OUR GULLIBLE Prime Minister has again been fooled into backing a campaign with no evidence to support it. On Sunday he said: “We’ll soon announce details of the new School Food Trust . . . which will draw on the remarkable work of Jamie Oliver in schools, and of the Soil Association in encouraging the use of organic and local produce in school meals . . .”

The mullahs at the Soil Association must be delighted because they started “Food For Life” in 2003 with the aim that school meals should include at least 30 per cent of organic ingredients.

Taxpayers, however, should be groaning with dismay at this complete waste of their money. Fresh food may be desirable in schools but organic food is not. It costs significantly more than conventional food but is no better for anyone.

The Soil Association has long claimed that organic food has more vitamins and other valuable ingredients, but this is hogwash. The Food Standards Agency, the Government’s official adviser, has stated that “the current scientific evidence does not show that organic food is any safer or more nutritious than conventionally produced food”.

The Advertising Standards Authority recently ruled that organic food cannot be described as “healthy” after a complaint from me about a Soil Association pamphlet. The ASA said on March 2 that the association had failed to produce any scientific evidence to show that “organically produced food conveyed noticeable health benefits over and above the same food when conventionally produced or that a diet of organic food could guarantee no harmful effects”. Studies purporting to show health benefits from organic food are invariably junk science.

Tony Blair is not alone in swallowing this rot — the British National Party has also come out in support of organic food. There is a precedent for its stance: some of the early supporters of organic food were also Fascists. Jorian Jenks, who was interned as a Mosleyite in the Second World War, was one of the founders of the Soil Association. There are strong similarities between the campaigns for racial purity and food purity. To be successful they require a suspension of rationality and a pandering to prejudice, just the qualities that our leader shows, in spades.

The author used to work at the Ministry of Agriculture.