Zoe Williams: Did you fall for Swaddles organic swindle?
Saturday, September 26th, 2009This week Stansfield was given a 27-month prison sentence for his misdeed – buying perfectly ordinary food (pork pies, salmon, chickens …) from high street supermarkets, re-packaging it in reassuringly expensive wrapping, calling it organic, and selling it on at inflated prices to other retailers and via mail order. His wife and Russell Hudson, the operations manager, got community service for their part in it. Considering the scale of his offence – an annual turnover of £2.5m, a nauseating trading name (Swaddles Organic), a massive client base that, intoxicatingly, included Fortnum & Mason – 27 months is not a lengthy sentence, but it feels harsh. Sure, the crime wasn’t victimless. It had victims. But they were all asking for it. It’s a huge swindle, the organic market. The first and simplest reason is this emperor’s new clothes aspect that Stansfield made his money from: organic food is meant to taste so much better, and yet nobody can actually taste the difference. [...]
What’s the lesson to the buyer, though? Well, mainly, stop buying it. There is no consistent, demonstrable superiority to organic food. We already knew this, of course, because the Food Standards Agency has always stood against the organic industry making any health claims. This position it reasserted in July, having commissioned research that showed, again, “no important differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health benefits, of organic food”. David Pickering, the lead investigations officer from Trading Standards, said equably that buyers maybe weren’t looking for health benefits, they were looking for standards of sustainability and respect for the land. And this brings us to the other big swindle of the organic industry, the way it has appropriated concerns that reasonable people might well have – the humane treatment of farm animals, the avoidance of unnecessary foodmiles, seasonal eating – and grouped them all under its own umbrella, so that it is now impossible to be a person who cares about cruelty to a pig, and yet isn’t opposed to antibiotics. And it is impossible to be a person who is happy to eat seasonally, who actually isn’t spoilt and doesn’t want asparagus at Christmas, and yet isn’t against the use of pesticides. It is impossible to be a person who cares about food, but doesn’t need every cut of meat to be the best ever, who doesn’t need an Olympian chicken, who would happily eat a tough old campaigner. Even though almost all of us are this person.
Article continues. I’ve come to believe that people will believe anything. PETA will protest the killing of a fly by someone else while putting to death 95% of the animals in its own care. Vegans, those most peaceful of all eaters, have to kill to get their point across once in a while. It turns out trees have rights too, and the power of the State is necessary to preserve the dignity of plants and the rights of apes. I’m all for consenting and informed adults eating or not eating what they please. You can eat meat (the only source of the necessary nutrient B12 – just ask the Vegan Society) [thanks to Klint Finley for pointing out my error: animal products such as milk and eggs contain B12] and protect your brain in old age, or you can not eat meat and have your brain shrink. Not feeding your child what your child needs is murder and deserves to be punished as such. But for goodness sakes, if you’re going to indulge in food superstition then have a sense of humor about it, enjoy what you eat and try not to fall for every health hoax that comes your way.