The U.S. Corporatocracy and our right to organic food

[green_jenni]

Every so often (and getting more frequent), I have to write letters and emails to save organic standards. Sadly, it's time to do this again. Here's the latest attack on our right to organic food and something you can do about it.

Having to go through this effort every few years to fight the corporate food producing giants' attack on my food options

Comments

[darakat_ewr]

So basically they won't be organic anymore...

[green_jenni]

Definitely not organic as it's currently defined, which is this

[darakat_ewr]

Yeah thats what I thought (though I didn't know what counted as organic under US law) this would basically allow some currently commercialized meat count as "organic" and thus any authority from contamination by things like steroids, non organic feed, irradiation, etc which were the reasons for having such a thing as "organic food" in the first place. Its basically "we want to sell our stuff as organic because it sound healthy and people buy it" and it becomes yet another useless name for the commercialized world.

[green_jenni]

Yup, that about sums it up. It will also put a lot of organic farmers out of business, since organic farms tend to be smaller than commercial agribusiness farms and won't be able to compete if people aren't allowed to know which products are truly organic.

It's also an environmental issue, as you can see by the standards that to currently have the organic label you have to take care of the land, which most major agribusinesses do not do.

Organic

[darakat_ewr]

They tried to do this back durring the Clinton administration too, when they were first establishing USDA standards. Some heavy protesting stopped it--no doubt only because they knew they could come back and 'fix' it when we weren't paying as much attention.

Back in 98, my food coop in North Carolina was trying to decide what to do if the feds did spoil the term 'organic'. We discussed several other words we could use. In the end, though, if we want to keep our food supply safe and sane, we're going to have to know and trust the producers of everything we eat. It's a lot more work than trusting a government label, but, as they say, you get out what you put in. The easiest way is to buy locally from people who are willing to answer your questions. If you find a dedicated organic farmer or rancher, you can't get them to shut up about how they produce their food :)

Shane