Organic Food

I would genuinely like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) on securing the debate, which is on an important issue. He has been through many of the issues that I wished to touch on and I shall try not to repeat what he said, but I will follow a generally similar line of argument. I would like to say first, as my hon. Friend did when he finished his speech, that I am not against better welfare for animals or better production methods on farms and trying to produce a farming product, whether it is an animal or a vegetable, of as good a quality as possible, with the least damage to the environment. There is a general consensus that that is a good thing. Unfortunately, the label ““organic””—which is a bit of a misnomer; as though there was some other kind of farming—has come to mean ““good”” and that all the rest is bad. That is inappropriate. Before getting into the detail of what I want to say, I shall quote C. S. Prakash, a famous and distinguished plant biologist, who said:"““Organic farming is sustainable. It sustains poverty and malnutrition.””" That is the worry with following the line of argument that many of the people who lead the organic movement follow. This debate allows us to explore two issues. First, what are the Government and the EU’s policies towards organic farming? Are they consistent? Is it right that we are putting subsidy and support into getting farms to transfer to become certified by the Soil Association, and is it right that that association is recognised as the certification agency? There is a larger issue, which concerns everybody in relation to the complicated issues that face people in this country and on the planet generally. How is science being helped to improve the difficult situations that people face in world farming and in trying to feed everybody on the planet and to ensure that people are not poisoned but have safe food? Those are the two main issues that my hon. Friend has allowed us to debate today. I shall not repeat my hon. Friend’s points about Rudolf Steiner and his bizarre beliefs about biodynamic agriculture and forces, except to slander him some more by reminding people that the man did join the Nazi party as well as holding those other strange beliefs. There is no doubt that when Lady Balfour set up the organic movement and the Soil Association, it was his ideas that she had in mind. In a sense, that would be completely irrelevant if the organic farming movement now was following sensible, rational, evidence-based policies, but then we get to people such as Patrick Holden, who ran the Soil Association. He dismisses the possibility and even the sense of having scientific tests on the claims that are made by the organic farming movement and the Soil Association. It is a similar position to that taken by the homeopathic movement. Basically, he says that organic farming is holistic, integrated and joined-up; therefore, it is not subject to scientific testing. That is mumbo-jumbo; it is hokum.