Expression GreenExpressing the need for a healthy green lifestyle

The word “organic” may appear on pack­ages of meat, car­tons of milk or eggs, cheese and other single-ingredient foods. Cer­ti­fied organic requires the rejec­tion of syn­thetic agro­chem­i­cals, irra­di­a­tion and genet­i­cally engi­neered foods or ingre­di­ents. Lit­er­ally, of course, the term is a redun­dancy: all food is com­posed of organic chem­i­cals (com­plex chem­i­cals con­tain­ing car­bon). Any mate­ri­als used in the pro­duc­tion or pro­cess­ing of organic food must be proven safe. Aware­ness is grow­ing about the value of organic foods. But, whether organic chicken or pesticide-free let­tuce rep­re­sents “health­ier” alter­na­tives has long been a sub­ject for debate.

Organic farm­ing is one of the fastest grow­ing seg­ments of the U.S. Gar­den­ing organ­i­cally is much more than what you don’t do. In fact, sales of organ­ics have surged more than 20 per­cent each year in the past decade. In terms of num­ber of farms, acreage and value of pro­duc­tion, the organic food indus­try is grow­ing at a rate of 20 – 30% per year. As com­mod­ity pro­grams are elim­i­nated, more farm­ers have dis­cov­ered that organic pro­duc­tion is a legit­i­mate and eco­nom­i­cally viable alter­na­tive enter­prise. The growth in the num­ber of organic farm­ers has increased steadily, sim­i­lar to the growth of the U.S.

In cur­rent organic pro­duc­tion sys­tems, grow­ers are not per­mit­ted to use con­ven­tional syn­thetic organic fungi­cides in their dis­ease man­age­ment pro­gram. Non-organic milk comes from farms that are allowed to use genet­i­cally mod­i­fied cat­tle feed, along with rou­tine antibi­otic treat­ments and syn­thetic pes­ti­cides. Argu­ments have long raged as to the effects these hor­mones and chem­i­cals have on the bio­prod­ucts. Growth hor­mones in cows, pes­ti­cides on pro­duce and antibi­otics in poul­try are among the rea­sons many Amer­i­cans are turn­ing to organic foods. 

Organ­i­cally raised ani­mals may not be given growth hor­mones to or antibi­otics for any rea­son. Pro­duc­ers are required to feed live­stock agri­cul­tural feed prod­ucts that are 100 per­cent organic, but farm­ers may also pro­vide allowed vit­a­min and min­eral supplements.

The US Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture finally put in place a national sys­tem for label­ing organic food. The new fed­eral rule guar­an­tees you, the con­sumer, organic prod­ucts that are grown with­out toxic pes­ti­cides, her­bi­cides, or fer­til­iz­ers. Pes­ti­cides derived from nat­ural sources (such as bio­log­i­cal pes­ti­cides) may be used in pro­duc­ing organ­i­cally grown food. Lim­i­ta­tions in rela­tion to which pes­ti­cides may or may not be used, present the organic grower with some unique and very demand­ing chal­lenges. Food that is at least 70 per­cent organic will list the organic ingre­di­ents on the front of the pack­age. More than 40 pri­vate orga­ni­za­tions and state agen­cies (cer­ti­fiers) cur­rently cer­tify organic food, but their stan­dards for grow­ing and label­ing organic food may dif­fer. Even with these label­ing rules in place, con­sumers should be pre­pared for some con­fu­sion when shop­ping for organic foods. For one thing, organic prod­ucts are not uni­formly labeled because many farm­ers using organic meth­ods do not pur­sue cer­ti­fi­ca­tion at all. In addi­tion, the lan­guage con­tained in seals, labels, and logos approved by organic cer­ti­fiers may differ.

While con­sumers strug­gle with the fact that often, the avail­abil­ity of organic mate­ri­als is lim­ited when large quan­ti­ties are needed. More and more peo­ple have come to appre­ci­ate the added dimen­sions of value and qual­ity avail­able in the organic marketplace.