Why Organic is Worthless!

I have for the past five or so years been yelling from the rooftops... OK so I just tell anyone who will listen to me... that commercial organic products are absolutely worthless. Check out this article which I found in my facebook feed from Ever Growing Farm about why commercial organic and organic for that matter are currently worthless.

Factory Farms Producing Organic Milk/Eggs

I have been encouraging people to make their first priority to know their farmer. It is not about the label that is slapped on the food, or the government regulations. The reality is that when it comes to big farm business they will slap any label on the food to make extra money, and they have the money to buy the label in the first place, and pay the minimal fines IF they get caught. 

I remember when farmers used to have to defend that they did not have the organic label because the process to become certified was more about making money for the state and less about organic foods. There was a lot of red tape and cost that small farmers could not afford. There were also regulations (proof that there had been no chemicals applied to the land in the last decade) that some small farmers just couldn't meet. Those farmers were passionate about the organic methods that they used, despite not being certified. I used to purchase from those farmers (and still do). 

Then when big businesses (like the cereal companies) started getting into the organic market I knew that the standard would be diluted (and it has been, there is a percentage of non-organic components allowed in a product labeled organic, and now some amounts of pesticides and chemical fertilizers are allowed on organic lands). 

If you know farmers, then you know that there has been a movement from the term organic to the term sustainable. This is a self-imposed standard for which there is no regulation. I believe the government regulation is the problem. It leads the average individual to the false security that someone else (the government) has their (the individual's) best interest at heart and has already investigated and protected the individual. The REALITY of government oversight is that the government creates a lot of red tape and a process for everything they oversee. Big businesses have no problem keeping up with the red tape, they can pay someone to deal with the red tape and fill out the applications.

What government is concerned with is keeping its seat in office (which means making the lobbyists and moneyed constituents happy, and if you haven't figured it out yet that means keeping big business happy). 

Instead if we removed regulation of industries like Organic and took personal responsibility to investigate our farmers and their farms WE would know our food and the conditions it comes from. 

It is my intention to interview and visit several local farms, meat and produce and share those interviews on this blog. 

For the time being I challenge all of you to find out who the parent company of Cascadian Farms is.  Then ask yourself what does that REALLY mean for Cascadian Farms' "organic" products?