Bloodless Coup

Congress Pisses Me Off, Again: Part 2325

Via todays New York Times, we discover that "organic" no longer means, well, "organic":

But last week, Senate and House Republicans on the Agriculture appropriations subcommittee inserted a last-minute provision into the department's fiscal 2006 budget specifying that certain artificial ingredients could be used in organic food.

Yes, that's right, Congress inserted language into the Ag bill (language that wasn't in either the Senate or the House version of the bill originally) to allow non-organic compounds in the making of organic food. Yup, that makes about as much sense to me as passing a law to declare that "red" can be called "blue".

Why the change? Why is Congress bothering with this?

With sales of roughly $12 billion, organic food remains a niche market within the $500 billion food industry. But the sector's growing appeal to consumers has fueled a 20 percent annual growth rate in recent years, making it highly attractive to food giants looking for gains in a slow-moving business.

So, this isn't lobbying by the small, organic farms themselves. Nope. Big business (who, it seems, can't actually compete without changing the fricking rules to benefit themselves) wanted this. Didn't know that big business was in the organic foods markets? Neither did I:

General Mills markets the Cascadian Farms and Muir Glen brands; Kraft owns Back to Nature and Boca Foods, which makes soy burgers. Within the last few years, Dean Foods, the dairy giant, has acquired Horizon Organic and White Wave, maker of Silk organic soymilk. Groupe Danone, the French dairy company, owns Stonyfield Farm.

Yup. Most of the organic food comes from massive corporations who can't be bothered to actually, you know, grow organic food:

At the same time, Charles Sweat, chief operating officer at Earthbound Farm, the country's largest grower of organic produce, said he was concerned with the section of the spending bill that gives the Agriculture Department authority to grant temporary exemptions to allow conventionally grown ingredients like corn, soybean oil or tomatoes in organic food when organic versions are not "commercially available."

Yup, once again, you got it right. When some ingredients aren't "commercially available" (whatever that means - I don't want to know) in organic form, companies can use non-organic versions, and still label the resulting product as "organic" - and certified organic by the USDA. Fucking assholes.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the standards as they are now mean that "organic" isn't really "organic":

The National Organic Standards Board has been trying to persuade the Agriculture Department to clarify its vague rule that to produce organic milk, dairy cows, besides receiving only organic feed and avoiding growth hormones and antibiotics, must have "access to pasture." It wants to require that milk labeled organic come from cows that get at least 30 percent of their diet from pasture grass for a minimum of 120 days a year.

That's right: to be organic, you only have to have "access" to pasture. They want to raise the standard to 30% pasture grass for 33% of the year. By my calculations, that means milk will be "organic" if the cows eat pasture grass for about a month and are stuck inside for the next 11 months (30% of 33% is about 10%).

Oh, and don't buy any "organic" milk from Safeway, Costco or Target:

Mr. Kastel of Cornucopia estimates that roughly 30 percent of the organic milk sold in the United States comes from cows that are not on pasture, most of them from two large dairies run by Aurora Organic Dairy, an offshoot of what was once the country's largest conventional dairy company. Organic milk is the most popular organic product and sells for up to twice the price of regular milk.

On a recent visit to Aurora's farm in Platteville, Colo., at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, thousands of Holsteins were seen confined to grassless, dirt-lined pens and eating from a long trough filled with 55 percent hay and 45 percent grains, mostly corn and soybeans. Of the 5,200 cows on the farm, just a few hundred - those between milking cycles or near the end of their lactation - were sitting or grazing on small patches of pasture.

Aurora executives say that despite the lack of pasture, their cows are "very healthy and happy." The 10 million gallons of milk the farm produces each year are supplied mainly to supermarkets and sold under store brands like Safeway Select, Kirkland at Costco and Archer Farms at Target.

"Organic": just another word for "profit center".

Posted by baltar at November 1, 2005 12:10 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Food