Author: shacker

Used to be that “organic” meant not only chemical-free, but also produced on small, sustainable, local farms. We paid a premium for these attributes because they mattered. But something funny happened on the way to Kellogg’s beginning production of Organic Rice Krispies (I’m not making this up) and Wal-Mart’s embrace of organic products.

Shouldn’t we be on our feet cheering to know that mainstream America will be eating healthier food, and ecstatic for all the cleaner air and dirt and water that will result? Well, yeah, except that it doesn’t work that way. Trouble is the USDA’s organic guidelines have been rendered nearly impotent under pressure from producers. And because there aren’t nearly enough small/local organic producers to supply clients the size of Wal-Mart. So ingredients are produced on factory farms, almost like before, and trucked long-distance to factories for production, burning just as much fossil fuel as ever.

Mark Morford, for the SF Chronicle:

“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. And those compromises mean “organic” is a shell of its former self. 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 … 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.

J-School professor Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma (a fantastic read) has been engaged in a public exchange of words with Whole Foods CEO John Mackey on that store’s failure to live up to the healthy/organic image it sells. Read his two latest letters here and here.

Technorati Tags: organic, pollan

We sometimes regard fish farms as a way to raise seafood in a controlled environment, not subject to oceanic pollution and other factors that ravage aquatic populations. But in reality, there’s often a horrible backfire to cultivating artificial populations. According to Environment News Service, as many as 95% of wild salmon migrating past commercial salmon fisheries are devastated by parasites raised within the facilities.

The debate over whether to buy farm-raised or wild salmon has long been a hot one, with many eco-conscious lox lovers opting for the wild-caught variety. But that may not be an option much longer, thanks to some tiny tagalongs. The Environment News Service reports that deadly sea lice have been feasting upon the flesh of juvenile wild salmon on their way out to sea. It sounds like a Halloween horror story, and indeed there is a daunting villain: the massive commercial fish farm industry. According to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “[p]arasites from fish farms kill as much as 95 percent of young wild salmon that migrate past the facilities.”

It’s ironic. Build a fishery to create sustainable artificial populations, and in the process end up devastating the remaining natural population.