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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] An Organic Drift
  • Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 08:28:57 -0700


November 4, 2005 Editorial
An Organic Drift

Organic food has become a very big business, with a 20 percent annual
growth rate in sales in recent years. But popularity has come at a
price. Ever since 2002, when the Department of Agriculture began its
program of national organic certification, there has been a steady
lobbying effort to weaken standards in a way that makes it easier for
the giant food companies, which often use synthetic substances in
processing, to enter the organic market.

That's exactly why many organic farmers greeted the U.S.D.A.'s
organic seal with real trepidation. They know that the one thing the
department has always done especially well is to capitulate to the
lobbying pressure of big food and big agriculture.

Last week, an amendment was slipped into the agricultural spending
bill without meaningful debate in a closed-door Republican meeting.
It would do two things. It would overturn a court decision
reinstating the old legal standard that prohibits synthetic
substances in organic foods. And it would allow the agriculture
secretary to approve synthetic substances if no organic substitute
was commercially available.

In part, this is a battle over a label. The big producers, which
often use synthetic materials in processing, want to call their
processed foods organic because that designation commands premium
prices. They do not want to say their products are made with organic
ingredients - a lesser designation that allows more synthetics. This
is also a cultural battle, a struggle between the people who have
long kept the organic faith - despite the historic neglect of the
U.S.D.A. - and industry giants that see a rapidly expanding and
highly profitable niche that can be pried open even further with
lobbying.

"Organic" is not merely a label, a variable seal of approval at the
end of the processing chain. It means a way of raising crops and
livestock that is better for the soil, the animals, the farmers and
the consumers themselves - a radical change, in other words, from
conventional agriculture. Unless consumers can be certain that those
standards are strictly upheld, "organic" will become meaningless.


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company





  • [Livingontheland] An Organic Drift, Tradingpost, 11/04/2005

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