While the Soil Association is pleased your columnist Dr David Delvin recommends looking out for the Soil Association symbol when buying organic (The Argus, March 17), he erroneously claims "there is no legal definition of the word organic".

This is currently true with textiles and health and beauty products but absolutely not true of organic food and drink.

"Organic" is a term defined by EU law. This means anyone who is using the term on food and drink products needs to hold a licence with an approved certification body such as the Soil Association. The EU has set basic standards for organic production and it is up to the individual member states to translate this into their own law.

In Britain, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is responsible for this. Any organic product imported into the EU must be compliant with EU organic baseline standards. This is overseen by local inspection bodies such as the Soil Association and the work of competent authorities such as Defra or trading standards.

Dr Delvin also claims there is little scientific evidence of organically produced food having nutritional differences or benefits compared to non-organic food. However, there is now a growing body of scientific and peer-reviewed evidence indicating significant nutritional differences between organic and non-organic food.

  • Marisa Vaughan, information co-ordinator Soil Association