There are occasional posts on the forum about food and drink, and I wondered whether the folks hereabout specifically search out produce labelled "Organic" when out shopping. My other half is becoming obsessive about doing this and it drives me mad. I can see some benefit in the area of fresh fruit and vegetables or milk, but she's just purchased an Organic Black Pepper refill and I can't see there's much point when it gets to this level. I'd be interested in any thoughts.

Not bothered, really.

I certainly won't pay extra for anything with "organic", but I will look out for welfare marks and stuff with meat and eggs.

Only if it's on offer and the cheapest available.

Nope, I trust the EU to make non-Organic stuff safe to eat.

I do buy quite a lot if organic fresh fruit & veg because I find that in general it tastes better. I'd say the difference is not that organic food is especially good, it's that a lot of 'standard' fruit & veg in the supermarkets is ruddy awful. A lot of chemicals are used to 'force' growth and as a result the is a lack of flavour. Apples are a classic example - non organic apples are very watery and thus lacking in taste whereas organic apples taste like... apples.

It's not so much the issue of organic/non organic as that the standard stuff has been produced to a price whereas the organic hasn't. And like anything else, when you produce as cheap as possible, the quality suffers. A lot of people say that organic fruit & veg tastes like it did when they were a kid. It's not because it's organic, it's because it's produced the way food was when supermarkets didn't mandate price over quality and competition wasn't so cut throat.

I am hopeful that you are being ironic there...

No, I'm not actually. The EU produces some brilliant legislation, particularly in the Food Safety field (for example, the Food Labelling Regulations 1996, Food Safety Act 1990 (Amendment) Regulations 2004 etc).

Granted, their regulations are a good idea. But as to their enforcement I am not so convinced.

Hm, depends on who's enforcing I guess. The OFT does a good job IMO, as did the FSA (that is the Food Standards Agency, not the Financial Services Authority) before it was axed. The quality of enforcement by Trading Standards, Environmental Health varies from authority to authority, as with most local government services. As for enforcement by other countries - most are quite good. And of course for non-compliance by Member States (which includes the UK on many, many occasions), said Member State will end up in court.

My Nan will tell you that you're not buying apples that are grown in the right part of the world...French apple taste like dirt, apparently...

Not being particularly rich, I buy the cheapest I can buy which generally means I don't look specifically for organic stuffs.

Yes, since the EU introduced food related legislation, no-one has been adversely affected because they ate a banana that was just too straight, thank God!

I'm not fussed either way.
Organic food doesn't hold any greater nutritional value, has a lower yield per acre and costs more.
If you're in it for the taste then cool, but that's about the only plus to it, as far as I can see, and even that's a subjective judgement.

I know some people with coeliacs that claim that they have much less problem with organic wheat than they do with 'normal' wheat, although I suspect there may be other factors involved there too.

It's the extra placebos you get with organic wheat.

That was one of the factors, certainly