A Swedish court has instructed the country’s Coop supermarket chain not to repeat claims about organic and conventional food made in a 2015-16 promotional video called ‘Ekoeffekten’.
The video followed a Swedish family over a two-week period when they switched to eating only organic. Before switching, urine tests from each of the five family members were taken and analyzed. The video’s narrator tells viewers that lab tests showed that a number of synthetic chemicals – pesticides, fungicides and plant growth regulators – were present in all the samples taken. The family are re-tested at the end of the two weeks and ‘before and after’ graphics show the striking result – almost all of the pesticides are no longer present.
In the video the mother of the family reflects on the fact that her children have been consuming “so many chemicals” by eating conventional food – which she calls “disgusting” – and declares that she “never wants them back”.
Forman & Bodenfors, the creative agency behind the film says that the ‘Ekoeffekten’ video has been viewed more than 35 million times online, and “has changed the conversation about organic”.
But in 2016 the Swedish Crop Association (Svenskt Växtskydd) launched a lawsuit against the Coop, claiming that the retailer’s video was “misleading”, “unethical” and “rigged”. The pesticide industry trade association disputed the claim that the chemicals found in first round of urine tests were directly the result of crop pesticides, arguing that some of the substances detected were ‘breakdown products’ of chemicals used widely in household products. It also accused Coop of failing to test for any pesticides permissible in organic agriculture.
Earlier this month, Sweden’s Patent and Market Court ruled in favour of Svenskt Växtskydd, warning Coop that it would face a heavy fine if repeated the claims made in the Ekoeffekten video, which it said “gave the impression that organic farmed foods are better and cause fewer health risks than conventional farmed foods”.