Issues of Food Safety: Are “Organic” Apples Better? 2017.

• Organically grown foods have become increasingly popular with the consumer because of a desire to improve nutrition and prevent environmental contamination. • Fruits and vegetables are cultivated according to different approaches: conventional (chemical-based agriculture), integrated farm management, organic agriculture. • Experimental evidence suggests that higher levels of micronutrients and phytonutrients are associated with organically grown fruit and vegetables. • Cultivation systems affect the amount of chemical residues in products and the risk of its possible biological contamination, whereas synthetic pesticide and additive residues can be avoided in properly managed organic systems. • Overall, however, the differences between foods grown under different agricultural methods may not be sufficient to declare organic produce as superior quality food when compared to their conventional or integrated counterparts. • Concerns about the consumption of transgenic foods (GE) are rising among consumers and this situation is aggravated in the USA by the reluctance of governmental authorities to enforce labelling of genetically engineered (GE) foods.