An Inorganic Truth
Official Standards Frequently Fail to Meet Consumers' Expectations
When you see the word “organic,” what comes to mind? For many, the word conjures images of rolling green pastures on small family farms, chickens brightly clucking as they roam free-range, and orchards brimming with fresh, crisp apples. People buy organic foods, believing them to be healthier for both the earth and the consumer.
But after last year’s publication of Michael Pollan’s best-seller The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which painted a picture of organic corporations that increasingly resemble the industrial food chain in scope and in environmental effect, and the recent E. coli outbreak stemming from bagged organic spinach, consumers are beginning to think twice about organic foods and to question whether “organic” is all it’s cracked up to be.
Until 2002, when the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act’s final compliance deadline went into effect, the word “organic” had no definition under the law. Today, the United States Department of Agriculture regulates the use of the term “organic.” Organic produce must be grown without pesticides (unless given express permission by the USDA, in certain circumstances), synthetic fertilizers, or radiation. Land must go through a three-year process of fertility-building in order to achieve organic status. Organic meat, eggs, and milk must come from animals raised on organic feed. Animals may not be given antibiotics or hormones. Packaged food products may be labeled “organic” if 95 percent of their ingredients are organic, and packaging may state “made with organic ingredients” if at least 70 percent of ingredients meet organic standards.
Julie Raskin, CC ’08, president of CoreFoods, Columbia’s organic food co-op, says that the environment is the main reason her group promotes organic foods. “This is the same reason we try to buy products that are locally produced—so as to cut down on ‘food miles,’ or using extra energy to transport food from far away when we can get it from sources close by,” Raskin said.
However, not all organic foods are locally produced, which means that a food labeled “organic” might actually leave a negative mark on the environment due to the fossil fuels burned to transport it across the country or around the globe. Furthermore, as Pollan reports in his book, organic produce is often grown on large-scale farms that deplete the soil and burn fossil fuels during packaging. Organic farms may do damage on another level, as well. Organic cattle and chickens are often crammed into the same, small, less-than-humane feedlots that typify the industrial food chain. It’s a far cry from the stereotype of the organic family farm.
Another aspect of the Organic Rule—the handling standards that forbid commingling between organic and conventional produce—is controversial for another reason. Detractors find these standards arbitrarily stringent and helpful only to major, high-volume organic groceries, like Whole Foods. The standards mean that grocers cannot use the same bins for organic and conventional produce, that organic and conventional items must be stored in separate locations, and that if a customer takes an organic apple to checkout and then decides she doesn’t want it, it can no longer be sold as organic.
“At a coffee shop, you’re supposed to have a separate roaster, a separate grinder, and a separate coffeemaker from conventional coffee,” says Nora Bryant, a first-year Columbia Law student who worked at Whole Foods in Austin, Texas, for over three years. Whole Foods boasts on its Web site about its role in getting the organic legislation passed, but Bryant suspects that the company’s motives for wanting exceptionally strict handling rules weren’t entirely pure. “It’s a money-making scheme. ... [Whole Foods] wanted additional measures that people had to go through so smaller stores wouldn’t present competition,” she says.
Farmers, too, must jump through bureaucratic hoops to meet organic standards, and some simply choose to ignore them. “We’re not organic, we’re low-pesticide,” says Craig Acton, a vendor and farmer for Stannard Farm, which sells its produce at a Greenmarket stand at 115th Street and Broadway on Thursdays and Sundays. “If it were all organic, we’d all starve because it’s so labor intensive,” he says, citing blight, an inability to use fungicide, and a need for frequent sprayings as problems facing the organic farmer. “You can’t even use black plastic because it’s all made out of petroleum,” he said. Acton says that once he explains his farming methods, customers are rarely upset that Stannard’s produce isn’t certified organic. “Apples, once they get golf-ball sized, they never get sprayed again, so [pesticides] are pretty much gone” by the time you buy them, he says.
Does it bother him that Stannard’s produce cannot legally be called organic, when foods grown and sold by huge corporations are? Acton shrugs. “One way or another, [the government is] going to be in control,” he says. “They already have their hands in it.”