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Researchers at Riso National Laboratory in Roskilde, Denmark, say shoppers
need protection from dodgy vendors who label intensively farmed crops as
“organic”. To tell the difference, the lab has cooked up a system that uses a
mass spectrometer to map out the relative amounts of up to 60 elements in a crop
(WO 01/40795). The maps of different crops can then be compared. To prove it
works, the Danes built element maps for onions from conventional and organic
farms, which showed clear differences between the two kinds of produce.