Category Archives: Everything

I used to wonder about the meaning and significance of “organic” in both meats and plant products. I thought of organic products as more sustainable and low impact, but never knew what the word truly meant. It turns out “organic” doesn’t really have a simple, one line definition. It doesn’t allow certain processes like genetic engineering or radiation. It prohibits the use of most, but not all synthetic materials and pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, etc. The allowed exceptions include chlorine, soap, vitamins, disinfecting alcohol, vaccines that are produced from natural products and processes, and lots of other substances we’ve never heard of but are deemed harmless and nontoxic to the land, our health, etc. The list of exceptions is ridiculously long and complicated, citing other lists like “EPA 3- inerts of unknown toxicity.”¹ The term “organic” also means the maintenance of soil health and water quality through a variety of methods such as crop rotation, which also serve to stop erosion, and manage pests. The certification requires consistent record keeping of “production, harvesting, and handling” for years prior to certification.² This seems like a lot of really important regulation, but the definition of the word is really only part of the story.

The certification process is long and expensive, so there are a lot of farms out there that don’t have the resources to keep records and pay for the certification. The system then favors large-scale farms that are more standardized and have more workers. In this way, there could be many farms that don’t carry the organic seal, but easily meet or go beyond what is required for the label.  Another criticism of organic foods is that the certification is in the end just a list of requirements, methods, and prohibited substances. However, truly sustainable farming is the result of a holistic practice, beyond a quantifiable list. In the words of vegetable farmer Morse Pitts, “It’s just a list of things you can and can’t add to your crops. I take a whole approach to farming. It’s not some checklist I can tick off.”³ Truly sustainable farming takes into account the nature of a specific site and is constantly adjusting, improving. This is not to say that I don’t agree with a lot of the requirements of an organic label. But maybe a quantified label isn’t the answer.

The way organic works in the US is that the NOP (National Organic Program) is in charge of “overseeing the organic system in the United States” including “training, accrediting, and monitoring the independent third-party bodies that issue organic seals.”⁴ The most common example would be something like the USDA, whose seal we constantly see on products in the grocery store. There are about a hundred of these certifiers, all managed by the NOP staff which was at most eight people between 2002 and 2008.⁵ It’s easy to see that no matter how strict the regulations are, the enforcement is what makes the difference. The certifying bodies send inspectors to a given farm every year, yet these inspectors are only required to complete a “visual inspection” which leaves out soil samples or chemical tests. The inspectors often have a lot to do, may only see the fields from a distance, or not even visit the farm. Certifiers are often motivated more to keep their business with the farms they inspect than to be strict and honest. Fraud is not unheard of.⁶ And when the farm being certified is in another country and more organizations get involved, there is an even greater likelihood that the farm doesn’t truly live up to the specifications or what we think of when we read the word organic.

Outside of all this, there are 3 levels of organic in foods with multiple ingredients: “100% organic,” “organic,” and “contains organic ingredients.” 100% organic means just that; 100% of the ingredients are grown organically. Organic means that 95% of the ingredients by volume (excluding water and salt) are certified organic. A product labeled as containing organic ingredients must have 70% of its ingredients come from certified organic sources.⁷

And this is just the beginning of discovering everything behind the word “organic.” It is so complicated and there is still a lot more to learn. The way I see it, there are “organic” farms out there that are great or awful to their land and earth. There are farms without the organic seal that have a similar range. This only makes it more important to know the specific farm and develop specific opinions. If this is interesting to you, I recommend the book Green Gone Wrong by Heather Rogers. I got some of my data and quotations from this book. I’m not finished with the book but I’ve learned a lot so far and I’ll definitely write about it on here once I’m done. For the sake of honesty and acknowledgement, I’m going to start citing my sources for specific facts in informal footnotes.

^{1 2} National Organic Program Electronic Code of Federal Regulations http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr;sid=dd55fb5a1230b3dde926629bf8e6a50c;rgn=div5;view=text;node=7%3A3.1.1.9.32;idno=7;cc=ecfr

^{3 4 5 6} Green Gone Wrong by Heather Rogers

⁷ The Daily Greenhttp://www.thedailygreen.com/going-green/3979

-Simon

Sorry I haven’t posted for a long time. I just got back from Chewonki and I definitely have a lot to share about the things I learned there.

While at Chewonki, I took on a vegan diet except I drank milk from my friend’s farm. It is part of my philosophy to not only avoid foods which are harmful to the environment, but support those that I deem sustainable and kind to animals. Milk grown on the local Goranson farm fell under the last category for me. The milk is special because it is super fresh and I know the person who is making it. The mik comes from just one cow, which means Carl (my friend’s brother) can give that cow a lot of attention and care, making sure to keep her happy and healthy. The coolest thing about this milk is that it’s raw, unpasteurized and unhomogenized. Homogenization just means that the fat globules in the milk are brought under high pressure to mix them into the rest of the milk and create a homogenous solution which looks clean and fresh to consumers. All milk that is sold at supermarkets is pasteurized, meaning it’s heated to kill any bacteria and make the milk effectively sterile. But the heating gets rid of a lot of other things that are beneficial for humans. It reduces the amount of vitamins A, B, D, E, and K. It denatures the enzyme lactase which helps us digest the protein lactose in milk. It kills helpful bacteria which would naturally fight off the bad bacteria like E. coli or Salmonella. A lot of milk in supermarkets is vitamin D fortified and Lactaid is milk that has the lactase enzyme added back into it. These fortifications are examples of humans destroying something that is naturally present in the milk only to add it back in, which seems pretty inefficient to me. The reason we have pasteurization is to get rid of pathogens and harmful bacteria, but these wouldn’t be present if we had better, cleaner conditions for our cows. If pasteurized milk is safe because it is sterile, raw milk is healthy because it is rich in life. I am lactose intolerant and I hadn’t drunk milk in probably 3 years, but I tried that raw milk with no problems.

The pasteurization process makes sense for a system which is looking for efficient, guaranteed, standardized safety. I think it’s nice to hear the other side once in a while, though. Pasteurization makes sense for our current system, which transports milk long distances. Here is a really cool site which allows you to figure out where your milk came from by looking at a code on the bottle: http://whereismymilkfrom.com/ This isn’t the kind of system I want to support, which is why I won’t drink milk. The kind of self-sustaining, localized agriculture like Carl’s makes sense for me. Since raw milk can’t be bought in a grocery store, I won’t likely drink milk again. There are a few reasons for this decision. Often times, I hear the argument that cows enjoy being milked. This is true if the cow is giving milk to its calf or being milked gently by hand. But with commercial milk production, cows are milked by machines which aren’t comfortable or careful. Along with this mechanization, cows must be repeatedly impregnated to keep them producing milk. If the cow gives birth to a male cow, it will likely be sold to become veal and live a short life in a confined crate. Whenever I think of consuming milk, I remind myself that I am in a way indirectly supporting the veal industry and other cruel practices.

Obviously, it’s a really hard change to fundamentally change what you consume, but I find it fascinating and enlightening that a product we often don’t think about has so many moral and environmental complications to it.

-Simon