Selling the Organic Label

[Griff]

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.