What’s Organic

…and realizing it’s time to re-focus this blog.

The topic that causes me the most distress on a personal level is genetic engineering and biotech practices and their implications for our health, environment and food supply. But there are good people out there watching and writing about this. Among them are:

• The Union of Concerned Scientists Food and Environment pages
• The Center for Food Safety
• Organic Consumers Association

The original idea for a WhatsOrganic blog came from cruising the National Organic Program online, reading public comments, following lots of dead links, and being generally filled with dread at the realization that organic standards had been folded into the government bureaucracy.

But that’s history. As a marketing tool, the word “organic” has been co-opted. And so before buying anything with an organic label I will choose to buy local — especially when the label is on packaging for food grown thousands of miles away from my kitchen table.

But that doesn’t remove the need for one more voice in this wilderness talking about what organic means. We need to know why the term has become synonymous with money to big producers and what it means that companies have added the term USDA Organic to product labels. We need reassurance that buying organic — in particular “USDA Organic” can be done in good faith and with a clear conscience.

So let’s see where this leads us…