Selling the Organic Label
 

We had a pretty good thread a while back on organic food labeling etc.. In it I argued that the hippy farmers were screwing up by demanding a government label for their products. They did it for the same reasons anyone else, barbers, surveyors, teachers, doctors, lawyers, ad infinitum, go the regulation route. They wanted to limit entrance into the [pun]field[/pun]. While the original fight was happening, more than a few of the small producers figured out that they were going to be squeezed out but by that time it was too late. The bureaucracy had already been created now it needed only to serve itself. Here is the result:

National Desk | February 14, 2003, Friday
Late Addition to Spending Bill Would Dilute Organic Rules

By MARIAN BURROS (NYT) 567 words
Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 24 , Column 5
ABSTRACT - Buried within huge federal spending bill is provision that would permit livestock producers to certify and label meat as 'organic' even if animals were fed partly or entirely on conventional rather than organic grain; organic-food industry protests; last-minute provision is traced to Georgia Rep Nathan Deal, who got $4,000 in campaign contributions from employees of poultry producer Fieldale Farms Corp Buried within the $397 billion spending bill passed last night by Congress is a provision that would permit livestock producers to certify and label meat as ''organic'' even if the animals had been fed partly or entirely on conventional rather than organic grain.

Under the provision, if the Agriculture Department certifies that organic feed is commercially available only at more than twice the price of conventional feed, then the department cannot enforce regulations requiring that livestock labeled organically raised be fed only organic feed.

-rendering their label completely meaningless.

Organic grain farmers in the upper midwest and Canadian prairies are staring down GM corn, canola and now threatened with wheat blowing in and weeding up crops, killing rotation for the organic market. Starting the chain. What can the little guy do?
Seeds of Domination

I haven't got a clue. They're finding transgenics in potatoes up in the Andes and in isolated corn plots in Mexico. I'm not anti all gmo's but some have the potential of destroying traits bred in by man over thousands of years. That should make folks stop and think. I guess, I'm thinking subsidizing agriculture = centralizing agriculture and thats not good for natural systems and us human beans.

I just noticed the label on my Kashi this morning.

SUPPORT THE U.S. FARMER
AND SUSTAINED AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS
GROWN WITHOUT PESTICIDES
OR CHEMICALS

They make no reference to the federal organic label, maybe thats where we're headed.

Kashi?

What the hell's wrong with you? That's rabbit food...not to mention, it's almost $5 a box at the grocery store.

There are nine breakfasts per box thats about 90 cents a day. Worth it for the enormous mid-day dump alone. I am trying to squeeze enough dead animal into my diet at lunch and dinner.

Another classic Cellar gem from Señor Griff.

I think the whole organic thing is overdone.

Consider ... happy little hippie farmer Serendipity is raising her tomatoes in organic splendor. She spends hours a day picking the aphids off her plants by hand and speaking to them in nurturing tones, encouraging their happy organic growth ...

While just uphill from him, industrial farmer Bob, pushes a button in the big house, and evil pesticide sprays are dispensed all over HIS fields.

God enters the picture ... providing both Serendipity and Bob with plenty of rain to raise their crops.

Water runs downhill from Bob's place, adding a massive dose of pesticide to Serendipity's nice organic tomato plot. And you still pay 3x as much for her tomatoes.

I don't get the whole genetically-modified hatred gig either. Would it make those anti-folks happy if the FDA spent billions on a study of the foods? We already know that the FDA drops the ball at times (Seldane)...but since we're pushing up spending again, why not?

I just got done filling out 20 pages of Dept of Ag census crap. Total on farm income was approximately ten dollars from excess egg production. stupid evil bureaucratic...

*cough* including yogurt and banana, of course.

C'mon, man ... black market eggs.

It's the wave of the future. Be a part of the underground economy.

KASHI!
 

LOL! I am a total Kashi addict. Every day man. Punch the clock. 10 gr Fiber is our friend. Clean as a whistle and worth every penny. :)

Genetic tinkering is not blanket bad, its just untested and shortsighted in the race for the market. And the idea of it being totally irreversible, dwindling diversity, when there is so much we dont know- too much to gamble. The idea that as a consumer/citizen I would or may have no choice but to consume GM food. Its like spraying my neighborhood skeeters with DDT, dont worry its safe. Silent Spring.

Here's a quote from an article about Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring:

The most important legacy of Silent Spring, though, was a new public awareness that nature was
vulnerable to human intervention. Rachel Carson had made a radical proposal: that, at times, technological progress is so fundamentally at odds with natural processes that it must be curtailed. Conservation had never raised much broad public interest, for few people really worried about the disappearance of wilderness. But the threats Carson had outlined -- the contamination of the food chain, cancer, genetic damage, the deaths of entire species -- were too frightening to ignore. For the first time, the need to regulate industry in order to protect the environment became widely accepted, and environmentalism was born.

I was very anti-GM and now I'm not sure what to think. My opinion was moved by two things. One, convincing arguments from tw. (I'm not kidding!) Two, stories of the EU forcing African nations NOT to take GM food that would solve hunger and malnutrition problems there.