Following the scientific community’s strong critique and the doubts expressed by the President, Italy’s lower parliamentary house has approved an amendment eliminating biodynamic farming from the text of an organic food production bill. In May, the bill, equating the validity of biodynamic and organic agriculture, was approved after its first reading in the lower house, but returned with modifications by the Senate.
Other salient changes include the definition of organic food production as an activity of national significance and social and environmental relevance and the establishment of a Technical Committee for Organic Food Production and an Italian Organic Product badge for foods made from Italian raw materials.
In resisting the protection of biodynamic agriculture, the Italian Academy of Cuisine had joined other Academies involved in agriculture by sending the Agriculture Ministry an urgent and forceful request for elimination of this pseudoscientific practice from the bill.