| organically speaking |

Here's an interesting argument not to buy "organic" food from Jackie Avner, a woman who grew up on a dairy farm.

In a nutshell, Ms. Avner argues that "organic" is a marketing term and that:

The milk that comes out of cows given antibiotics and hormones is no different from the milk from cows that are given those antibiotics and hormones. The difference is that cows from an "organic" farm get sick and are not given drugs to help them get better or relieve their suffering. If they don't recover, they are slaughtered for meat.

[Is it an urban legend that the high levels of hormones in meat is causing nasty hormonal imbalances in children, causing girls to get periods at age 8?]

Things labelled "organic" are automatically assumed to be fresher, but this is apparently not so. Organic milk is ultra-pasteurized, giving the milk a ridiculously long shelf life. I have in my refrigerator a single-serving of Horizon Organic Milk that doesn't expire until 2008!

Organic food isn't necessarily better for the environment, either. Ms. Avner quotes a Cornell academic about two wheat farms in Alberta, one organic and one using better technology. The organic farm uses 6 times more fuel and leaves a huge environmental footprint. Technology, she argues, is better for the overall environment.

And organic food doesn't mean it doesn't come from China or Chile or somewhere far away, either.

Maybe we've been victims of a smart marketing campaign, getting us to eat food that has to meet certain requirements to be called "organic" so that it can be sold for twice as much but in the end isn't all that different from food grown using newer farming methods.

Maybe we should be more concerned about where our food is grown -- maybe locally grown food is what we're really after.

I stopped buying "organic" milk after reading a little blurb in 5280 that said our local milk delivery, Royal Crest Dairy, was a better option. Cheaper, fresher, locally produced, and they deliver it to my doorstep. Plus, my grocery bills are considerably lower -- I guess I'm not going into the grocery store as often for that last minute carton of milk, where, as long as I'm there, I'll pick up a few other things, and $150 later...

Finally, Ms. Avner argues that stores can charge more then double the price for organic food -- a brilliant marketing ploy.

She made me rethink my thinking, I'll giver her that.

Now I'll argue that locally grown is fresher and cheaper. I just came from our local farmer's market, where for $6.50 I got:
- 1 deliciously juicy cantalope grown a hundred miles south, in Rocky Ford
- 3 ears of sweet corn that were growing two days ago in a field in Brighton
- 1 white onion that is actually edible -- slightly sweet, pungent, but not like the Safeway onions that come from California or who knows where, and have to be soaked in cold water for a full day to get the bitter taste out of them
- 1 bunch of crunchy green spinach
- 1 box of small, sweet & tart red strawberries -- not the flavorless monster berries from the grocery store

Comments

[Peter]

Avner's article was so filled with half-truths that I almost threw up. It was every bit as slick and manipulative as organic marketing has become.

Locally grown organic food. That's all you need to know in order to keep your food safe, clean the air, clean the water, and clean the land, regardless of the selective studies Avner used.

And Royal Crest Dairy: it's still pasteurized, meaning all the good stuff has been removed from it. And aren't you being suckered once again with the organic or all natural marketing ploy of RCD? Do they actually step up and show you without a doubt they don't use hormones? Thought so.

Speaking of hormones, too much soy can be a hormone disruptor. And what about contemporary drugs in our water?? If you're drinking tap water, what are you really drinking? Whatever it is they test for is what. THink anyone has devised a test to identify all drugs and all chemicals not naturally occuring in water?

I agree: local is fresher and cheaper, but organic is better: no chemicals. There are so many natural ways to combat known pests that it never ceases to amaze me that people still reach for the bottle. They don't know or try to deny the basic laws of nature: you reap what you sow.

If you use chemicals on pests, they respond by becoming chemical resistant. Same with weeds. This guarantees that chemicals are needed in ever greater amounts to combat the original problem that it never resolved to begin with. Avner simply sidesteps this whole issue.

I laughed at your onion comment. Onions keep and the kind of onion you got from the farmers market (Belmar) was weak. Scientists still haven't isolated the compound(s) that give onion its flavor: the stronger and more bitter/spicy it is, the better it is for you.

Thanks for the opposing view.

When I was nursing my son, I went through six months of hyperactive thyroid that went untreated because the medicine that I could have taken for it would have gone into my milk. Of course it's the same for cows.

But then I hear that Horizon's organic milk is not truly organic...

[Liz]

The Denver Post neglected to tell us that Ms. Avner works for a company trying to genetically modify cats so that people allergic to them can still have one. Sounds like a bad Stephen King novel in the making....
http://thedrunkablog.blogspot.com/2007/07/here-kitty.html