Kirk James Murphy, M.D. of Firedoglake:
Last week the USDA unveiled their new “standards” for 39 food materials. Amazingly enough, all 39 proposed “standards” simply declare chemicals or chemically grown foodsstuffs can now be hidden in foods labelled “organic”. The comment period ended Tuesday, May 22.
Big Industrial Food (and their colleagues temporarily on detail as Bushie political appointees at USDA) have been chewing this over for years. The Bushies at USDA generously gave the public seven days of comment (instead of the usual 30 or 45) on the latest loopholes Big Ag and Big Bug Spray found for our tables.
Big Ag and Big Bug Spray have entered their “Harry Potter” phase. They want the USDA to magically declare:
- Chemically grown rice magically produces organic rice starch
- Chemically grown hops magically make organic beer.
- Chemical cheese from chemically raised milk magically contains organic whey protein
- Chemical fish raised in pens and fed nothing but artificial food pellets and antibiotics will – when passed through industrial grinders – magically produce organic fish oil.
Big Ag and Big Bug Spray believe in magic. Who knew?
5 comments:
The feral guvmint giveth, and the feral guvment taketh away. Cursed be the name of the feral guvmint.
Seriously... "organic" as a food description defined by regulation has always been vulnerable to this kind of reneging by the USDA. What this means for people like us is that if we wish to eat truly organically produced foods, we are now confined to sources we know, either from personal contact or the history of the producer. We are on our own now, but we are not without resources.
This is a real inconvenience, but hardly unexpected if you know anything about the dual mission of the USDA. Even under more benevolent governments, USDA is charged with a) improving America's nutrition, and b) promoting the sale of America's agricultural products... not necessarily in that order.
Ya, I read years ago where the term 'organic' did not mean what we were encouraged to think it meant. Kind of like 'NEW!' and 'IMPROVED!!'.
It is just sad to see that the government is no longer for the people, by the people but is now screw the people.
ellroon, by no means did I mean to minimize this sleight-of-hand change in regulations. All I meant was that there were organic farmers and organic consumers before there was a USDA organic designation for produce (or whatever), and now we will have to go back to the old system of trusted sources of food. Trusted sources of information about food most certainly do not include the USDA in this day and age.
About two decades ago I did a lot of subcontract computer work for USDA on the nutrition research side of things. The tension between the two abovementioned USDA missions was present even back then; they intrinsically contradict each other frequently. Nonetheless, it saddens me to see yet another once-useful agency not merely politicized but outright co-opted by the industries it is supposed to regulate.
Someone on the FDL thread you linked (it's grown a bit, BTW) suggested the Organic Consumers Association as a source of info. I'm about to explore it, if not right now, then sometime over this long weekend.
Not to overwhelm you with comments, but the OCA link above led me to this article which may be of interest: Item in Farm Bill Takes Away State & Local Rights to Regulate GMOs & Food Safety.
I am never overwhelmed by comments! I appreciate them. It's where the real fun in blogging lies.
Thanks for the links, will check them out.
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