By Joanna Blythman

August 21, 2005

Organic food is seen as safe in a disturbing world where food quality and safety are constantly under siege. An organic label dangles the promise of food produced by people with higher standards, an ethical choice that brings benefits such as better animal welfare, reduced pollution, more natural food.

When organics was a seedling movement, opponents insisted it was a con. When the organic movement successfully defended its occupation of the moral high ground, they tried to marginalise it as a cranky obsession of the neurotic middle classes. Now that organic food has broken into the mainstream shopping market, everyone wants to get in on the act.

Greengrocers are tired of explaining why they don't stock organic carrots or apples. Struggling butchers suddenly realise that when they start selling a few organic chickens all sales go up, because the organic chicken casts a halo of wholesomeness over anything on the slab. Factory farmers, tired of being criticised for their unsavoury production methods, can greenwash their profiles by moving a tiny proportion of their production to some sort of organic system.

Consumers need to have their wits about them. All food retailing, organic or otherwise, can be subject to outright fraud, from the restaurant that charges a premium for Scotch Aberdeen Angus beef when it's Argentinian, to the barrow boy selling Israeli herbs as if they were British.

Then there are the retailers who are just lazily ignorant about the provenance of what they sell or vague in the extreme about the principles and practices of organics. If some plausible supplier turns up with a cheese said to be organic, they will take it on trust without testing questions.

Tedious and paranoid though it may seem, if a product does not carry a label showing it is certified by a body such as UKROFS, Organic Farmers and Growers, the Scottish Organic Producers' Association, the Organic Food Federation, Demeter, or the Soil Association - the latter demands the most exigent organic standards - then ask the person behind the stall or counter how they can be sure that it is bona fide organic. Any foot-shuffling and unconvincing talk, then take your business elsewhere. More than likely though, you will end up rooted to the spot as some earnest organic devotee gives you chapter and verse you didn't need.

But in the final analysis, the key to all informed, provenance-aware shopping, organic or otherwise, is to build a relationship of trust. Suss out shops and stalls initially on the basis of the willingness and transparency with which they answer your questions, then reward them with your repeat custom. You become a favoured regular and they prosper from your trade. It's a win-win situation.

? Joanna Blythman is author of 'Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets.'