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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Denver Post Op-ed

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  • From: "Sharon and Steve" <shopkins AT tdstelme.net>
  • To: "Sharon and Steve" <shopkins AT tdstelme.net>, <E-Dairy AT yahoogroups.com>, "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>, <SustainableAg AT yahoogroups.com>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Denver Post Op-ed
  • Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2007 16:48:57 -0400







Robin asked:
What do you agree with?
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Reasons you should buy regular goods
By Jackie Avner
Article Last Updated: 07/27/2007 10:40:10 PM MDT


I don't like to buy organic food products, and avoid them at all cost. It is a principled decision reached through careful consideration of effects of organic production practices on animal welfare and the environment. I buy regular food, rather than organic, for the benefit of my family.
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Thats what we have done as a family for 40+ years, and for different reasons, if I wanted to go organic I could not, as many of the foods that interest me are not available. In the process of raising 3 youngsters in one of the 3 or 4 poorist counties east of the mississippi (Robin gets to be in #1) price was everything, and sometimes still is.
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I care deeply about food being plentiful, affordable and safe.
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Dont we all?
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I grew up on a dairy farm, where my chores included caring for the calves and scrubbing the milking facilities. As a teenager, I was active in Future Farmers of America, and after college I took a job in Washington, D.C., on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee staff.

But America no longer has an agrarian economy, and now it is rare for people to have firsthand experience with agricultural production and regulation. This makes the general public highly susceptible to rumors and myths about food, and vulnerable to misleading marketing tactics designed not to improve the safety of the food supply, but to increase retail profits. Companies marketing organic products, and your local grocery chain, want you to think organic food is safer and healthier, because their profit margins are vastly higher on organic foods.
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Avner here deals mostly with dairy, at this place that would mean double the price for organic vs conventional.
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The USDA Organic label does not mean that there is any difference between organic and regular food products. Organic farms simply employ different methods of food production.
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In some cases she is giving too much credit to the organic producer, come on over and we will follow the grain delivery truck, the milk pick up truck; we will look at the pastures, the barns, and a bunch of stuff that will show that you that organic is just a word.
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For example, organic dairy farms are not
permitted to administer antibiotics to their sick or injured cows, and do not give them milk-stimulating hormone supplements (also known as rbGH or rBST).
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A bit of a blip here, organic producers are required to administer antibiotics if prescribed (procedure not outlined) but must then remove the cow fron the herd.
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The end product is exactly the same - all milk, regular and organic, is completely antibiotic-free, and all milk, regular and organic, has the same trace amounts of rbGH (since rbGH is a protein naturally present in all cows, including organic herds). Try as they may, proponents of organic foods have not been able to produce evidence that the food produced by conventional farms is anything but safe.
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Remove the r and she is correct here and again I suspect that is an editing problem. She is correct in that if one administers rbGH, Monsantos Posilac, to cattle there is no detecteble difference in the milk.
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Do organic production practices benefit animals? Dr. Chuck Guard, professor of veterinary medicine at Cornell University, told me that it pains him that many technological advancements in animal medicine are prohibited for use on organic farms. He described how organic farms don't use drugs to control parasites, worms, infections and illness in their herds. "Drugs take away pain and suffering," he said. "Proponents of organic food production have thrown away these medical tools, and the result is unnecessary pain and suffering for the animals." In order for milk and meat to qualify as USDA Organic, the animals must never be given antibiotics when they are sick or injured. On organic farms, animals with treatable illnesses such as infections and pneumonia are left to suffer, or given ineffective homeopathic treatments, in the hope that they will eventually get better on their own. If recovery without medication seems unlikely, a dairy cow with a simple respiratory infection will be slaughtered for its meat, or sold to a traditional farm where she can get the medicine she needs. I don't buy organic milk because this system is cruel to animals, and I know that every load of regular milk is tested for antibiotics to ensure that it is antibiotic-free.
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If strong wording was a crime then a lot of "organic folk" would also be headed for the pokey as their finger pointing and screaming about conventional farmers trying to poison the flora and fauna on the planet is pretty vicious also.
I am not up that much on dairy science but in the sheep industry where I have been most recently there truly are no organic answers to some problems and shepherds are choosing between unhealthy, unhappy animals and being a damned liar in order to get that big organic money.
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Organic milk certainly is not fresher than regular milk. Regular milk is pasteurized and has a shelf life of about 20 days. Organic milk is ultrapasteurized, a process that is more forgiving of poor quality milk, and that increases the shelf life of milk to about 90 days. Some of the Horizon organic milk boxes I've seen at Costco have expiration dates in 2008! There is a powerful incentive for retailers to put the ultrapasteurized organic milk on the shelf just before the expiration date, so consumers will think the organic milk is as fresh as the regular milk. After all, consumers are paying twice as much for the organic product.
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Well, ultra pasturized gives milk a different taste, so all they have to do is say it is what makes the milk different, and if you were to go from conventional skim or low % to Ultra whole it might be a big improvement.
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Do organic production practices benefit the environment? In many cases, they do the opposite. Recently, Starbucks proudly informed their customers that they would no longer be buying milk from farms that use rbGH, the supplemental hormone administered to cows to increase milk production (even though the extra hormones stay in the cow, and the resulting milk is the same). The problem with this policy is that Starbucks will now be buying milk from farms that are far less efficient at making milk. Without the use of the latest technology for making milk, many more cows must be milked to produce the same number of café lattes for Starbucks' customers. More cows being milked means more cows to feed, and therefore more land must be cultivated with fossil-fuel-burning tractors. More cows means many more tons of manure produced, and more methane, a greenhouse gas, released into the atmosphere.

I see Starbucks' policy as environmentally irresponsible. When a farmer gives a cow a shot of rbGH, the only environmental cost is the disposal of the small plastic container it came in. But the environmental benefits of using this technology are enormous.
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She sez, I know what it is to have to fill 750 wrds, I can take or leave that bit, mostly leave it.
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Attention all shoppers: Safeway is adopting the same misdirected policy as Starbucks, judging from the prominent labeling of milk at my local Safeway store: "Milk from cows not treated with rBST." When I'm feeling particularly green, I drive past Safeway and shop at another grocery store in protest.

Consumers assume that organic crops are environmentally friendly. However, organic production methods are far less efficient than the modern methods used by conventional farmers, so organic farmers must consume more natural and man-made resources (such as land and fuel) to produce their crops.

Cornell Professor Guard told me about neighboring wheat farms he observed during a visit to Alberta, Canada: one organic and one conventional. The organic farm consumes six times as much diesel fuel per bushel of wheat produced.
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I can believe he found that farm. Might or might not be a symptom of the industry.
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Socially conscious consumers have a right to know that "organic" doesn't mean what it did 20 years ago. According to the Oct. 16, 2006, cover story in Business Week, when you eat Stonyfield Farms yogurt, you are often consuming dried organic milk flown all the way from New Zealand and reconstituted here in the U.S. The apple puree used to sweeten the yogurt sometimes comes from Turkey, and the strawberries from China. Importation of organic products raises troubling questions about food safety, labor standards, and the fossil fuels burned in the transportation of these foods.
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NOS assumes that imported organic will equal or better U.S organic; but they cant even get U.S. organic close to their ideal so guess what!
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Does buying organic really benefit your family? Remember, there is no real difference in the food itself. At my local Safeway store, organic milk is 85 percent more expensive, eggs 138 percent higher, yogurt 50 percent, chicken thighs 80 percent, and broccoli 20 percent. If the only organic product you buy for your family is milk, then you are spending an extra $200 on milk each year. If you buy 5-10 other organic products each week, such as fruits, vegetables, eggs, yogurt and meat, then you could easily approach $1,000 in extra food costs per year. Families would receive a more direct health benefit from spending that money on a gym membership, a treadmill, or new bikes.
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I would say that families would benefit more from buying more fruits and vegatables...........and meats. and cooking them properly at home and having family meals. Nutrition of the body and mind should be around the supper table, not through the drive up window on the way to someplace.
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When I share this information with friends who buy organic, I get one of two responses: they either stop buying it, or they continue to buy organic based on a strong gut feeling that food grown without the assistance of man- made technology has to be healthier.
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But the rub comes when all available man-made technology is used and the USDA Organic label is a damned lie, all you have then is ............what, you tell me.
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I don't push it, but I wonder: Why do people apply that logic to agricultural products, but not to every other product we use in our daily lives? There are either no chemicals, or the minutest trace of chemicals in some of our foods. But other everyday products are full of chemical ingredients. Read the label on your artificial sweetener, antiperspirant, sun lotion, toothpaste, household cleaning products, soda, shampoo, and disposable diapers, for example. The medicines we administer to our children when they are sick are man-made substances. Chemicals aren't just used to make these products; they are still in these products in significant amounts. It just doesn't make sense to focus fear of technology on milk and fresh produce.

I say, bypass the expensive organic products in the grocery store. Buy the regular milk, meat and fresh produce. It is the right choice for the family, animal welfare and the environment.
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Here she and I are in lock step..........perhaps for different reasons but what the hay..........organic was never meant to be in a super market, if you want to go buy something that carries a USDA Organic sticker go ahead.........but dont expect it to be anything buit a rip off.

MAsteveINE

Jackie Avner (jackie.avner AT gmail.com) lives in Highlands Ranch.











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