A great organic-food fraud
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Randy Constant wasn't selling organic produce, or really much of anything that you think of buying "organic" at the grocery store. Because, for the most part, there tend to be a lot of visual differences between organic and conventional: conventional apples, for example, tend to be huge and spotless, while organic are almost always smaller and less "pristine". Similarly, stuff like organic, grass-fed milk tastes much different than conventional milk.
I've always been of the opinion that, as a consumer choice, organic makes sense for certain types of products where you eat the skin and all, e.g. apples, vegetables, etc.
In this case, though, Mr. Constant was selling "organic" grain primarily as livestock feed. The idea that you can really tell, or there is any difference at all, in the meat of livestock fed organic vs. conventional is extremely far fetched. Sure, there way be some tiny difference, but it's not like conventional methods include spraying with heavy metals. Most of the pesticides, etc. sprayed on conventional crops certainly don't show up in the meat of animals that eat these crops.
So this whole episode did expose the scam of organic livestock feed, but I don't think it's fair to stretch that to organic products generally.
People have magical thoughts about what organic does. Roundup and synthetic fertilizer do not affect flavor.
I think a lot of times with "organic" produce, the taste improvements come from something else - typically using different, heritage varieties that were bred for flavour, rather than looking good on the shelf.
It's trivial to make worse handicraft than mass produce, but handicraft makers realize that if they charge N times more they've got to add at least some value. They also focus in areas where it's possible to add value (no handicraft Android phones or Lego bricks).
So when you actually buy some handicraft item/organic food, it is usually different/better quality, not because this is inherent property of the production process, but because the price has to be justified.
I'm not arguing they do. But I've seen conventionally grown apples that were nearly the size of my head, and I've never seen organic produce that comes anywhere close.
Granted, that just means it would be difficult to pass off organic as conventional, while the reverse you could just pick conventional earlier, but I think arguing "organic does not look different" is asking me to disbelieve my eyes every time I go to the grocery store.
Some producers get rid of much of the fruit early in the season which results in fewer, larger apples. Organic producers could do this just as well, but generally don't.
this is patently false. the easiest and most obvious case is eggs.
try it yourself. buy a dozen of the cheapest factory farm eggs you can find and a dozen of organic cage-free eggs. crack them open and look. they barely look like the same thing. factory farm eggs look pale and sickly - organic looks rich and nutritious.
of course, you could just search it:
It is essentially marketing.
I'm probably one of these people, so I feel the need proffer a defense.
It isn't that I think organic produce is a scam. But from what I understand about the verification systems in place it is easy to get away with labeling non-organic products as organic. And since organic products sell at a price premium, everyone has a financial incentive to be in on it. Everyone just passes the buck upstream.
I'm certainly not going to pay a price premium for something that isn't easy to validate. Now, if the organic green peppers look better than the non-organic ones, I might buy them instead, but in this instance, I'm paying for tangibly better produce, not a fancy sticker.
It doesn't help that I grew up in soy bean country right around the time when everyone was going organic, so I've seen first-hand the disdain that land owners had for organic buyers. The article is really spot on in this respect.
Pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers massively increased yield, so eschewing these modern innovations due to some woo to get trash yields and inferior products (e.g., smaller, with more signs of insect predation) just seems like lunacy.
Keep in mind, people who have made a living judiciously spraying their crops with these chemicals for many years aren't likely to think they've been poisoning themselves or the population for a lot of reasons, so they won't buy into the central premise of organic farming. So it's like insisting on doing all of your programming on a PD-11/20 just because it's pure. When customers start insisting on the right to buy inferior products at inflated prices, it's all the more batty.
Do you know if their perspective has shifted over time?
I would guess that their views have moderated a bit, but probably more because organic can be good for business and it doesn't seem to be going away so there's less risk that capital expenditures and up-skilling to do organic farming is going to be wasted.
To illustrate, when I was a kid I would "bean-walk," which is walking through soybean fields and cutting down weeds with a hook like tool manually. It was cheaper to pay local kids arcade money than spray, so that's what they did. In general farmers don't like spraying their crop with chemical--it's expensive.
Farmers are pretty pragmatic people, but they have to plan ahead and deal with weather, etc. If organic pays enough of a premium to handle reduced yield and perhaps an increased risk premium for risk (e.g., higher insect levels due to a wet spring that organic methods don't fix) they'll do it.
Are they more flavourful? Nutritious?
With enough practice and maybe some reading, you can learn to evaluate a fruit or vegetable pretty well by touch, sight, and smell.
Ripeness is the biggest thing I look at. Generally the more ripe the fruit or veg, the softer, and more fragrant, and deeper the color it will be. So I try to buy firm, light, less smelly produce, but eat it when it is just begun to soften and give off an aroma.
I also look for bruises, cuts, blemishes, or other signs of damage during shipping.
For things like melons, I recommend reading up on how to evaluate them. Watermelons and musk melons in particular have a staggering flavor difference that can see, felt, and smelled, but they don't follow the same "rules" as other produce.
But I think it’s a misunderstanding to think that farmers have an easy path to unverifiable fraud. Those inspectors want to see your books, along with your entire operation. It’s rough to get certified.
that seems like using a blunt instrument to address two orthogonal issues, in a roundabout way.
1. if it's actually about the environmental/health impacts, why shouldn't artificial pesticides/fertilizers be allowed on a per-chemical basis if the evidence supports its safety?
2. is there any requirement that organic farming have less environmental impact on net compared to conventional farming? You might win in terms of run-off artificial pesticides and fertilizers, but then lose out overall because of lower yields.
>(plus more humane conditions for livestock),
is humane treatment part of organic certification?
If they tested the feed of course they would know the difference because the non-organic feed would be contaminated with pesticides/herbicides. And organic livestock is fed organic feed because of course the contaminants are reflected in the meat. This is easily verified as basic fact, though actually testing the feed or the meat is an expensive process hence the whole honor system.
This doesn't make organic a scam. Exactly the same reason you might not want an apple sprayed with a pesticide applies to eat a burger from a cow that was fed feed sprayed with the same. In many ways moreso given that these things are concentrated as you go up the food chain.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/chapter-I/subchapter-E...
Conventional red meat can have 20X the amount of glyphosate than your apple can.
This was a failure of the certification and monitoring system. Often by design.
I don't buy organic. Too niche of a section and the risk profile seems low enough that it doesn't seem worth the attention to me. But I'm not threatened by it, as many seemingly are, and get why some people are focused on that. Years back I did subscribe to a CSA that followed organic principles not because of the organic element, but because their land use was sustainable and quite beautiful (most farms are dire factories, in essence, whereas this place was an eclectic wonderland).
https://www.agdaily.com/technology/the-list-of-pesticides-ap...
Organic farming uses herbicides and pesticides too.
I'm not sure these are in the same league.
>Organic herbicides and pesticides are chosen specifically such that they don't contaminate the product (and thus products of the product). Nowhere in my comment did I claim otherwise.
Contaminate with what? Organic herbicides and pesticides contain the same constituent chemicals as their conventional counterparts. They have to, otherwise they wouldn't work. The organic variety contain more ballast, however, which requires additional application to meet the efficiency of the conventional variety.
If you want to give some specific example, go ahead, but as is the statement is nonsensical.
You can kill insects and pests with a neurochemical. Or you can put sharp rocks (diatomaceous earth) and traps to do the same, albeit with more labor and less efficacy. Are you sincerely arguing that these must be the same? That an organic burger has rat traps in it?
This same insincere argument appears in every discussion about organic practices. A sort of hand wavy "it's all the same". No, it isn't all the same. Farming has been pushed to the level of extraordinary efficiency -- as mentioned, conventional farms are basically gross factories, having nothing to do with "nature" -- and to do this the practice is massive applications of pretty nasty chemicals. Not many organic farms operate in such a manner.
What on Earth are you talking about?
>having nothing to do with "nature"
What does this mean? What, specifically, is the difference between conventional agriculture and organic with respect to your appeal to "nature"?
>pretty nasty chemicals.
What chemicals are you referring to here?
>Not many organic farms operate in such a manner.
Are you sure about that? How so?
This is absolutely false. And such an assertion, while dismissing my comments by saying everything is made of stardust, is indeed a reply in bad faith.
Care to tell us the chemical composition of modern pesticides from say... Monsanto?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/29/pesticides-e...
> In a landmark ruling in August last year, Monsanto was found liable for causing a school groundskeeper’s cancer through exposure to Roundup, the company’s leading pesticide. Earlier this month, in a later case, Monsanto was ordered to pay more than $2bn to a couple that got cancer after using its weedkiller. Roundup, a glyphosate-based, organophosphate weedkiller, is one of, if not the most widely-used pesticides in the world. A formal review of glyphosate by the EPA and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) released this month found some statistically significant links to certain cancers, such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
... like the ones you decided to omit? (selected for maximum chemical-sounding scare effect)
>Copper: Copper hydroxide, copper oxide, copper oxychloride
>Lime sulfer: Including calcium polysulfide
>Hydrogen peroxide
>Peracetic acid
>Streptomycin sulfate and tetracycline
Are they the same as glysophate or whatever because they're both chemical-sounding? Not necessarily. However, there's certainly enough uncertainty that you can't blanket state that organic pesticides are wholesome substances like "Vinegar. Sticky traps. Soaps. Diatomaceous earth. Targeted bacteria", and non-organic pesticides aren't in the same "league" entirely.
USDA non-organic food is less sanitary than the organic variety?
>chemical-cleanliness
What does this mean? If you put something on food, it's going to get in your body. Whether you apply an organic product to crops or its conventional analog, it'll end up in your body. The chemicals are "clean" insofar they're present at quantities approved for human consumption.
>Fresh organic foods raised in good soil are unarguably way better for you than the alternative. There's not even a comparison.
How so?
How is this relevant to the discussion?
> ...of course the contaminants are reflected
> This is easily verified as basic fact
So easy and obvious that you failed to provide a source.
> Conventional red meat can have 20X the amount of glyphosate than your apple can.
Is there a reason for that?
It seems plausible to me that glyphosate would not survive being cooked and, therefore, a food that is often eaten raw would have different requirements for different types of food.
The increased allowable amount is also not indicative that there is actually more in it. It may simply be reflective of an decreased bioavailablity of the substance when delivered via meat, for whatever reason.
Nope.
Or rather, milk tastes different for plenty of reasons, and you can buy non-organic milk that tastes similar to organic. And I can absolutely guarantee that you can buy organic milk that tastes no different from the mass produced cheap non-organic milk.
(I've spent a lot of time testing/tasting different milk products).
That's because the cow is eating grass, not because it's "organic"
> organic makes sense for certain types of products where you eat the skin and all, e.g. apples, vegetables, etc.
I feel like that would be true if there was any legal definition of organic that meant "pesticide-free", which there isn't. Organic farms use ancient pesticide technology, which isn't that good and requires MORE pesticides to be used.
It'd all feel much different if we had more data to empower consumers. Imagine e.g. a meat thermometer that gave ppb/ppt of 100+ pesticide residues.. suddenly you find one kind/cut of meat has orders of magnitude more pesticide than another.. "oh weird I never felt good after eating that brand of meat, maybe I'll pay an extra $2 a pound next time".
You don't even need a consumer widget to do that. We have organic certification programs that conduct inspections/audits. Why can't we have a "low pesticide"/"pesticide free" program that does guarantees low pesticide residues?
They have been farming without synthetics since the late 70's, and dropped the "organic" because the government definition made it meaningless.
https://medium.com/@NYCGreenmarkets/from-organic-to-ornery-7...
He had lobbied for years for this very law, and was devastated to see exceptions for chemicals that, in his words, “are so destructive to the environment they shouldn’t even be allowed in conventional agriculture, let alone organic.” (Allowing those 142 chemicals, by the way, is just one of sixty-three issues to which farmers like John so ardently object.) As he saw it, the certification he’d dedicated much of his life to building was now so lax that it was effectively meaningless.
It took almost a year to come to grips with, but after twenty years of being certified organic by the state, the Gorzynski family decided to give up the term rather than participate in a certification they could no longer stand by.
Try them out if you're in Union Square in NYC! (Saturdays only, through Christmas)
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edit: Try out Russet apple varieties, e.g. Golden Russet. They are not sold in stores, presumably because of the way they look.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russet_apple
I've been eating them from the markets in SF and NY for a few years without knowing the name.
As a mnemonic think "Russet" == rough or rusty, but it tastes good. They are very sweet and tart depending on the season, but really the density / crispness / freshness is what stands out.
All things being equal, unknown produce that looks ugly is more likely to taste good. Because produce that both looks ugly and tastes bad will naturally disappear from the market. Produce that looks good and tastes bad can persist for many years (e.g. the monoculture of red delicious apples in the USA a few decades ago).
There are many things which count as organic qualified treatments which are defensibly “not particularly synthetic” but are still concerning from an environmental and human health angle.
Just because something is close to nature doesn’t mean it’s better or healthier.
can you elaborate on this? Which chemicals?
Copper sulfate and neem oil are a couple.
More broadly, the more I learn about the practices and laws governing the US food system, the more I'm willing to spend on local food grown by people I trust.
It's certainly not perfect and I'd rather have trustworthy enforcement or certifications, but it's better than nothing.
I'm also curious if label fraud is any more common with organic certification compared to other food labels.
For example I recall articles about a study that found 20% of fish was deliberately mislabeled: "Cheaper, less desirable fish were often sold in the name of more popular fish. Particularly concerning was the report's finding that some substitutes were fish that contain higher mercury levels or come from less sustainable fisheries."[2]
More generically, "economically motivated adulteration" is estimated[3] to impact 1% of the global food industry with examples given such as sweeteners, oils, seafood, juice, and spices.
[1] https://organic.ams.usda.gov/integrity/Certifiers/Certifiers...
[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/study...
[3] https://www.fda.gov/food/compliance-enforcement-food/economi...
The core arguments in the paper are that plants don't exist to serve as food for us, they exist to reproduce. Plants grown in a stressful environment spend significant metabolic energy in generating chemical defenses against predators e.g., molds. Some of those chemical defenses are carcinogenic. Plants grown in less stressful (pesticide-controlled) environments generate less of those chemical defenses.
So, roughly synthetic == bad, natural == good.
Yes, this is a 1990 paper and perhaps it is no longer true and I'm certainly no expert in this area (I'm sad to see that a paper that influenced me so much at the time lacks significant citations).
[1] https://files.toxplanet.com/cpdb/pdfs/Angew.pdf
[2] DOI: 10.1002/anie.199011971
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_AmesOne is that it likely goes both directions: there are likely stressors increased by both conventional and organic production (presumably different ones) Plant health is tied pretty closely with local ecology health and there is a lot of symbiosis going on.
Second is that you are not a weed or an insect or a fungus. Some plant defenses are quite enjoyed by humans (lots of drugs, caffeine, capsaicin, the flavors of most herbs).
It is the kind of thing where you can’t make a blanket generalization. You need specifics and weighed risks. An interesting opening theory but definitely not enough to base life choices on.
I'm sure there's a lot of fraud and fuckery going on, but just going on the experience of consuming this stuff minimally prepared (rinsed/peeled) on a daily basis, conventional is disgusting. IMHO it's so bad it explains why many people hate fruits and veggies. It's flavorless and often has a chemical aftertaste.
This is in California which I've come to appreciate is a privileged place in the organic produce department, so YMMV.
The best stuff I eat comes from my garden but I'm not organic - I use Miracle Gro and toss conventionally grown scraps in my compost. I don't use pesticides so for the most part I think I'm doing the right thing.
Obviously, buying processed food[0] is a different story, and in many cases, the organic label is very much just that -- a label.
[0] Yes, yes, all food is processed at some level. I'm talking about a box of cereal, or a loaf of bread, or pasta, or, or, or...you get the idea.
100 years ago, 90% of people were spending 2500 hours a year in the actual fields that produced the food they ate. It hardly seems ridiculous that 90% of people could spend, say, 5 or 10 hours a year visiting farms they want to eat food from. That's probably less time than you spend putting gas in your car.
> It hardly seems ridiculous that 90% of people could spend, say, 5 or 10 hours a year visiting farms they want to eat food from.
1. you're assuming people are in a good position to judge the "production quality" of a food from a farm visit. suppose you're at an apple orchard and they sprayed [nasty pesticide] last week. how can you discern that from a visit?
2. if this gets popular, what's preventing bad actors from gaming this? ie. focus on making things look good, rather than actually increasing production quality
> That's probably less time than you spend putting gas in your car.
Using very conservative estimates of 5 minutes per fill-up, and a fill-up every week, we get just over 4 hours per year. That's still below your proposed "5 or 10 hours a year".
To your other point, in general, yeah, it's true that people can get fooled. Farmers can lie. Sometimes you might be able to catch them; other times not. Probably you have more of a chance of figuring out who's honest if you know them than if you don't.
See also: FSC wood, a lot of which is illegally cut but still gets certified in the end. Same story for fish.
Even worse, the French translation of their websites translated "organic" to "biologique", which is correct if you are using the "no synthetic chemicals" definition, but wrong if you are using the chemical definition (that would be "organique"). Turning an ambiguity into a flat out lie.
I once drove by a vineyard on a highly-trafficked highway in a very prominent wine-growing region and observed a sign that said something to the effect of "Organic vineyard. No dumping!"
At the time I thought to myself, "I wonder how many people who buy this winery's organic wine know that the grapes grow right next to such a highly-trafficked highway where they're constantly exposed to auto pollution?"
Ultimately, organic certification is a poor replacement for buying from local producers you know personally and can physically visit.
We would be way better off if we just sampled and tested products just before they hit the shelves.
The general public is desperate to trust something; anything. They will latch onto these meaningless words, thinking there is something behind the curtain. Alas, what is behind the curtain lacks any substance.
I will agree with that. My lack of trust in the US food industry is why I largely stopped eating meat in this country.
Why not consider a local producer? Somewhere where you can see the farm, see their production? And, if you can, why not raise your own? Much of the rest of the world does this. Self grown and raised food.
For example, the overuse of antibiotics contributing to antibiotic-resistant diseases. The greater environmental impact in terms of water/land/carbon. The manner in which animals are raised and slaughtered, especially in large-scale farms. The sustainability of fish stocks.
Several years back I started only eating meat from a couple local farms which addressed most of those concerns, but the cost meant that meat became more of a "special occasion" thing. I didn't go vegetarian (for example I tried the pork at our local farm's pig roast last month) but over the last few years it's just sort of happened that I eat meat less frequently, now a few times a year. So far I haven't particularly missed it from a taste or health standpoint.
Of course, turns out organic means it comes from the farming techniques they use. And of course, it's mostly a marketing strategy.
Might the same technique be used for known agricultural pests? Why spray a cornfield with pesticides when we can naturalize the population of the Corn Borer Moth? Target the species that are specialized towards consuming the crops we produce. Just imagine how much pesticide won't need to be sprayed because the main pests no longer exist in the area?
For example one can find this for countries https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.2903/sp.efsa...
I failed to find simple numbers quickly though, but for example for my country, it seems domestic is clean, EU produce okayish and non-EU food suspect.
The word I find most troubling is 'natural', often used in the same marketing.
All agricultural produce is the product of domestication of a wild plant or animal by humans. There's nothing natural about a crop or animal subject to human breeding for millenia. Domestication produces crops and animals totally different to natural selection.
There's this implicit assumption 'natural' things are better than man-made things. In the context of agriculture, it's a false dichotomy.
Yes, local producers at farmer’s markets still offer foods produced without pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers.
Yes, farmers of any size or scale can rationally balance the market prices of organic products against the expenses of pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers, the costs of application, and the potentially lower crop yields from doing without them.
But if there is no testing of products, no certification of crops versus farmland, no auditable paper trail from soil to seed to plant to crop to mill, the “organic” has as much meaning as “improved” or “healthy” in the marketplace, and is wide-open to the type of fraud described in this article.
How do i know that? I used to grow at my grandparents in eastern europe where all food was organic. We were to poor to afford any chemicals :)
Do they really save you from the worst chemicals?
Oh, and farmers are expected to use homeopathy and other quackery on sick animals, at least in the EU.
https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-homeopathy-and-norwegian-vets...
Thought at the title: Fraud, organic food, yes. This must be interesting.
Reading through the start: Okay, here's the life story of someone who's going to do something halfway through this article. Let me check how long this article is.
Jeez. It's gonna be a long read and I still don't get what it's about. I'll pass.
Thought I'd mention this as it's become a common thing in media lately.
This is how The New Yorker as done this since forever. If you don't enjoy the 'journey' of their writing at least as much as the 'destination', then they are not the publications for you.
Although I agree that the style is being copied by more and more people and outlets, many which don't have the skill to pull it off.
All this to say, sure, the article is long. But the New Yorker always has done it this way and this is not anything about the media lately. If anything, long articles are a holdover from a long previous time.
Also, all media styles and don’t have to appeal to everyone. The magazine has its audience and you may not be a part of it. Neither aspect is a bad thing.
"Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The problem is not so much with such comments in their own right but the fact that they quickly inflate into the kudzuey sort of discussion that chokes out more interesting things.
"What does Certified Organic mean?
— It means they haven't caught you sprayin'"
During my time in high end restaurants we came across a lot of small-scale vegetable farmers that used zero chemicals of any sort and grew objectively amazing, delicious and natural produce, but couldn't afford to pay the government to inspect and certify.