Peanut Butter and Salmonella Sandwiches anyone?

The recent peanut scare has put a spotlight on the safety of organic produce. A recent article has shed some light on aspects of the industry I’ve been skeptical of for a long time.

Throughout college I had to defend my badmouthing of certified organic foods and produce:

“But isn’t healthier for you?”
“It tastes better, doesn’t it?”
“They are more expensive but it’s worth it…right?”

My answer was always the same: it depends. While I have no problem with organics—I prefer my food as natural as possible—I’d repeatedly explained that it was the certification process, not the food I was against. My penchant for farmer’s markets and scrounging around my landlord’s garden was proof of my natural food obsession. However, when my friends would see my peppers and onions without that little green and white organic seal, the avalanche of accusations came.

After letting them in that the vegetables grown in my backyard were as organic as it got, I would describe how companies producing organic products had to pay for that holier-than-thou seal. In turn, the farms producing the ingredients for those products also had to pay. Despite the Department of Agriculture determining the standards for organic products, they had nothing to do with declaring the wares organic. This was left to various companies and officials who were paid by the producers looking to gain organic status.

“Wait a second,” they’d say, “the people who want the organic certification have to pay for it themselves?”

Exactly. Doesn’t that seem a little strange? Doesn’t that jeopardize the integrity of the system?

Another example was the Pennsylvanian farmers I dealt with on a weekly basis. These tiny operations didn’t have much money for anything, let alone organic seals. While I can’t be sure that every single one of them would adhere to the “no pesticides, no addictives, no hormones, no bull-shit” signs they would post over their stands, chatting with these people put my mind at ease about their agricultural practices. I’d much rather buy my produce from a local farmer without the seal thirty miles away than from a large, organic certified farm in California.

This isn’t to say that I go organic all the time. I’ve been known to eat an orange in the middle of March, but I do the best when I can. Buying organic isn’t all or nothing, but unless you do your part to be educated about you’re eating, you’re missing the point entirely.