I knew there was a reason I blow right past the ever expanding organic section at my local supermarket. Somewhere inside me deep down I knew something was very wrong with the whole "earthy" milieu.
Basically it's a sham. The whole "go organic" mantra is designed to play on your fear of chemicals, factory farms and big agri-business. In the end there is no real difference in the food itself - except for the cost. I don't mean just the cost you pay at the checkout, I'm talking about the cost to the land, the air, the water and the animals as well. Read Jackie Avner's excellent piece "Reasons you should buy regular goods" in the Denver Post.
Your local grocery store loves organic food, the mark up is tremendous, and by the way the supermarket is big business too. (Don't even mention Whole Foods, that's a multi-billion dollar BIG business).
Avner points out what is less than obvious:
Consumers assume that organic crops are environmentally friendly. However, organic production methods are far less efficient than the modern methods used by conventional farmers, so organic farmers must consume more natural and man-made resources (such as land and fuel) to produce their crops.
Why can't people seem to understand that more and more people all over the globe are being fed better than ever before in human history with less and less land and fewer farmers devoted to the cause. It called modern agri-business. It is responsible for our incredible lifestyle and increasing lifespan. Why is it looked upon as if it is something evil???
Jackie Avner ponders this as well:
but I wonder: Why do people apply that logic to agricultural products, but not to every other product we use in our daily lives? There are either no chemicals, or the minutest trace of chemicals in some of our foods. But other everyday products are full of chemical ingredients. Read the label on your artificial sweetener, antiperspirant, sun lotion, toothpaste, household cleaning products, soda, shampoo, and disposable diapers, for example. The medicines we administer to our children when they are sick are man-made substances. Chemicals aren't just used to make these products; they are still in these products in significant amounts. It just doesn't make sense to focus fear of technology on milk and fresh produce.
Who among us really wants to live the way humanity lived before 1830? The rise of applied science and technology has accelerated humanity to heights no one even dreamed of 2 or 3 hundred years ago. Nowhere is it more profound and important than in food production. Here we are about to let the Luddites deliver us to our past instead of to our future.
The truly evil ones are not giant agri-businesses but the small minded people who are standing in the way of real and meaningful progress towards eradicating hunger and starvation. Intellectuals and neo-Luddites particularly in Europe are actively preventing genetic engineering of food crops for backward dirt poor countries in Africa. This should be looked upon as criminal!
In the name of preventing cruelty to animals by way of "chemicals" and medicines that boost production primarily by eradicating disease and illness they are actually causing animals to suffer needlessly. Organic food producers throw away these medicines and modern practices, leading to unnecessary pain and suffering for the animals. Now tell me who are evil ones? In some nations in Europe they have banned the castration of pigs (a practice dating back thousands of years) to prevent "pain". Yet, for one, pigs that are whole fight constantly and inflict tremendous injuries on each other. Two, castrated pigs do not succumb to "boar's taint" which fouls the meat rendering it inedible.
Why is it that I keep coming to the conclusion that there are intellectual elites pushing organic foods, pie-in-the-sky renewable energy, global warming propaganda, inferior socialized medicine, fear of technology and last but not least an all out assault on big business (read capitalism) with the end goal of global population reduction. The problem for them is that there are just too many people on this planet.
The Al Gore types and the snobs in Europe will never come right out and say it (actually, some of them do) but this is the bottom line. Since capitalism (America) poses the biggest threat to this goal it is deemed enemy number one. And the happy dupes picking over the crappy looking produce in the organic section of the grocery store have bought the propaganda hook, line and sinker.
Wake up and smell the non-organic Foldgers coffee before it's too late.
CW
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