Buying organic: What’s a shopper to do?

[Guest guest]

Buying organic: What's a shopper to do?

 

Monday, July 25, 2005

 

By Katie Niekerk

 

It's an ordinary trip to the grocery store until you meander into the

produce section and notice something new: a row of shelves dedicated to

organic fruits and vegetables.

 

With a pint of organic strawberries in your left hand and a pint of

traditional strawberries in your right, you might wonder the point of buying

organic. The berries on the left look smaller and have more blemishes than

the berries on the right, and - wait a minute - they're about a dollar more.

 

But if you go so far as to conduct a taste test, you might begin to

understand. The organic strawberries likely are sweeter and redder inside

than their traditional counterparts. And when you consider the several

studies suggesting organic foods contain more health and environmental

benefits - while conventionally grown foods could actually harm health and

the environment - you just might abandon the fruit in your right hand and

fork over that extra buck.

 

If you did, you'd be among the growing segment of Americans buying organic

food. The U.S. Department of Agriculture - the organization that governs

whether a food can be labeled organic in the United States - estimated the

organic-food industry was worth $16 billion last year, up from $11 billion

in 2002.

 

What exactly is organic food?

 

The USDA defines organic food as that produced by farmers who utilize

renewable resources and conserve soil and water. Organic meat, poultry, eggs

and dairy products come from animals that are not given antibiotics or

growth hormones, and organic farming uses fewer pesticides, herbicides,

synthetic ingredients, sewage sludge, bioengineering or ionizing radiation

than conventional methods or none at all.

 

Before a product can be labeled organic, a USDA worker has to inspect the

farm where the food is grown to make sure the farmer is in compliance with

USDA organic standards. To become certified organic, a farmer must fulfill

several requirements, such as maintaining records about the production and

handling of products that are sold or labeled as organic, as well as

demonstrating he or she is minimizing soil erosion, rotating crops and

preventing contamination of crops, soil and water.

 

Additionally, the farmer must have had no prohibited substances applied to

the land for at least three years prior to the first harvest to be labeled

organic. People who market a food as organic when it's not can be fined up

to $10,000 for each violation.

 

There are no requirements for how large a farm or operation has to be in

order to produce organic food, and if the total gross agricultural income

from organic sales is $5,000 or less per year, the producer is exempt from

certification.

 

Three years ago, the USDA issued a national seal intended to notify

consumers which foods were certified organic following USDA standards, which

took about 10 years to develop.

 

The seal - a half-white, half-green circle with " USDA organic " printed

across - tells consumers the food is at least 95 percent organic, excluding

water and salt, which are the only two substances that cannot be considered

organic.

Food that is at least 70-percent organic can be labeled " made with organic

ingredients, " with the organic ingredients listed on the front of the

package. If a product is less than 70-percent organic, the organic

ingredients can be listed on the side, but the front cannot have the word

organic on it. If a food is labeled transitional, that means the farmer

produced it during the three-year period between growing conventionally and

growing organic. A food labeled natural does not mean it's organic.

 

http://www.gilroydispatch.com/lifestyles/contentview.asp?c=164690

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

This was a great article you posted.

 

Here is another, where I think we are fighting people like the

author who is attacking CR for what is essentially the truth

(especially the last paragraph- good grief, did he actually type

that???) He just seems so pissed about it all...

 

Irradiation Misrepresented by Consumer Reports

Health Facts and Fears ^ | August 11, 2003 | Joseph D. Rosen, Ph.D.,

 

Warning: Reading Consumer Reports may be dangerous to your health.

 

Consumer Reports (CR) has helped millions of Americans select the

best consumer goods available at the lowest prices and has called

attention to some of the excesses of the marketplace. As a result,

it has established a reputation among consumers as an honest,

informative magazine. In recent years, however, CR policy appears to

have been taken over by consumer and environmental activists and the

magazine is dispensing advice that is not in the best interests of

its readers. For example, CR recommended that consumers buy organic

food instead of conventional food although it found that there were

no health, nutritional, or taste differences between them and

organic food cost much more (if CR had applied the same standards to

food that it applies to refrigerators it would have rated

conventional food a " best buy " ). A pesticide danger ranking system

developed by CR's parent organization, Consumers Union, was so

scientifically unsound that it was severely criticized by the

Society of Toxicology. While CR admitted that genetically engineered

food is safe to eat, it nevertheless called for mandatory labeling,

knowing full well that this will give vendors of organic food an

unfair marketing advantage among many consumers.

 

An article titled " The Truth About Irradiated Meat " (August 2003) is

the latest outrage. At first, CR correctly reports that " irradiated

food is safe to eat, according to federal and world health

officials, " and that the United States Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention estimate that irradiating half of all ground beef,

poultry, pork, and processed meat would prevent approximately one

million cases of food poisoning, 8,500 hospital admissions, 6,000

grave illnesses, and 350 deaths in the U.S. each year. In their own

tests, CR found that 84% of non-irradiated chicken fingers contained

Listeria monocytogenes (a pathogenic microorganism responsible for

several disease outbreaks last year), while the irradiated product

contained none.

 

In spite of this, CR does everything it can to persuade consumers

not to buy irradiated meat. First, they claim that irradiation does

not kill all the bacteria. That's true, but the process is designed

to kill the pathogenic bacteria more readily than the benign

organisms. A similar situation is encountered in the pasteurization

of milk, a process that kills Salmonella but not spoilage bacteria

(or else milk would never spoil). Second, their taste test panel

(which consisted of a grand total of two people) found an off-flavor

so " subtle " that " some consumers may not notice it. " If the off-

flavor is so subtle, how about acknowledging that the vast majority

of consumers would not recognize it — instead of planting the notion

of poor taste into people's psyches? Besides, why not do a real

taste test by comparing the taste of a juicy medium rare or rare

hamburger with the burnt offerings obtained from having to cook non-

irradiated beef to a crisp? In addition to falsely claiming that

irradiated meat tastes bad, CR says that the typical irradiation

dose for meat is 150 times the dose capable of killing an adult.

While this may be true, it is irrelevant, since human radiation

exposure from eating irradiated food is zero. Another red herring is

that irradiation can't destroy the agents thought to cause Mad Cow

Disease: neither does cooking (or incineration, for that matter).

 

And Finally, Cancer

 

And if these arguments aren't enough to dissuade the consumer from

buying irradiated food, it's time for that old bugaboo, cancer. CR

cites unpublished European studies that suggest that some of the

chemicals formed in meat as a result of irradiation may cause

cancer. These chemicals belong to a class of compounds called 2-

alkylcyclobutanones (2-ACBs) and have been under intense study by

Dr. Henry Delincee and his colleagues at the Federal Research Center

of Nutrition in Karlsruhe, Germany since 1998. CR has apparently

found this information in an affidavit to the U.S. Department of

Agriculture from a paid consultant to Public Citizen and the Center

for Food Safety, two activist organizations that have led the fight

against irradiated food. However, CR did not inform their readers

that the consultant was condemned by Dr. Delincee for " obviously not

telling the truth, thereby committing perjury " and for submitting an

affidavit of " no value. " Nor did CR explain that the World Health

Organization, after examining the 2-ACB data, wrote that the

chemicals " do not appear to pose a health risk to consumers. " If CR

is so concerned about cancer, they should have informed their

readers that mutagens and carcinogens are also formed when meat is

cooked at the high temperatures required to kill bacteria — and that

the amount of these chemicals is much reduced at the lower

temperatures that can be used if the meat is first irradiated.

Perversely, CR is recommending that consumers buy products that are

not only more risky in terms of food poisoning but also pose an

increased (although extremely small) cancer risk.

 

CR has been able to maintain its enviable reputation for honesty and

integrity by refusing to accept advertisements. However, the

organizations and foundations that are providing substantial

financial support to CR's parent, Consumers Union, are the same ones

that are making huge contributions to groups that advocate the

purchase of organic food, want to get rid of pesticides, and are

against both genetically engineered food and irradiated food. In

fairness to its readers, CR should divulge that the rules have

changed, and that some of its opinions may result from a conflict of

interest.

************

Joseph D. Rosen, Ph.D., is an ACSH Advisor and a professor of food

science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. He likes his

meat rare and his science well done. For more information, see

ACSH's booklet on Irradiated Foods.

 

 

 

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rawfood , <beefree@g...> wrote:

> Buying organic: What's a shopper to do?

>

> Monday, July 25, 2005

>

> By Katie Niekerk

http://www.gilroydispatch.com/lifestyles/contentview.asp?c=164690

>

>

>