[Anyone] The Sad Death Of 'Organic'

[Thos Myers]

  The Sad Death Of 'Organic'
  How weird and depressing is it now that Kellogg's and Wal-Mart are
  hawking 'natural' foods?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist <mailto:mmorford at sfgate.com>

Friday, October 13, 2006


***I*was a little unprepared. The commercial came on and I heard the
familiar ukulele strums of the late Hawaiian singer Israel
Kamakawiwo'ole's famous and famously beautiful version of "Over the
Rainbow
<http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=6920402&s=143441&i=6920394>"
(I know, but it really is quite lovely) and my first reaction was merely
to cringe and wince as yet another exquisite and plaintive song was
whored out to the advertising demons, just one of thousands.

But then came the barrage of images: the requisite shot of the Perfect
Mom feeding her Perfect Child some sort of Perfect Food, all bathed in
soft morning breakfasty light with happy trees peeking through the
windows of the Perfect Kitchen in some utopian hunk of Perfect America,
a bizarre scene that of course does not exist anywhere on this planet
given how there weren't three empty wine bottles and some used underwear
and a stack of dirty dishes and a fresh bottle of Xanax and an open
newspaper offering up giant headlines about murders and nuclear warheads
and Korean sex slaves
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/foreigndesk/detail?blogid=16&entry_id=9691>
anywhere in sight.

And then it happened. The logo. The product shot. The soothing
voice-over. It was a commercial for a brand-new product: Kellogg's
Organic Rice Krispies. And your heart goes, Ugh.

You say it aloud and the words tend to catch in your throat and make you
sort of gag. Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies, with "organic" in big
scripted flowing font across the top of the box, all steeped in bogus
warmth and happiness and false notions of health and nature and
protecting your Perfect Child from the millions of icky poisons and
unhealthy crap churned out by giant megacorps exactly like, well,
exactly like Kellogg's.

Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. It's sort of like saying "Lockheed
Martin Granola Bars" or "Exxon Bottled Spring Water." Self-immolating,
and not in a good way.

That's when I heard it. The plaintive wail, the sigh, the crack and the
moan and the whimper, like a tree shooting itself in the head. It was
the final death knell of the "true" organic movement, breathing its last.

Because yes indeed, it's over. Organic is dead. Corporations have
officially bought it out, the USDA has weakened its definition to near
death, Whole Foods has made it chic and popular and profitable and yet
has compromised its integrity like no other by being forced to pretty
much ignore small, local farms and ideas of sustainability in favor of
staggering commercial growth. And now this.

Did you know? Did you already understand the real definition? Because
that's what "organic" was really supposed to mean, way back when: local,
sustainable, ethical, connected to source, pesticide- and hormone-free.
But the vast majority of organic product now flooding the market only
gloms on to that last aspect (and sometimes, barely even that), to meet
the USDA's impotent organic guidelines. Ah, government. There's just
nothing like it to make you want to smack yourself in the skull with a
brick.

One example: Stonyfield Farm's organic yogurt. As BusinessWeek points
out <http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_42/b4005001.htm>,
the stuff is made not on an idyllic working farm like the one on the
label but rather in a giant industrial factory. They get their milk
trucked in from a whole range of suppliers and it's possible they will
soon begin to import some of their organic ingredients -- in dried,
powdered form -- from New Zealand, so as to meet national demand,
delivering it all over the country via pollutive trucking companies.

This is the harsh reality, the real cost of mainstream organic. There
apparently aren't enough happy small, Earth-conscious local farms around
to produce this stuff in sufficient quantities to feed the entire
Wal-Mart nation. Massive compromises have been made. And those
compromises mean "organic" is a shell of its former self.

"Organic," according to the lobbyist-friendly USDA, does not have to
mean the food is grown using sustainable (read: nondestructive) farming
practices. It does not mean locally produced. It does not mean the
ethical treatment of animals. Nor does it mean the companies that
produce it need be the slightest bit fair or trustworthy or socially
responsible. All it means now: no pesticides, no chemical fertilizers,
no bioengineering.

So is that enough? After all, the fact that megaproducers like Kellogg's
and General Mills <http://www.cascadianfarm.com/products/default.aspx>
and frightening discount megaretailers like Wal-Mart
<http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2006/nf20060329_6971.htm>
are going big into organic certainly will translate into an enormous
reduction in chemicals in the American diet, thousands if not
(eventually) millions of pounds of pesticides and hormones and
fertilizer removed from the food chain as a whole. The benefits of this
cannot be understated: It's a great thing indeed.

But there's a massive snag: Thousands of products now claim to be
organic, but many merely replace the chemicals and pesticides with a
slew of other industrial, pollutive, destructive processes that easily
offset any health benefits -- most notably the extra shipping and global
delivery these "industrial organic" producers employ to obtain and
deliver organic ingredients, which pumps so many chemicals back into the
environment it probably counteracts all those saved in growing the stuff
in the first place.

(On that note, if you're going to read one astounding book on the
subject of farming, organics, fast food, and the American diet overall,
let it be Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma
<http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Michael-Pollan/dp/1594200823/>."
He maps it all out far better than I ever could. It's your must-read of
the summer, even though it's now fall.)

Whole Foods? Perhaps the greatest mixed blessing of all, an amazing
company that has single-handedly done more to bring the organic movement
to the mainstream and raise awareness of healthy foods and improve
farming and meat-quality standards across the board, not to mention the
pleasures of food shopping overall. Yet at the same time, merely by its
sheer size and success, they've simultaneously done more to dilute the
real meaning of "organic" than any other company.

Put another way: Unless you shop at farmers' markets or quasi-hippie
co-ops or unless you do your homework and find a true family-run farm
within 100 miles of your home and establish a relationship with them and
/really/ begin to buy local, the odds that the next "organic" product
you buy truly meets the original definition is about as likely as
finding real breasts at the Playboy mansion. And for now, maybe this is
just the way it has to be.

Which brings us back to Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. Industrial to
the hilt, not the slightest bit locally grown, not the slightest bit
sustainable, from the same company that poisons your kid with Pop-Tarts
and Froot Loops and Scooby-Doo Berry Bones and cares about as much for
the health of the planet as Dick Cheney cares about pheasants. And of
course, they ship the crap all over the country in planes and trucks
that burn enough oil to make Bush leer and the oil CEOs grin and it's
all just one big happy joke. On you.

But hey, at least they're helping remove millions of pounds of chemical
crap from the food chain, right? At least they /pretend/ to care.
Problem is, they've merely replaced those chemicals with an even more
toxic additive: hypocrisy. Now, can you swallow it?

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Morford at Litquake '06! Come hear Mark read as part of the
"Emperor Norton Lives: Only in S.F. Authors" group, all part of the
famed SF Lit Crawl <http://www.litquake.org/the-festival/lit-crawl/>
this Saturday, October 14 at the City Art Gallery. Full details at
litquake.org <http://litquake.org>!