I've been thinking a lot about organic food recently, as several topics have crossed my path over the last week or two. On a mother's forum I read the views of moms who buy organic milk versus moms who do not. A farmer friend sent me a concerned email about the recently introduced bill to remake the functions of the USDA and FDA into one concentrated food safety agency.
One of the main fears around this bill is how it will affect small scale producers and organics. And just today, Aaron sent me a report of
different organic milk brands, painstakingly rated by the Cornucopia foundation on criteria such as involvement in dairy operations, pasture available to cows, herd cull rate and more. This led me to do some checking out of the
Cornucopia site and other information available there.
There is no mistake that interest in organic and local food is increasing, and overall, this is a great development. However, certainly for most consumers buying organic doesn't mean they have any greater transparency about where their food is coming from, or that it is being produced with any of the notions often attributed to organic food, notions such as production resulting from a small family oriented farm, free roaming happy animals, and so on. This is not to disparage the organic industry, because there are many small scale farmers doing exactly what we as consumers associate with organic farming. But as this market sector has grown tremendously, big food companies haven't wanted to miss the boat. One of the ways they've protected their economic interests is by getting involved - buying or creating organic brands, and lobbying through industry associations to alter standards that ostensibly will favor their interests more. Over at the Cornucopia site, I found
this graphic to be particularly compelling. Many major organic brands have been acquired by a top 25 food company (such as Coca Cola, Kraft, Heinz and Cargill), and many organic brands are private label brands of larger supermarkets and food distributors (such as WalMart, Safeway, and Whole Foods). With the interest in and consolidation among organic food producers, it is nearly impossible for a consumer to really know what kind of entity is behind the food in question. Amazingly, at least as of 2007, there were a
handful of brands that have held out as independents.
My own revelation was that of the organic milk brands we prefer, only one rated 3 cows in the survey. That brand is owned by HP Hood, not by the company we thought it was (they licensed the name). I am not totally dismayed by this; both are New England companies that I think have reasonable business practices, but there is still some level of deception here. The others rated no or one cow due to lack of information on the actual production methods. I still believe in and prefer organic milk, but this certainly removes any idealistic impression of who we are supporting when we buy these brands.
This in turn brings me back to the localvore movement. I know where I am now getting most of our meat and produce from - real people we have talked to, real farms we have visited that are nearby, real relationships we will cultivate this year. Before we'd really started this effort, about this time last year actually, I didn't even think it'd be possible to get half of what we've found locally or done ourselves. It's been an incredible journey and one in which I keep looking for the next steps.
Got milk?
Look for more from us in the coming weeks.
