The children’s health trial with organic diet treatment has been completed and the results are currently under review by a peer-reviewed journal. Some preliminary results have been presented to children and parents of the study part of our ethical obligations to participants.

We implemented a school-based, randomized, crossover trial in six primary schools with two periods (40-days organic diet vs. 40-days of conventional diet) in Limassol, Cyprus during October 2016-April 2017. The primary objective of trial was to determine the effectiveness of an organic diet intervention in reducing the body burden of urinary concentrations of pyrethroid and neonicotinoid pesticide metabolites and, secondarily, to evaluate its effect on biomarkers of oxidative stress/inflammation biomarkers in primary school children in Cyprus. Six schools agreed to participate; three schools were randomly allocated to Group 1 (67 children) and the other three to Group 2 (124 children). A total of 149 children were included in the main analysis; the sex distribution of the children was balanced (51% males). The mean age was 11 years old and the majority of children (89%) completed 29–40 days of organic diet. At baseline, most children had a normal weight (60.8%) with 24.3% being overweight and 13.5% being obese. The percentage of overweight and obese children in this trial exceeds the percentage found by Savva et al., 2014 (20.1% overweight, 8.1% obese).

The final results of the trial are due out soon. Check the children’s health trial video here

This is a globally unique trial dataset that could inform the EU pesticide risk assessment policies, including EU policies about organic agriculture, and those policies that deal with healthy eating lifestyle promotion in schools.

The policy makers in the relevant 3 Ministries of Cyprus are fully aware of the studies taking place through ORGANIKO (Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Education) via ORGANIKO contacts with relevant offices in each Ministry. The ORGANIKO team contributed to the discussions before the recent inclusion of organic products in the revised Green Public Procurement plan for Cyprus being particularly relevant for public authorities and organizations, such as schools. The Ministry of Education has recently incorporated a new rule asking primary schools authorities to include specific organic products in school cantinas’ menus. The ORGANIKO team is in ongoing discussions with the Cyprus organic farmers association (COFA) to prepare a list of reliable organic products with adequate supply most of the year round.

Our ORGANIKO proposal for the Call for Organic Innovations 2017 at the EU level with the title “Organic lifestyle starts at primary school” was among the shortlisted applications and the jury found it promising. The EU TP Organics platform featured it in the Innovation Arena on its website

The EU Parliament event that we organized on 23 May 2018, was very important for policy implications since among the participants were five distinguished members of the European Parliament, who were informed of the so far results of the project in terms of the organic diet role in improving health indicators and of the organic farming role in soil quality improvement and climate change mitigation.

One of our main targets in terms of policy is to introduce the use of organic products in public places through the implementation of green public procurement (GPP) and our efforts focus especially in the incorporation of organic food in schools. The main difficulty is that the organic production in Cyprus isn’t very high and there are specific quantities of organic products for a specific period of time.

Before 2017, the absence of organic products in the canteens was evident. The Director of Primary Education of the Ministry of Education, Mr. Hadjiathanasiou announced that organic products will be included in the school canteens for the first time in the new school year. It is of note that for the school year 2017-2018, the canteen menu included some organic products.