The Danish arm of leading Scandinavian retail association Coop has cancelled a series of ads that formed part of its Øktober (Organic October) campaign, according to local media reports.
The decision comes as the campaign – run in partnership with Danish nature conservation charity Naturfredningsforening – has come in for sharp criticism from conventional farming groups, but also from consumers and even internally among Coop stores.
The front cover from Coop’s customer magazine Samvirke, featuring an image of person in a bio-suit and mask about to eat a salad, reads: ‘Pesticides are an everyday food – This salad contains pesticide residues, and the same happens with vegetables, fruit, bread and wine. The poison is legal but is suspected of causing diabetes and cancer’.
Critics of the campaign have accused the retailer of promoting organic by scaremongering. Media reports in Denmark say that Coop has been taken by surprise by the strength of the criticism. But the retailer says that its cancellation of the next phase of its Øktober campaign has been made for simple cost saving reasons. Coop’s information director told Danish newspaper Berlingske: “We had planned the announcement of the Øktober campaign again this week but chose to save it away, as the campaign had already got more exposure than expected.”
Coop has also faced criticism in Sweden over its organic promotions. A Swedish court recently told the retailer there not to repeat claims made about organic and conventional food contained in its Ekoeffekten (organic effect) video from 2015. 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”.
Answering criticism that there was insufficient evidence to show that pesticide levels detected presented a health threat, Coop Sweden said would actively welcome more research into this area.