Organic-wash

Not everything that you eat with the label “organic” is in fact organic. It seems that we now have “organic” and “Honest to God Organic”. Often times, when in the supermarket shopping for organic, you may in fact be paying organic prices for so called “traditional” produce that hides a multitude of sins like pesticides, growth hormones, anti-biotics and genetic modification. About the only thing organic in organic-wash foods, is the label itself provided it's not plastic. This practice throws doubt on everything labelled organic as it may be anything but. In the end, the only real way to find out if something is indeed organic is to do one or more of the three following things.

• Police the farm armed with knowledge and buy local

• Grow it yourself organically

• Learn to harvest wild and bio-diverse

“The Cornucopia Institute has released a report that exposes widespread abuses in the production of organic eggs, primarily by large factory farms. The study compares management practices employed by small organic egg farmers with those of large industrial operations that label eggs 'organic' that have been produced by chickens confined by the hundreds of thousands in industrial facilities.

According to Cornucopia News:

"After visiting over 15% of the certified egg farms in the United States, and surveying all name-brand and private-label industry marketers, it's obvious that a high percentage of the eggs on the market should be labelled 'produced with organic feed' rather than bearing the USDA-certified organic logo," said Mark A. Kastel, The Cornucopia Institute's co-director and senior farm policy analyst."

Eighty percent of all organic eggs are produced by a handful of operations. Most of these businesses own hundreds of thousands to millions of birds and market a percentage of their produce as 'speciality eggs,' one of which is organic. Most of the giant hen-houses used by these factory farms provide no legitimate access to the outdoors, which is a requirement of federal organic regulations.

"Many of these operators are gaming the system by providing minute enclosed porches, with roofs and concrete or wood flooring, and calling these structures 'the outdoors,'" stated Charlotte Vallaeys, a farm policy analyst with Cornucopia and lead author of the report.

"Many of the porches represent just 3 to 5 percent of the square footage of the main building housing the birds. That means 95 percent or more of the birds have absolutely no access whatsoever."

Cornucopia News also tells us, family farm-scale organic egg farmers will challenge agribusiness lobbyists at the October 25 meeting of the NOSB (National Organic Standards Board).” (1)

We see the foregoing as part and symptomatic of the capitalist system that gives us noting by chronic lies, censorship and terror. The organic-wash that has been exposed in this case is likely not limited to eggs, but runs the gamut of food production. This has parallels in the bottled water sector of the economy where rampant misrepresentation is the norm rather than the exception. It is a standard joke that Ontario bottled water consumers are drinking BC tap water and BC consumers are drinking Ontario tap water, all of it trucked with a big fat carbon footprint in the process. We have also heard that some of the “pure glacial water” is shipped from India to every market that will buy this lie. There is also the fact that the green product market is awash with green-wash products that are only green by claims found on the label. All of this so that people who don't challenge any of this think they are eating and drinking healthy and using green products. This is a copy-cat process cashing in on new crazes and fashions, just as imitation Rolex watches are not the real thing, nor imitation name brand clothes are not the fashion statement people think. Indeed, with all this lying, we can say that capitalism presents us the truth and the much rarer “Honest to God Truth”. With lies that brought us the foreclosure swindle where two of three banks lay claim to homes without even having proper paperwork, the tsunami of scams and fraud on the net, it's a wonder that the system is even running. Such is the anarchy of capitalist economy. Given this, who can we as people protect ourselves from this deceit?

When shopping for food, avoid anything that is not clear as to what it is and that may be covered by such terms as “natural flavour”, contains anything other than what it says it is, i.e., blueberry juice should have blueberry content and not apple, grape, sugar, natural flavours or a long list of unpronounceable chemical ingredients. Labelling contents are not universal and some “natural” contents may be GMO sourced or preserved by being irradiated. For real produce, shop local farms and if you have any doubt, go to the farm in question and see for yourself. Are the chickens really free range? If they are, you should see them running free on the farm. As for bottled water; get a filtration system and forget adding more plastic bottles to the Pacific Ocean. Carry a reusable bottle for water on the go from your filtration system.

You'll never know what is in your food, unless you grow it yourself. This may mean finding some place where you can grow food items under your own supervision using organic growing techniques. In the city it may be difficult, but there is guerrilla gardening and container growing. Some cities also allow people to have their own chickens for producing eggs. Allow these to be as free range as possible in your own yard. However, having a milk cow in the city is a bit impracticable. You may find a small milking goat useful instead, especially if you have a yard.

Most cities also have a variety of local and wild edibles around for the having in season. You will need to know what you can eat and when and where it is available. In many cities, there are oak trees that produce acorns in the fall. Gather these and process them as they are a good source of wild food. So too are hazelnuts, chestnuts and walnuts. There are wild greens and berries so get to know what is around and what is edible. These are almost never organic-wash or green-wash as they rely solely on nature to provide for their growth. In the case of older trees, they are not GMO either.

Unfortunately, Codex Alimentarius (2) has made growing organic, herbal supplements and collecting wild food illegal in the US. Canada and Europe has like legislation. So, whether you grow and harvest marijuana or collect wild chestnuts or other delectable items, you run foul of the law with fines and/or imprisonment. The concept of Codex Alimentarius (3) is to bring the entire food web under the control of agribusiness and international pharmaceuticals. Thus, in order to get a herbal or organic supplement, you will need a prescription from your family physician and the item is likely to cost more and have no more guarantee of being what is claimed than what has been explained above. Conspiracy theorists make claims that this is part of an endgame global engineered famine to get rid of 97 percent of humanity. However, for the sake of making a profit from masses of consumers, this is a self defeating and contradictory argument. What it really means is the end of small ma and pa type farms in the favour of huge agribusiness farming corporations that want total control of growing food resources to sell to humanity. You can't sell produce to the dead. We will agree however, that making people weak and ill is to the advantage of pharmaceutical companies as this will provide a ready market for all their nostrums. To do this, they have to restrict alternate medicines through the capitalist version of “scientific medicine”. Unfortunately, some on the left have fallen for this ruse and have unwittingly handed over control to agribusiness and big pharmaceuticals in the name of “scientific medicine” that has no more science in it other than Marx's understanding of capitalist economy. But we have seen capitalist “science” at work in other areas such as the economy and what ruin this has caused in its wake.

If people are going to have any democratic control of what they say or eat, they will have to do it in the context of a collectivist socialist planned economy where the toilers run the government and economy at the international, regional and local level to the benefit of all. Food and medicine for people; not profit!

References

1. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/10/15/systemic-abuses-in-organic-egg-production.aspx

2. http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index_en.jsp

3. http://hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/intactivit/codex/index-eng.php