Is this saying there’s a US “organic” food label, but it doesn’t actually have any (meaningful) legal restrictions? Or is it rather saying that there’s technically no reason why ‘organic’ food should be better food?
There are requirements to be able to call yourself organic, but there’s no actual reason to think that it’s better or more nutritious food.
Basically, people had a wide range of food concerns and they wanted to generally “eat better food”. USDA (US department of agriculture) rolled many of those concerns up into a bundle and made them compatible with how food can actually be produced.
Fulfilling their role of making sure that consumers aren’t mislead, and that there’s a consistent standard associated with a consistent label attached to foods.
USDA organic isn’t a “grade”, like “this is better than prime, this beef is organic”. It’s more “this beef met a minimum requirement for outdoor motion, and wasn’t given antibiotics as a preventative, only as treatment for a disease”. “This food was grown using only certain types of pesticide”.
The FDA (food and drug administration) doesn’t let anyone use anything that they don’t have good reason to believe is safe.
So as far as anyone can actually demonstrate, nothing prohibited by the organic rules is actually harmful.
So we have a label that says “this food was produced in a fashion that basically complies with a vague set of preferences that a bunch of people kinda had towards food, and uses a subset of the safe food manufacturing techniques available”.
Nothing about being healthier, because they don’t let you sell food they think is harmful (in the dangerous sense, no one thinks poptarts are good for you, but they aren’t poisonous).
It’s a marketing label in the sense that it keeps marketing terms uniform and honest, not that it’s meaningless.
It’s a marketing tool, in blind testing people don’t differentiate between organic and GMO, nutritional value is the same or better, there’s less waste as crops are better protected.
Anyway, we’ve been breeding crops by mixing them for so long at this point that everything is technically a GMO.
There needs better regulations around herbicides and pesticides for sure though.
Interesting. Here in Germany, we have “bio” food, which I believe is similar in scope. And while it certainly doesn’t either regulate that it’s actually high-quality food that you’re buying, it has become somewhat synonymous with ‘premium’, so shops do often pander to the higher expectations. Like, the tomatoes that taste the best are from the farmer’s market, then bio tomatoes are still okay, and non-bio tomatoes often just taste like water.
Thing is, the farmer’s market/bio tomatoes would also taste like water if they could develop as much as the non-bio tomatoes and the non-bio tomatoes can taste the same as the others if they’re not getting boosted to make them as big as possible…
Truth is, we can’t realistically feed all humans on bio food, not if we care about waste.
In principle, I agree, but non-bio will long-term also not be able to feed all humans, as it’s so destructive to nature. Like, you probably know the relatively simple causality of pollinators dying from pesticides (and climate change).
Obviously, in theory, we ‘just’ need to find the correct poison, which only kills the insects we don’t like, but I don’t think that’s going to happen in practice. So, if the regulations are chosen sensibly and get enforced enough to matter, then I do think having an option to pay more for companies to be less shit, is good. (I am aware, that this is also somewhat utopian.)
Ultimately, I think, veganism could help us get everyone fed, because eating plants directly, rather than having them digested by an animal first, is essentially always going to be more efficient, in terms of land use, water use, greenhouse gas emissions, required pesticides and so on. But yeah, that the majority of people switch to veganism in the next few decades, is also utopian.
So, ultimately-ultimately, I think, we’ll just do it like we always do: Procrastinate, do too little too late, and have people in foreign nations starve. 🎉
Idk much about this quote, or this dude, of what year this quote is from.
Here’s what I do know, organic labels do have legal requirements.
Example: organic meat can only be watered with purified water, not just tap or well water.
There are chemical usage restrictions, there are requirements against medicines used for livestock, etc.
It takes years (7?) To get a farm organically certified, and requires soil testing and inspections.
Thats why you’ll see some people label their shit as “organically raised” because theyre following the guidlines, but they dont have the certifications.
It takes 3 years to get a farm organically certified. This is because it longer than some of the longest lasting synthetic chemistries like Imazamox (26 months).
It’s the agriculture secretary being very clear that organic food has no more nutrients and conventional food isn’t harmful.
Near as I can tell this quote is provided with no context in an article by a Henry I. Miller, a man who also claimed that nicotine is harmless and was called a key supporter by the tobacco industry. He’s a member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank that also promotes climate denial.
His article is here: https://www.hoover.org/research/organic-food-hoax - it’s a very slimy polemic against labeling GMO food. Incidentally, Daniel Glickman was strongly in favor of labeling, so I strongly suspect that Miller is intentionally being misleading with his quote.
He’s intentionally misleading several times in that piece:
“Many of those organic pesticides are more toxic than the synthetic ones used in ordinary farming.” - toxic how? To pests or to humans? Which ones? How many? What volumes of toxins are organic vs conventional farms putting into the ecosystem?
"His findings were extraordinary. In 59 of the 68 crops surveyed, there was a yield gap, which means that, controlling for other variables, organic farms were producing less than conventional farms. ” that’s not extraordinary, everyone knows synthetic fertilizer+pesticide increases yield. Claiming that organic is worse for the environment because if our entire food system was organic it would require more land is a crazy argument that ignores the amount of poisons like round up that conventional agribusiness pumps into the environment.
He conflates the entire organic food industry, government regulatory apparatus and GMO labelling proponents, using an Adam Smith quote to imply that labeling GMOs is part of a vast conspiracy against the public to raise prices. 🙄
There are lots of rules for the label, the problem is that it’s not a consistent set of rules for all produce, each type of produce has completely different rules and sometimes they even allow pesticides. It’s so ridiculously inconsistent that you unfortunately would have to read the rules for every type of produce to know if it’s worth it. For some produce it’s totally worth it though, like tomatoes.
Is this saying there’s a US “organic” food label, but it doesn’t actually have any (meaningful) legal restrictions? Or is it rather saying that there’s technically no reason why ‘organic’ food should be better food?
There are requirements to be able to call yourself organic, but there’s no actual reason to think that it’s better or more nutritious food.
Basically, people had a wide range of food concerns and they wanted to generally “eat better food”. USDA (US department of agriculture) rolled many of those concerns up into a bundle and made them compatible with how food can actually be produced.
Fulfilling their role of making sure that consumers aren’t mislead, and that there’s a consistent standard associated with a consistent label attached to foods.
USDA organic isn’t a “grade”, like “this is better than prime, this beef is organic”. It’s more “this beef met a minimum requirement for outdoor motion, and wasn’t given antibiotics as a preventative, only as treatment for a disease”. “This food was grown using only certain types of pesticide”.
The FDA (food and drug administration) doesn’t let anyone use anything that they don’t have good reason to believe is safe.
So as far as anyone can actually demonstrate, nothing prohibited by the organic rules is actually harmful.
So we have a label that says “this food was produced in a fashion that basically complies with a vague set of preferences that a bunch of people kinda had towards food, and uses a subset of the safe food manufacturing techniques available”.
Nothing about being healthier, because they don’t let you sell food they think is harmful (in the dangerous sense, no one thinks poptarts are good for you, but they aren’t poisonous).
It’s a marketing label in the sense that it keeps marketing terms uniform and honest, not that it’s meaningless.
It’s a marketing tool, in blind testing people don’t differentiate between organic and GMO, nutritional value is the same or better, there’s less waste as crops are better protected.
Anyway, we’ve been breeding crops by mixing them for so long at this point that everything is technically a GMO.
There needs better regulations around herbicides and pesticides for sure though.
Interesting. Here in Germany, we have “bio” food, which I believe is similar in scope. And while it certainly doesn’t either regulate that it’s actually high-quality food that you’re buying, it has become somewhat synonymous with ‘premium’, so shops do often pander to the higher expectations. Like, the tomatoes that taste the best are from the farmer’s market, then bio tomatoes are still okay, and non-bio tomatoes often just taste like water.
Thing is, the farmer’s market/bio tomatoes would also taste like water if they could develop as much as the non-bio tomatoes and the non-bio tomatoes can taste the same as the others if they’re not getting boosted to make them as big as possible…
Truth is, we can’t realistically feed all humans on bio food, not if we care about waste.
In principle, I agree, but non-bio will long-term also not be able to feed all humans, as it’s so destructive to nature. Like, you probably know the relatively simple causality of pollinators dying from pesticides (and climate change).
Obviously, in theory, we ‘just’ need to find the correct poison, which only kills the insects we don’t like, but I don’t think that’s going to happen in practice. So, if the regulations are chosen sensibly and get enforced enough to matter, then I do think having an option to pay more for companies to be less shit, is good. (I am aware, that this is also somewhat utopian.)
Ultimately, I think, veganism could help us get everyone fed, because eating plants directly, rather than having them digested by an animal first, is essentially always going to be more efficient, in terms of land use, water use, greenhouse gas emissions, required pesticides and so on. But yeah, that the majority of people switch to veganism in the next few decades, is also utopian.
So, ultimately-ultimately, I think, we’ll just do it like we always do: Procrastinate, do too little too late, and have people in foreign nations starve. 🎉
Organic != Non-gmo
Youre actually incorrect.
The use of genetic engineering, or genetically modified organisms (GMOs), is prohibited in organic products.
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2013/05/17/organic-101-can-gmos-be-used-organic-products
Idk much about this quote, or this dude, of what year this quote is from.
Here’s what I do know, organic labels do have legal requirements.
Example: organic meat can only be watered with purified water, not just tap or well water.
There are chemical usage restrictions, there are requirements against medicines used for livestock, etc.
It takes years (7?) To get a farm organically certified, and requires soil testing and inspections.
Thats why you’ll see some people label their shit as “organically raised” because theyre following the guidlines, but they dont have the certifications.
This actually gives me pause. Purified, as in distilled and deionized? That’s missing a lot of naturally occuring electrolytes and minerals.
How long do you need to water your organic meat for, before the cow patties start growing?
Lol, eh, im not changing the phrasing.
Would the waters of lake minnetonka be enough? Please, my cow patties must grow.
I mean why explain yourself on your porn viewing account
It takes 3 years to get a farm organically certified. This is because it longer than some of the longest lasting synthetic chemistries like Imazamox (26 months).
It’s the agriculture secretary being very clear that organic food has no more nutrients and conventional food isn’t harmful.
Near as I can tell this quote is provided with no context in an article by a Henry I. Miller, a man who also claimed that nicotine is harmless and was called a key supporter by the tobacco industry. He’s a member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank that also promotes climate denial.
His article is here: https://www.hoover.org/research/organic-food-hoax - it’s a very slimy polemic against labeling GMO food. Incidentally, Daniel Glickman was strongly in favor of labeling, so I strongly suspect that Miller is intentionally being misleading with his quote.
He’s intentionally misleading several times in that piece:
“Many of those organic pesticides are more toxic than the synthetic ones used in ordinary farming.” - toxic how? To pests or to humans? Which ones? How many? What volumes of toxins are organic vs conventional farms putting into the ecosystem?
"His findings were extraordinary. In 59 of the 68 crops surveyed, there was a yield gap, which means that, controlling for other variables, organic farms were producing less than conventional farms. ” that’s not extraordinary, everyone knows synthetic fertilizer+pesticide increases yield. Claiming that organic is worse for the environment because if our entire food system was organic it would require more land is a crazy argument that ignores the amount of poisons like round up that conventional agribusiness pumps into the environment.
He conflates the entire organic food industry, government regulatory apparatus and GMO labelling proponents, using an Adam Smith quote to imply that labeling GMOs is part of a vast conspiracy against the public to raise prices. 🙄
This is just standard industry lobbyist tactics.
There are lots of rules for the label, the problem is that it’s not a consistent set of rules for all produce, each type of produce has completely different rules and sometimes they even allow pesticides. It’s so ridiculously inconsistent that you unfortunately would have to read the rules for every type of produce to know if it’s worth it. For some produce it’s totally worth it though, like tomatoes.