Sir, - Con O'Rourke correctly notes (January 24th) that organic food tastes exactly the same as non-organic food, and provides no extra nutrition. The question is: why has the world organic food market grown to $22 billion, with predictions of growth to $100 billion over the next five years? Is that a fashion statement? Why are major supermarket chains undergoing large-scale conversions to organic?
The answer, which Con O'Rourke fails to address, is pesticide use. Pesticides sprayed in non-organic agriculture are manufactured to be invisible, odourless and tasteless to us, to permeate the skin of fruit and vegetables, and are not removed by washing. In 1940, the pesticide DDT came into wide-scale use but was eventually linked to cancer, reduced lactation and reproductive problems in humans and animals, and then banned in 1972. Thirty years later it still persists in the food chain. - Yours, etc.,
Rowan Dempsey, Gardiner Place, Dublin 1.