Is organic superior to regular food?

[David Zhu]

Is organic superior to regular food?
Thursday June 1, 6:00 am ET
Cliff Bowden


Consumers with a taste for the organic can chew on a smorgasbord of issues in the coming years as large companies vie for a healthy slice of a very lucrative market. While big business pressures government to change standards for what can be certified organic, proponents of healthy eating identify "locally grown" as the most palatable option.

Shoppers no longer have to visit specialized stores to find organics. Feeding on jitters about pesticides, genetically altered produce and irradiated meats, supermarket chains across the country are offering their own lines of organic foods. The label goes on vegetables, dairy products -- even frozen pizzas and instant dinners -- significantly driving up their cost.

Skeptics call it a scam. There's no evidence, they say, that organically produced foods are any healthier, while advocates say the mainstreaming of the trend introduces concerns that go far beyond the totals on sales slips.

Definition of organic
While putting "natural" on a label may be no more than an advertising ploy in the food business, use of the word "organic" label is strictly defined by U.S. Department of Agriculture standards set in 2002 as part of its National Organic Program. Produce must be grown using environmentally sustainable production methods, without the application of pesticides or fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge. To earn the organic designation, meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products must come from animals that are not given antibiotics or growth hormones -- nor can they be confined in pens. No claims are made about country of origin or health value.

The logistics of small-scale farming are one reason organic products traditionally have been more expensive, says Guillermo Payet, founder and president of Local Harvest, a California-based advocacy group.

Pricey produce
For the uninitiated, comparison shopping in any market would confirm that. Pricing is inconsistent -- it varies by season, market location and store policies -- but you can usually count on paying more for organic food in a chain supermarket than in a health food store.

A pound bag of conventional carrots, a mere 69 cents in one chain's produce section, was $1.49 in its organic section a few aisles away. At the health-food store, they sold for 99 cents.

Conventional chicken was $1.59 a pound at the chain market; eggs $1.29 a dozen. The health-food store was selling free-range chickens at $2.29 per pound, eggs at $3.69 a dozen. House-brand milk at the chain was $2.09 per half gallon. The same store's organic milk was $3.19. Competing brands started at $3.79 -- 20 cents more than the same brands cost at the nearby health-food outlet.

As a rule, organic food costs anywhere from 15 percent to 100 percent more than conventional food, says Ronnie Cummins, president of the Organic Consumers Association. One reason is higher small-farm production costs: Organic farmers cannot produce and distribute as efficiently as competitors. But, Cummins says, other long-term factors are not so apparent.

With organics, he says, "there are no hidden costs passed on to the public, as there are with conventional food." Established firms get publicly subsidized to lobby for supportive legislation to the scientific development and use of hormones, as well as fertilizer and pesticides, he explains. Cummins says conventional prices are kept low through the use of industrial agriculture practices that severely damage the environment. While the cost at the cash register may be less, eventually "you pay in taxes and the cost of health care."

Organic food a scam?
Joseph Rosen, who heads the Food Science Department at Rutgers University's Cook College, says there's "not one iota of evidence" that consuming organic food is healthier.

"Organic is, in my opinion, one of the biggest scams ever foisted upon the American public," Rosen says. "These foods have absolutely no advantage whatsoever, especially when you consider the high prices charged for them."

In fact, says Payet, the decision among small farmers to market homegrown products as organic was probably a mistake.

"The movement for wholesomeness was branded with the concept of organic, which just means no chemicals," Payet says. "That's certainly one component. It worked very well in the beginning, but it made it very easy for agribusiness to co-opt the movement when they realized there was money in it."

Rosen, an organic chemist, says that the growth hormones people worry about in animals "are produced by humans internally" anyway. He cites a study of free-range and conventional chicken that found "no difference, except about $2 a pound."

Irradiated meats, Rosen says, may even be healthier than their organic counterparts, which are cooked at high temperatures to purge them of possible bacteria. "The more you cook the meat, the greater your chances of incurring naturally forming carcinogens. So instead of the hypothetical risk of irradiation, you have a very real risk that comes as part of the cooking process."

As for pesticides, Rosen says, "the vast majority used are at a lower level of concentration than the maximum allowed by the EPA. So where's the danger? Once fruits and vegetables reach the consumer, very little pesticide is left on them."

So what does Rosen consider healthy? "Fresh," he says. "Fresh will win every time, whether it's conventional or organic. It's not so hard to figure out that produce from a roadside stand will taste better than food that has traveled thousands of miles to get to the supermarket."

The organic niche
Payet concurs, adding that some organic farmers agree that wholesome has at least as much to do with freshness as production methods. In fact, he says, his group focuses first on supporting family farms and next on the buy-local movement. Organic farming sits in third place.

"Agribusiness brought consumers better prices and greater convenience," Payet says. But it also "reduced the quality of food and took away intangibles such as community. People used to know where their food came from."

He says it was only about 15 years ago that people started realizing that "wholesomeness had been lost from the food business." In response, "the same local farms that were providers 40 years ago started fulfilling this demand through co-ops and farmers' markets."

But now executives for major chains are eyeing organics, Payet says -- and that's not at all about local farms. "It's about importing large quantities of produce from other countries. So the local farms that created the movement are being sidelined again."

Representatives for watchdog organizations, such as the Organic Consumers Association, say the giants of agribusiness are putting pressure on Congress to relax U.S. standards used to certify organic products.

"We need to make sure that these large corporations don't just profiteer at the expense of pioneers who have kept the label meaningful," says Mark A. Kastel, who heads The Cornucopia Institute, a small farmers' advocacy group based in Wisconsin. Kastel says that while some synthetics have always been allowed in organic food, now there's a move to change the wording from "synthetic substances" to "synthetic ingredients." That, he says, "opens up a whole new category of things.

"An example would be food-contact substances such as chemicals used in boiler treatments. Right now things like that are approved for use in conventional food plants, but they wouldn't be allowed in organic production without scrutiny."

Cummins says some large dairies supplying products to chains "bring young heifers onto their organic farm from conventional farms." The milk-producing heifers are raised in confinement and then imported to the same company's "organic" farm as adults. Again, this violates the USDA National Organic Program's standards.

"They're watering down the standards, which amounts to defrauding the consumer," says Kastel. "The problem is that private brands are anonymous. You don't know where your food is coming from. Organics, for most of their history, have had an identity, a connection to the land and those who produce our food."

The case for buying local
That's where advocates say buying local becomes not just a healthier alternative but also a political act. Cummins says in 2005 conventional supermarkets accounted for half of all organic food sales -- and that food is likely to have been grown outside the U.S.

"If you're outsourcing to China," he says, "where the farmer makes 20 cents an hour, what you get may not be organic at all. That's why we don't want the Wal-Mart business model to predominate in organics, because what you end up getting if you follow that model is less quality."

Even if organic tomatoes from China really meet organic standards here, Payet says, "it's not a sustainable practice. Think of all the energy used and oil burned to ship those tomatoes here."

If shoppers buy as much as possible from local producers, Payet says, "labels and verification become less important, because you know the producer. You can see they're not throwing chemicals into local creeks."

Cummins adds that supermarkets peddling organic convenience foods such as instant frozen dinners are stretching the concept.

"Any nutritionist would say you shouldn't eat 'organic' processed convenience foods any more than other kinds," he says.

As for escalating prices, Cummins says there are tactics consumers can use to keep food bills down.

"You can," he says, "buy in clubs or co-ops, or directly from farmers, avoiding processed organic foods. Your best tactic is to learn to cook from scratch using organic ingredients. It's half the price -- and it's better for you."