: "The Agency has complete confidence in the validity of the work carried out by the LSHTM."
Mr Smith branded campaigners "irresponsible" for wrongly claiming the report found organic food had higher levels of nutrients.
He said: "The important message from this report is not that people should avoid organic food but they should eat a healthy balanced diet and, in terms of nutrition, it doesn't matter if this is made up of organic or conventionally produced food."
Today's move by the watchdog will fuel the debate over organic food and if it is value for money.
This week, the boss of the Whole Foods organic food supermarkets admitted his shops sold "a bunch of junk".
John Mackey, chief executive of the American chain, which has a flagship branch in Kensington, acknowledged that organic food was not necessarily more healthy than conventional food, and said his own stores had lost touch with their roots.
A major criticism of the FSA report by organic food campaigners including the Soil Association was it excluded any work on the health impacts of pesticides. They say the use of chemicals is the main reason consumers shun food grown through conventional farming methods.
But Mr Smith said: "Pesticides were specifically excluded from the scope of this work. This is because our position on the safety of pesticides is already clear: pesticides are rigorously assessed and their residues are closely monitored.
"Because of this, the use of pesticides in either organic or conventional food production does not pose an unacceptable risk to human health and helps to ensure a plentiful supply of food all year round."
The £2billion-a-year organic industry is already struggling as a result of the recession. Some shoppers have been turning their backs on organic because it is significantly more expensive than normal supermarket food.
The London study was based on 50 years of research and studied more than 100 types of produce including vegetables, fruit and poultry.
Reader views (7)
I would certainly take the opinion of an entity that has been studing this for 50 years than from people's unfounded opinion. The reason they did not include pesticides is because this has been studied for decades and the fear of pesticides was found not to be a factor.
- Ruckus, Myrtle Beach USA
I wouldn't even consider that study a legitimate one. As for the boss of Whole Foods, John Mackey saying its selling a "bunch of junk" is preposterous. The service this store offers is great for vegetarians like me and people who are health conscious. This study was done to aim the market at buying Genetically Modified/pesticide/intoxicated/Cancer inducing/obesity causing foods.
- Juan Macy, San Antonio, United States
Organic foodies, like climate change nutters will never be convinced to change their beliefs. No matter how many scientific studies show the opposite of what they believe it is a quasi religion to them. if they are happy to pay way over the odds for food that has no nutritional benefit then let them. As they say " A fool and his money are soon parted "
- Duncan Walker, Ex Peckham now Thailand
Bob of Cheam - Not knowing anything about the subject just does not seem to stop you.
And your bringing of new labour into every discussion, whether it has anything to do with it or not is frankly a bore. I am sure if one were discussing astrophysics with you and what is, say, the nature of dark matter, you would allege that we could not see it because "Nu liebour" was deliberately hiding it! Grow up!
Unlike you, I actually went and looked up the studies that they had discounted. And it is quite clear why they ignored various studies on organic food because they did deal with the nutritional content of the food or were not sufficiently rigourous on such things as control studies.
For your information, I buy organic foods wherever possible for enviromental, animal welfare and taste reasons. The pesticide issue is a complete red herring.
- William, London, UK
The most compelling reason for buying organic (apart from pesticide avoidance) is to support and maintain our irreplaceable rural landscape and heritage. This includes farmers, farmworkers and rural arts and crafts.
I don't know anyone who buys organic produce in order to get a few more units of vitamin C.
- Sarahn, London, UK
I love it, they're determined that they're right even though large portions of their study they themselves deemed "irrelevant" because it didn't fit what they expected, they should all go to work for Nu Liebour.
- Bob, Cheam
One cannot make a scientific, unbiased and true and accurate assessment of organic food while taking the pesticide element out of the equation. The whole ethos of organic food is the fact that it is grown without pesticides and herbicides. I cannot really believe that anyone would agree that ingesting pesticides and herbicides is a "health benefit" so therefore avoiding food containing these products must be in the category of "an additional health benefit".
- Patricia, LONDON
