the death of organic

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The Sad Death Of 'Organic'

How weird and depressing is it now that Kellogg's and Wal-Mart are hawking

'natural' foods?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

 

Friday, October 13, 2006

 

 

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Iwas a little unprepared. The commercial came on and I heard the familiar

ukulele strums of the late Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's famous and

famously beautiful version of " Over the Rainbow " (I know, but it really is quite

lovely) and my first reaction was merely to cringe and wince as yet another

exquisite and plaintive song was whored out to the advertising demons, just one

of thousands.

But then came the barrage of images: the requisite shot of the Perfect Mom

feeding her Perfect Child some sort of Perfect Food, all bathed in soft morning

breakfasty light with happy trees peeking through the windows of the Perfect

Kitchen in some utopian hunk of Perfect America, a bizarre scene that of course

does not exist anywhere on this planet given how there weren't three empty wine

bottles and some used underwear and a stack of dirty dishes and a fresh bottle

of Xanax and an open newspaper offering up giant headlines about murders and

nuclear warheads and Korean sex slaves anywhere in sight.

 

And then it happened. The logo. The product shot. The soothing voice-over. It

was a commercial for a brand-new product: Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. And

your heart goes, Ugh.

 

You say it aloud and the words tend to catch in your throat and make you sort of

gag. Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies, with " organic " in big scripted flowing

font across the top of the box, all steeped in bogus warmth and happiness and

false notions of health and nature and protecting your Perfect Child from the

millions of icky poisons and unhealthy crap churned out by giant megacorps

exactly like, well, exactly like Kellogg's.

 

Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. It's sort of like saying " Lockheed Martin

Granola Bars " or " Exxon Bottled Spring Water. " Self-immolating, and not in a

good way.

 

That's when I heard it. The plaintive wail, the sigh, the crack and the moan and

the whimper, like a tree shooting itself in the head. It was the final death

knell of the " true " organic movement, breathing its last.

 

Because yes indeed, it's over. Organic is dead. Corporations have officially

bought it out, the USDA has weakened its definition to near death, Whole Foods

has made it chic and popular and profitable and yet has compromised its

integrity like no other by being forced to pretty much ignore small, local farms

and ideas of sustainability in favor of staggering commercial growth. And now

this.

 

Did you know? Did you already understand the real definition? Because that's

what " organic " was really supposed to mean, way back when: local, sustainable,

ethical, connected to source, pesticide- and hormone-free. But the vast majority

of organic product now flooding the market only gloms on to that last aspect

(and sometimes, barely even that), to meet the USDA's impotent organic

guidelines. Ah, government. There's just nothing like it to make you want to

smack yourself in the skull with a brick.

 

One example: Stonyfield Farm's organic yogurt. As BusinessWeek points out, the

stuff is made not on an idyllic working farm like the one on the label but

rather in a giant industrial factory. They get their milk trucked in from a

whole range of suppliers and it's possible they will soon begin to import some

of their organic ingredients -- in dried, powdered form -- from New Zealand, so

as to meet national demand, delivering it all over the country via pollutive

trucking companies.

 

This is the harsh reality, the real cost of mainstream organic. There apparently

aren't enough happy small, Earth-conscious local farms around to produce this

stuff in sufficient quantities to feed the entire Wal-Mart nation. Massive

compromises have been made. And those compromises mean " organic " is a shell of

its former self.

 

" Organic, " according to the lobbyist-friendly USDA, does not have to mean the

food is grown using sustainable (read: nondestructive) farming practices. It

does not mean locally produced. It does not mean the ethical treatment of

animals. Nor does it mean the companies that produce it need be the slightest

bit fair or trustworthy or socially responsible. All it means now: no

pesticides, no chemical fertilizers, no bioengineering.

 

So is that enough? After all, the fact that megaproducers like Kellogg's and

General Mills and frightening discount megaretailers like Wal-Mart are going big

into organic certainly will translate into an enormous reduction in chemicals in

the American diet, thousands if not (eventually) millions of pounds of

pesticides and hormones and fertilizer removed from the food chain as a whole.

The benefits of this cannot be understated: It's a great thing indeed.

 

But there's a massive snag: Thousands of products now claim to be organic, but

many merely replace the chemicals and pesticides with a slew of other

industrial, pollutive, destructive processes that easily offset any health

benefits -- most notably the extra shipping and global delivery these

" industrial organic " producers employ to obtain and deliver organic ingredients,

which pumps so many chemicals back into the environment it probably counteracts

all those saved in growing the stuff in the first place.

 

(On that note, if you're going to read one astounding book on the subject of

farming, organics, fast food, and the American diet overall, let it be Michael

Pollan's " The Omnivore's Dilemma. " He maps it all out far better than I ever

could. It's your must-read of the summer, even though it's now fall.)

 

Whole Foods? Perhaps the greatest mixed blessing of all, an amazing company that

has single-handedly done more to bring the organic movement to the mainstream

and raise awareness of healthy foods and improve farming and meat-quality

standards across the board, not to mention the pleasures of food shopping

overall. Yet at the same time, merely by its sheer size and success, they've

simultaneously done more to dilute the real meaning of " organic " than any other

company.

 

Put another way: Unless you shop at farmers' markets or quasi-hippie co-ops or

unless you do your homework and find a true family-run farm within 100 miles of

your home and establish a relationship with them and really begin to buy local,

the odds that the next " organic " product you buy truly meets the original

definition is about as likely as finding real breasts at the Playboy mansion.

And for now, maybe this is just the way it has to be.

 

Which brings us back to Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. Industrial to the hilt,

not the slightest bit locally grown, not the slightest bit sustainable, from the

same company that poisons your kid with Pop-Tarts and Froot Loops and Scooby-Doo

Berry Bones and cares about as much for the health of the planet as Dick Cheney

cares about pheasants. And of course, they ship the crap all over the country in

planes and trucks that burn enough oil to make Bush leer and the oil CEOs grin

and it's all just one big happy joke. On you.

 

But hey, at least they're helping remove millions of pounds of chemical crap

from the food chain, right? At least they pretend to care. Problem is, they've

merely replaced those chemicals with an even more toxic additive: hypocrisy.

Now, can you swallow it?

 

 

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always

glorify the hunter