Organic food is expensive but its authenticity is inconsistent. Can consumers trust it?

Organic vegetables, organic rice, organic eggs……

Nowadays, various organic foods are expensive but of inconsistent authenticity; please see our reporter's in-depth market investigation——

Organic food, can we trust it?

Confusion of true and false: Is organic food easy to recognize?

The concept of organic food is vague, and most consumers do not understand the specific differences between organic vegetables and ordinary vegetables

“Organic vegetables are vegetables grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers.” Gao Mingyue, from Lubei District, Tangshan City, Hebei Province, usually pays close attention to food health issues and has relatively high requirements for vegetables consumed in daily life. “Occasionally I go to large supermarkets to buy organic vegetables, mainly because I feel they are healthier than ordinary vegetables.”

Recently, hearing that an organic lifestyle experience restaurant had opened near her home, Ms. Gao felt it was novel and immediately invited a few friends to taste it. “The restaurant environment is mainly green, with pictures of various vegetables hanging on the walls. As soon as you enter, there are promotional posters introducing the organic restaurant and organic food.”

According to the restaurant manager, this organic lifestyle experience restaurant had just opened not long ago, introduced the world's advanced biological low-carbon agricultural technology, and established its own demonstration farm to produce organic food. The restaurant adopts a “direct supply of organic food” method, delivering directly from the production farm to the restaurant. Because it is in the trial operation stage, the current price of “organic vegetables” is not much different from ordinary vegetables, and “it is hoped that preferential prices will help promote the organic restaurant.”

However, Ms. Gao learned that the restaurant can currently only guarantee that the vegetables used are organic, while grains, meat, and other foods are still ordinary foods. Ms. Gao also had doubts about whether the restaurant provides organic vegetables. “There are quite a few customers in the restaurant, but everyone comes with the mentality of trying something new. Whether what we eat is organic vegetables, we are not sure either. After all, it is only the seller's own claim.”

Consumers find it difficult to tell true from false, and many salespeople are not familiar with organic food either. The reporter randomly visited some vegetable markets and supermarkets in Beijing. In most vegetable markets and small supermarkets, no organic vegetables with labels were found. When the reporter found supermarket shopping guides and asked whether organic vegetables were sold, they first pointed to several kinds of green vegetables in a corner and said these were them. When the reporter then asked why these “organic vegetables” had no labels, they said they might not be organic vegetables after all, and that none were sold there.

Most consumers are not clear about the difference between organic vegetables and ordinary vegetables. “Even with so-called organic vegetables, after buying them you still have to wash and soak them carefully.” Ms. Gao said.

“When buying organic food, I mainly check whether the product packaging has a circular ‘organic mark,’ but I have also heard that many organic certification marks can be bought with money, so I am not very certain about the authenticity of such marks.” Ms. Gao said that salespeople always praise organic food extravagantly, but whether organic food is true or false, there are always doubts in her mind. “I have also bought organic rice and eggs, but the taste was not good either. After buying them once, I did not want to buy them again.”

High prices: Is organic food worth it?

Prices close to “sky-high” deter many consumers; if the price is too different from ordinary vegetables, buying organic food is not worth it

“Usually I go to the vegetable market near my neighborhood in the morning to buy fresh vegetables. After all, organic vegetables are too expensive, and I cannot easily afford them.” Fan Lin, a resident of Chaoyang District, Beijing, told the reporter that according to advertising, organic food feels healthier, but the price of organic food is too high, and vegetables are needed every day. After weighing the options, she still chose ordinary vegetables.

At a Walmart supermarket store in Chaoyang District, the reporter noticed that vegetables were roughly divided into 3 areas, namely ordinary bulk vegetables, packaged green vegetables, and organic vegetables. Organic vegetables were also specially placed in refrigerated cabinets for storage, while the other two were only placed on ordinary shelves.

The reporter carefully compared vegetable prices and found that organic vegetables, green vegetables, and ordinary vegetables differed considerably. For example, ordinary carrots cost 0.98 yuan per jin and round eggplants cost 2.5 yuan per jin; among green vegetables, carrots cost 6 yuan for a box of two and round eggplants cost 7 yuan for a box of one; while among organic vegetables, carrots sold for 25 yuan per box, with only 3 carrots in each box, and round eggplants cost as much as 25 yuan each. Prices close to “sky-high” deter many consumers, and very few customers walked near the organic vegetable sales area.

“These vegetables are sold by the piece, all packaged, and you can just scan the code directly.” Supermarket staff told the reporter that even if consumers know something about organic vegetables and know that organic vegetables are better than ordinary vegetables, the high price is still unacceptable to most consumers.

Opening a web page and searching for organic food, the reporter saw that many websites selling organic food were beautifully designed and offered different things. Organic vegetables and fruits, meat, poultry, eggs and dairy, grains, oils, rice and noodles, aquatic products and seafood, and other foods were dazzling in variety. Some websites also offered activities such as trial tastings and customer picking, and the prices of organic food remained high and aloof.

During the interviews, the reporter learned that the authenticity of organic products and their prices are the two major points consumers care about most. So why are organic vegetables so expensive? Are they really worth the money?

Mr. Kong is a salesperson at an organic food company in Chengdu. He told the reporter that the production cost of organic vegetables is higher than that of ordinary vegetables. “The company has multiple specialized production bases in Chengdu, Xichang, and other places. The soil and water sources at the bases must be monitored at least once a year, and multiple spot checks are also conducted each month. Each variety undergoes scanning for 109 pesticide residues and monitoring for 5 heavy metals. The annual testing cost reaches more than 500,000 yuan.”

Mr. Kong said that not only is the cost of the production stage relatively high, but after harvesting, all stages including transportation, preliminary processing, and distribution must not be contaminated and require strict control, so naturally the price is relatively expensive.

“Organic vegetables focus on the health and safety card, but consumers have a scale in their hearts. If the price differs too much from ordinary vegetables, it is hard for them to be attractive.” Fan Lin said.

Nutritional misunderstanding: What exactly is good about organic food?

Compared with green food and conventional food, organic food has no nutritional difference; it only imposes strict restrictions on pesticide residues, food additives, genetically modified ingredients, and so on, ensuring the natural state of the food

“I often see green vegetables and organic vegetables in supermarkets. Besides being healthier, are these vegetables somewhat more nutritious than ordinary vegetables?” Wang Xian, a consumer in Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, has always been confused about the various “certified” vegetables on the market.

Industry experts said that organic food should be naturally produced, processed without pollution, have complete production and sales records, and be certified by the National Organic Food Development Center under the Ministry of Environmental Protection. It eliminates the use of chemical substances, non-natural genetically modified species, radiation, hormones, and other non-natural production methods, avoiding hidden risks such as pesticide residues, artificial additives, and antibiotics. Green food, however, is allowed to use pesticides and chemical fertilizers in the production process. But overall, compared with green food and conventional food, organic food has no nutritional difference. For example, organic vegetables and ordinary vegetables do not differ much in trace elements. Essentially, organic food only imposes strict restrictions in the production method on pesticide residues, food additives, genetically modified ingredients, and so on, ensuring the natural state of the food.

In September this year, the Certification and Accreditation Administration of the People's Republic of China released the China Organic Industry Development Report. The report shows that over more than 20 years, China's organic industry has developed rapidly. By the end of 2013, China had a total certified organic production area of 2.722 million hectares, with 7,894 organic production enterprises, and organic products covered four major categories: plant, animal, aquatic, and processed products. A relevant person in charge of the Certification and Accreditation Administration said that in recent years, the administration has successively revised and issued the Organic Products national standard, the Implementation Rules for Organic Product Certification, and the Measures for the Administration of Organic Product Certification, implementing whole-process management of organic products in planting and breeding, production, packaging, certification, sales, and other stages, and implementing traceable management of organic codes with “one product, one code” for organic products, bringing China's organic industry onto a standardized and legalized development track.

Although the state has promulgated many rules and regulations targeting the organic industry, and the Certification and Accreditation Administration also inspects organic food certification bodies every year, the levels of certification bodies are uneven. There still exists the phenomenon that some certification bodies give the green light to substandard food in order to make money, and various illegal certificate-processing “small workshops” are also common. All of this has caused great harm to the healthy and orderly development of the organic industry market, and has also left a shadow on consumers' impression of organic food: they spend a lot of money but may not buy true health and safety.

“I hope relevant state departments further regulate the production and promotion of organic food, strengthen the enforcement of standards, and let consumers truly understand organic food and be able to choose trustworthy organic products according to their own economic conditions.” Wang Xian said.