If what’s on your dinner plate looks more like a chemistry set
than food, consider eating organic
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.
