The health claim that organic food helps protect the body’s cells and molecules (lipids and DNA) from oxidative damage will not be legally allowed in the EU. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) ruled, in a scientific opinion published on Wednesday 20 October, that this claim has no scientific basis.
The application for authorisation was made under the EU Regulation on nutrition and health claims made on foods (Regulation 1924/2006, Article 14), and its scope concerned children’s development and health.
The applicant - the Competent Authority of Cyprus, on behalf of the Cyprus University of Technology - argued that organic food is characterised by its lower level of pesticide residues compared to food not labelled as organic.
However, EFSA noted that the application and human studies did not address the nutritional composition and pesticide concentration of these ‘organic’ foods.
In the absence of sufficient characterisation of the candidate foods for the health claim and the non-organic foods they are intended to replace, it concluded that it was impossible to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the consumption of organic foods and the contribution to the protection of the body's cells and molecules against oxidative damage. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)