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A RECENT review of research from the last 50 years by scientists in the U.K. has determined that conventionally and organically produced foods, including meat and poultry, are no different in terms of nutritional quality or other health benefits.
The review was designed to meet very high standards, was peer reviewed and was published in the July 29 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, according to the research team.
The organic food industry is, worldwide, a $48 billion industry and continues to expand as consumers tend to believe that organic products have superior health and nutrition benefits, the team said. Although some previous reviews have drawn such conclusions, there has been no critical review of the literature to document health and nutrition differences in conventionally and organically produced foods, the team said.
The review was conducted by scientists at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, led by Dr. Alan D. Dangour of the school's nutrition and public health intervention research unit. It was commissioned and funded by the U.K. Food Standards Agency (FSA).
Dangour said the team searched abstract databases for details of papers in which researchers had measured and quantified the nutrient content of conventional and organic foods, searching abstracts from the beginning of 1958 to the end of February 2008. He said team members also contacted experts on the issue.
The papers reviewed had to demonstrate that a study was conducted with "rigor," he said, in that organically produced food has to be grown according to an organic certification scheme, provide breed evidence for livestock and crop cultivation explanations and provide details of laboratory methods and statistical tools used in analyses.
Team members analyzed data for 13 nutrients.
Informed choices
Dangour said more than 52,000 papers were found in the search, 162 met the first level of inclusion and 55 went into the analysis. From those, the team concluded:
* Conventionally produced crops had a significantly higher content of nitrogen;
* Organically produced crops had a significantly higher content of phosphorus and measurable acidity;
* There was no other evidence of a difference between conventional and organic foods in the remaining crop nutrient categories, and
* There was no evidence of a difference between conventional and organic meat products in the applicable nutrient categories.
Dangour said the team consequently concluded that there is no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality or quantity between conventionally and organically produced foods. He suggested that the crop differences in nitrogen and phosphorus were most likely due to differences in fertilizer use and ripeness at harvest and were "unlikely to be of any public health relevance."
Peter Melchett, policy director for the Soil Assn., a leading organic organization, said the review rejected "almost all of the existing studies" of the comparisons and said he was disappointed in the conclusions.
Gill Fine, director of consumer choice and dietary health at FSA, said the study was not intended to be for or opposed to organic foods but to ensure that consumers have "accurate information ... to make informed choices about the food we eat."
She said the study did not state that consumers should eat or not eat conventionally produced or organic food -- just that there was no evidence of nutritional differences between the two.
The complete report of the review is available at www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/organicreviewappendices.pdf. | 
