Premium Price For Carbon

 

UPDATE 30 May 2021: Man convicted in Missouri for selling fake "organic" meat.  This case only proves that they are protecting the logo and brand, not the perceived quality of "organics".

Back in the late 1970s, I had a "day" job as a produce buyer for the most famous grocery store ever in the history of the world.

I'm not kidding.

I say "day" job, because being a produce buyer meant getting up at 2am, and driving a truck out to the farmer's market to buy veggies as they came off the trucks from the fields.  It is because of this job that I became an aficionado of raw vegetables, legumes, tubers, and fungi.  All my wives have appreciated my talent for selecting produce for flavor, freshness and the exact moment it will ripen.

I also hung around the top restaurants in Houston, and possibly the world, acquiring a taste for fine dining and learning tricks of the trade from top chefs.

One of those top chefs was my mother.  Though never tested, I imagine she could take dog meat and dress it up so fine, James Beard couldn't tell the difference.

I even dated a chef for a time.  She was trained at the CIA (not THAT one) and taught me one of the neatest tricks I've ever learned - how to de-bone a chicken from the inside out.  Makes great stuffed chicken and turducken.

All of this is by way of saying I know a bit about food, and specifically produce (food plants, fruit, legumes, tubers, and fungi to be clear), and also to say that I know for a fact that people have been paying premium prices of "organic" foods since at least the 1970s, and likely long before that.

When folks think of organic foods, they ofter imagine the wagyu beef of the veggie world - daily massages, listening to Mozart, people paid to sit around and talk kindly to the plants, that sort of thing.  They might imagine strict oversight by government organization, ensuring your "orginic" food has no chemical fertilizers or insecticides.  Perhaps folks might go so far as to think "organic" means no mucking about with a plant's genome, a.k.a. GMO seeds.

If you are one of those folks, you should get prepared, 'cause here it comes.

There is no legal definition of "organic," nor is there any government enforcement of the term "organic".  In the USA, which has some of the strictest "ideas" about what "organic" means, the entire labelling system is a voluntary process, and acquiring the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) "organic" label means a farmer's produce is at least 95% "organic".  Note, however, that the whole thing comes down to a label, and little else.

In 1990, the US Congress mandated the USDA create a set of standards for "organic" foods.  Note here that it is a set of standards, not laws, rules nor any kind of enforcement structure.  In 2000, the USDA formed a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) which created the National Organic Program (NOP), whose sole job it is to hand out and protect the "integrity" of the USDA Organic label.  You will note carefully that their job is to protect the label, not the food.

Yes folks, "organic" is a marketing program, backed up by a PPP that enforces a set of  practices, and your local farmer can voluntarily join the program, fill out a bunch of forms, get inspected once a year and follow 95% of the guidelines to earn the right to use a label.

That's it.

If you don't follow the guidelines, you get your wrist slapped and you can no longer put the little sticker on your produce and you're not invited to the annual conference in Las Vegas, but you can still call it "organic," and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it.

And that extra cost for "organic" food?  That's to pay for all the bureaucracy  and the dancing girls at the Vegas hoe-down.

A big part of the problem here is that "orgainc" has a specific definition:

or•gan•ic ôr-găn′ĭk

• adj.
  Of, relating to, or derived from living organisms.
• adj.
  Of, relating to, or affecting a bodily organ.

 If your produce falls under the qualification of "life as we know it," meaning carbon is its primary constituent, then it is by definition "organic".  Everything else is marketing.  And one of the great deceptions of marketing is that it's not what you claim, but how you word it.

Remeber that little detail about 95%?  You can drive a whole lotta sins through that remaining 5%.  For instance, if less than 5% of the genome is artificial, "organic".  If less than 5% of the farmer's weed killer is glyphosate, "organic".  If the farmer uses less than 5% ammonium nitrate, "organic."  If the irrigation system only receives 5% of its water from the local nuclear plant, "organic".

Essentially, paying top dollar for the "organic" label is a marketing ploy backed up by the watchful eye of a PPP that follows the guidelines of the USDA.  Your food is no more safe, fresh or natural than any other apple on the cart.

There's a fun little test you can do right in the socially distance comfort of your home.  Next time you brave the prutid and infected world to run to the store and buy some high-priced "organic" veggies, be sure to save the seeds.  Rinse them off and dry them thoroughly, then plant them in some nice "organic" soil, throw a little water on them every day, and be sure not to use ammonium nitrate or glyphosate.  In about 5-8 weeks, let us know what came of your little experiment.

I'll bet you decide to save a few bucks and stop shopping at Whole Foods by end of summer.

By the way, putting a couple free-range chickens in your back yard is a fantastic, "organic" pest control system, and all those bugs make the yolks dark yellow and full of flavor!