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MARCH 2006

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Summary of the FQH Workshop in Odense 29th of May 2006

“Where do we come from and where should we go?”
Food Quality Concepts and Food Quality Parameters, related to future research in Organic FQH-topics

The Chairperson Angelika Ploeger welcomed all 30 participants from 10 different countries. In her introduction she made it clear that this workshop was supposed to take up topics of the discussion raised at the first FQH-Conference. The discussion was based on the Manon Haccius experience that consumers do expect an absence of undesirable compounds in organic food but not a direct proven positive effect by more desirable nutrients. Certainly the evidence of better health when eating organic food would have an influence on the organic market. The problem for researchers however is not having adequate experimental designs to link the quality of organic food to human health.

The discussion paper which was sent to all participants to create an equal back-ground for the workshop summarised questions concerning food quality. Angelika Ploeger reminded participants of four questions:

1. What do consumers really expect and how about organic quality?
2. How well defined and controlled is the quality of organic food?
3. What are the additional and specific aspects of organic food quality?
4. Is there an impact of organic food on human and animal health status?

Discussion-paper (.pdf)

At this workshop question No. 3 was the main topic. For the additional and specific aspects of organic food quality the speakers started with an historical review of innovative concepts from scientists of the nineteenth and twentieth century. For Agriculture Steiner and Rusch, for Nutrition Kollath and the Whole Food Nutrition Movement were introduced by Urs Niggli and Angelika Ploeger. For Health the Inner Quality Concept developed at the Louis Bolk Institute was presented by Machteld Huber.

Steiner and Rusch by Urs Niggli (.pdf)
Kollath/Whole Food Nutrition by Angelika Ploeger (.pdf)
IQC by Machteld Huber (.pdf)

After the tea-break three crops were presented in order to describe “quality gates” where farmers could influence food quality in their agricultural management.

Wheat by Kirsten Brandt (.pdf)
Potatoes by Daniel Neuhoff (.pdf)
Carrots by Geert-Jan van der Burgt (.pdf)

The Organic Congress organisers prepared a delicious lunch for FQH and the participants enjoyed having a break.

Invigorated and relaxed the participants were kindly asked to split up in five working-groups. Each group had a question to discuss and were supposed to present their results after the coffee-break. The FQH Coordinator and the chairperson took notes. The following reports are presenting the results only and not the complete discussion.

Results working group 1 "Do we want a quality definition which discriminates
organic from conventional food or good from bad?" (.pdf)
Results working group 2 "Do the existing organic standards ensure the quality
of food? If not, how should they be adapted?" (.pdf)
Results working group 3 "Can the historical concepts for quality be
transferred into modern science?" (.pdf)
Results working group 4 "Which paramters have something to do with good
("good" unterstrichen) quality?" (.pdf)
Results working group 5 "Do we have valid concepts linking food quality to
health?" (.pdf)

For further steps in the scientific work of FQH the participants agreed to have another workshop (scheduled for March 20th, 2007 in Stuttgart-Hohenheim, Germany). An equal share of the participants would like to focus more on the health side of the question, the others on food quality. For the topic “health” medical doctors and scientists from sociology or psychology should attend. They should be concerned about health linked to nutrition and food quality and being open to conventional science as well as to organic science. FQH members are invited to point persons with expertise to the FQH coordinator

Angelika Ploeger thanked everybody for participating and Sophie v. Lilienfeld–Toal for organising the workshop in an excellent way and closed the work-shop by inviting for dinner.

Whole summary (.pdf)