Yes, organic produce is different – and better for you – than food grown with artificial chemicals.
The New York Post loves a good villain, but you’d think it would be hard to cast a bad light on the group of people profiled in an April 19 story: moms who feed their kids organic food.
Naomi Schaefer Riley took on the challenge in “The Tyranny of the Organic Mommy Mafia,” and built a case against “the arrogance and class snobbery” of people who buy and eat food that’s been grown without artificial chemicals.
“Organic food does not necessarily mean better. It’s a term that’s been co-opted and manipulated into a billion-dollar industry by some of the biggest food companies in America,” Riley wrote.
The anti–organic food narrative is a recurring theme in the media of late. What’s going on with these stories?
In January, Slate (1/28/14) served up “Organic Schmorganic” by Melinda Wenner Moyer—shared 45,000 times on Facebook. The story concluded that it’s not worth feeding your kids organic fruits and vegetables because there is no documented harm from conventional produce treated with chemicals, especially when the residues are below levels deemed safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The story assumes that EPA exposure levels for pesticides are health-protective and ignores ample evidence about the health concerns of long-term exposures and combined effects of pesticides (Environmental Health Perspectives, 11/12; International Journal of Andrology, 4/08), as well as data that pesticides are building up in children’s bodies (Environmental Health Perspectives, 2/06).
In short, the article was based largely on spin, as pointed out in detailed rebuttals by the Organic Center (1/30/14), Environmental Working Group (2/10/14) and Civil Eats (2/4/14).
Research shows that organic farming is not just better for people – it’s better for the planet.
In the Washington Post (4/7/14), Tamar Haspel took a more balanced approach with “Is Organic Better for Your Health?” However, in reaching her conclusion that organic products are not that much better, Haspel overlooked large-scale literature reviews and meta-analysis about the benefits of organic food. She also ignored many studies on the health risks of pesticides, especially in children (Environmental Health Perspectives, 8/11, 4/12; National Research Council, 1993), and missed the bigger public health concerns about feeding healthy animals massive doses of antibiotics and growth hormones. (See the statement from the American Public Health Association, 11/10/09, regarding their opposition to hormones in beef and dairy production.)
Haspel also fails to recognize that that US standards allow for comparatively high drug-residue levels (thus the low detection rate of drugs) and that the European Union and many other countries reject US meat raised with hormones and growth additives precisely because of animal and human health concerns. (See the European Union’s Scientific Committee on Veterinary Measures Review, 4/10/02, on the potential risks to human health from hormone residues in bovine meat and meat products.)
Where do reporters get these ideas? The New York Post article cited a recent report published by Academics Review (4/7/14) that harshly attacks the organics industry and its nonprofit allies for what they described as “deceptive marketing practices,” designed to instill “false and misleading consumer health and safety perceptions about competing conventional foods.”
However, the report provides scant evidence to back up its fundamental premise that organics marketing strategies are deceitful and that eaters in fact have nothing to fear from conventional food, or that there are no appreciable health, nutritional or safety advantages to organic over chemically farmed and genetically engineered foods.
In fact, in the entire 24-page report, principal researcher Joanna Schroeder cited just two highly contested meta-studies, including one by Stanford researchers published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (9/4/12). This misleading study has been soundly discredited by agricultural policy expert Charles Benbrook in a comprehensive rebuttal (9/4/12) published by Washington State University, as well as by articles in the New York Times (10/2/12), Huffington Post (9/13/12) and Environmental Health Perspectives (12/12). These critiques highlight how the study greatly underestimates the important differences between organic and conventional foods, especially in terms of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pesticide exposure.
The other study cited by Schroeder, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (7/2/09), failed to consider several important studies (e.g., Plant Sciences, 4/29/11; Organic Center, 3/08; Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 4/01) that suggest dramatically higher nutritional benefits for organic food. Benbrook explains why their conclusion is wrong in a letter to the editor (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 12/09), and the Organic Trade Association’s response to the study (2011) points to organic food’s higher levels of minerals, antioxidants, omega 3 and other beneficial nutrients.
Importantly, neither of the studies Schroeder cites mentions the question of GMO safety, a major focus of the Academics Review article. Despite claims made on the Academics Review website that the science is settled on GMOs, nearly 300 scientists and doctors have signed a statement (ENSSER, 10/21/13) that there is no consensus on the safety of GMOs.
Schroeder also does not mention important studies from UC Berkeley (Environmental Health Perspectives, 8/11) and the University of Washington (Environmental Health Perspectives, 3/03) that suggest that people, and especially children, should be concerned about the health risks of pesticide exposure from food. She doesn’t mention the impact of pesticide mixtures or weak EPA regulatory frameworks, and the extreme toxicity of pesticides when combined with “inert” ingredients that are found in products such as Roundup (BioMed Research International, 2/26/14).
Finally, the author conveniently ignores the environmental benefits that also drive organic purchases. Numerous studies have shown the farmworker, soil health, water quality and climate benefits of organic agriculture (e.g., Organic Farming Research Foundation, 8/12; Crop Management, 4/13; FiBL, 10/2/13).
Unfortunately, most reporters writing on the topic fail to dig under the surface spin of their sources. A closer look at some of these sources suggests that the anti-organic narrative did not arise organically.
Riley’s “organic mommy mafia” narrative in the New York Post starts off with a few examples of moms who are “so crazy” and “worried” about non-organic food that they harass other moms, then quotes her main source, author and conservative activist Julie Gunlock.
Gunlock explains that the pressure on parents to use only organic food is an “outgrowth of helicopter parenting. People need to be in control of everything when it comes to their kids—even the way food is grown and treated.”
Gunlock expounded on this theme in a recent panel in New York (5/1/14), which aimed to educate stressed-out moms about how activist organizations, the media and government regulators work together to nurture a “culture of alarmism” in which “terrifying headlines about child safety, food and agriculture, chemicals and everyday household products bombard women daily.”
Whose agenda is Riley advancing by espousing Gunlock’s views in the Post article?
Gunlock is director of the Culture of Alarmism Project at the Independent Women’s Forum, a group that “gets its funding from right-wing foundations and other conservative interests including the Koch Brothers,” explained Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury (and a FAIR associate), in a recent CounterPunch piece (4/30/14).
The Koch brothers are the conservative billionaire co-owners of a conglomerate of chemical and oil companies, including Koch Ag & Energy Solutions. They and other biotechnology/chemical companies have a lot to lose from the explosive growth of pesticide-free organic foods.
Academics Review claims to be an independent “association of academic professors, researchers, teachers and credentialed authors” from around the world “committed to the unsurpassed value of the peer review in establishing sound science.”
However, recent articles on its website and Facebook page paint a picture of industry-biased, agenda-driven organization focused on discrediting public interest organizations, organic companies, media outlets and scientists who question the safety of GMOs and pesticides, or who tout the benefits of an organic diet.
The co-founder of Academics Review is Bruce Chassy, a recently retired professor of food microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Chassy was among 11 scientists named by the Center for Science in the Public Interest in a complaint (8/21/03) to the journal Nature for failing to disclose “close ties to companies that directly profit from the promotion of agriculture biotechnology.”
As the letter notes, Chassy “has received research grants from major food companies, and has conducted seminars for Monsanto, Genencor, Amgen, Connaught Labs and Transgene”—companies with a large financial stake in pesticides and GMO technologies designed to boost pesticide sales.
Chassey is also on the advisory board of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a group that bills itself as an independent research and advocacy organization devoted to debunking “junk science.” Carl Winter, one of Slate’s key sources, is also on the ACSH board.
However, as Mother Jones (10/28/13) revealed in a expose based on leaked documents, ACSH’s funders include agribusiness giants Syngenta and Bayer CropScience, as well as oil, food and cosmetics corporations that have a vested interest in getting consumers to stop worrying about the health effects of toxic chemical exposures.
Links to ACSH and other pro-biotechnology organizations, such as International Food Biotechnology Committee, Center for Environmental Risk Assessment and GMO Pundit, are listed prominently on Academics Review’s “independent” website.
ACSH’s director of chemical and pharmaceutical science, Josh Bloom, also appeared alongside Julie Gunlock at the Culture of Alarmism panel in New York, echoing her theme about the tyranny of organic foodie moms.
Academics Review accuses organic companies of “paid advocacy” in which companies fund their NGO allies to promote messages that “amplify negative health risk allegations linked to conventional foods and the corresponding safety, healthfulness and ethics of organic production.”
But the relatively small amount of money spent by the organic industry to support mission-aligned nonprofits is nothing compared to the more than $1.3 billion that the agribusiness industry has spent over the last decade in lobbying and on PR front groups or “industry trade groups” to help spin a story about the safety of chemical-intensive and GMO foods.
These include the Animal Agriculture Alliance, the US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance, the Biotechnology Industry Association, the Coalition for Safe and Affordable Food and the Alliance for Food and Farming. The latter group alone has spent millions, including a $180,000 grant from the USDA, to convince eaters that they have nothing to fear from pesticides in conventional foods—and they’re also a source quoted by the New York Post’s Riley to assure readers of pesticides’ safety.
All of this raises the question: Why spend massive resources on PR efforts to convince people not to care about pesticides, antibiotics, hormones or GMOs in food, rather than giving consumers what they want: safe, healthy food grown in ways that don’t harm people or the planet?
With the proliferation of industry-associated scientists, websites and opinion pieces attacking organic agriculture and spinning their narratives about the safety of chemical-intensive GMO foods, reporters and the public must probe deeper and question the real motives behind these so-called “independent” sources of information.
Kari Hamerschlag is senior program manager of Friends of the Earth/US Food and Technology Program. Stacy Malkan is the founder of communications consulting firm MovetheMarket.org and the author of Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry.
“‘It’s a term that’s been co-opted and manipulated into a billion-dollar industry by some of the biggest food companies in America,’ Riley wrote.”
Absolutely true.
But aren’t these the same food companies that profit from the very practices that organics stand in opposition to? That they seek to greenwash themselves with “natural” and “organic” products that are such in name only isn’t an indictment of organic agriculture, but of their manipulative and hypocritical acts.
I’m certain these corporations, while marketing these shams, are also sponsoring the propaganda exposed here. It’s analogous to conventional energy corps touting “green” initiatives while spending huge amounts to thwart any real shift to renewables.
It’s a facet of the story that Hamerschlag and Malkan should have included among the other salient points they make.
So, just because I don’t want to feed my kids or myself toxic garbage, I’m now a bad guy? That’s a very interesting new narrative being crafted by the ChemAg companies. Make people hate people who want better quality food – classic “us against them” mentality, and I’m sure some people are eating it up – literally.
It was Goebbels who said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
These lies continue because they have the support of those in government, because of the revolving door between Monsanto and other ChemAg companies and the federal government.
Thank you for a well written piece.
Tyrone Hayes has been targeted and heckled by hired hecklers as he shares his research regarding the terrible harm, especially to male life forms, from known endocrine-disruption chemicals. In a visit to the campus of MIT, I saw a building where the Kochs gave a lot of money because they have family members who have experienced cancer. So the art in the lobby had pictures of what happens in cells with that process. While I know independent-science advocates will not get into private symposia run by the associated industries, I do think it is good to go on their magazine sites, such as Forbes, and pile on against those who are paid to spout stuff that will harm them if they eat, for example, based on their party lines. As an example, you can see the article in Forbes about Tyrone Hayes and read the comments, and then compare with the article in the New Yorker. This is nitty-gritty work, down in the weeds of the comments, but I think it is valuable to use their own sites to expand lived experience and independent science, for their readers who are geeky enough to get down in the comments. In particular, it may help those of us who feel we have experience of harm, to weigh in this way. I know people who feel comments are too full of craziness, and that is often true. On the other hand, you can often find news as it breaks in the comments, before it is all edited and fine-tuned to show up elsewhere.
Organic does not mean safe hemlock, cocaine and unrefined polonium are organic.Cyanide is organic. Synthetic does not mean evil either penicillin is synthetic. It is not about safety, but organic is about elitism, roundup has a higher LD than salt or caffeine, Mommy bloggers are anti science and elitist, no one here is arguing DDT should be legal. We are just against less sustainable, environmentally damaging primitive methods because your beliefs on nostalgia and good old days.
Organic uses Chemical Pesticides. BT, Copper Sulfate, Rotenone etc. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/06/18/137249264/organic-pesticides-not-an-oxymoron
My central interest is methods that create more food, then more nutritious food, while minimizing environmental impact. I’ve been thinking about that for a long time.
Therefore, I support “organic” efforts to raise food with less impact. I’m especially excited to learn about organic techniques and understand ways they are being adopted by conventional farming. I can site a dozen instances for you, and all are wonderful.
However, I feel Big Organic’s softest point is it’s failure to accept sound science. The arbitrary demarcation of what is allowed is crazy. The certification process needs work. I don’t know a plant potassium receptor that can distinguish between organic potassium and a synthetic time-release substitute.
Plus the vicious stance against transgenic (GMO) crops is grounded in myth and ideology more than science.
Organic science (and there is some great stuff) will always be considered fringe and looney until they start to accept hard science. While its nice to kick a hackey sack and march against monsanto, it is that stuff that makes people not take it seriously.
And that’s a shame. We should be learning from the best techniques, organic or biotech, to farm sustainably with less environmental insult.
Responding to Mark Jones and Kevin Folta:
JONES: Your harping on the fallacy of presuming that whatever is “natural” is good, which Neurotic Knight continues, is itself fallacious because it does not go to the merits of organic agriculture vs. those of conventional agriculture. Some people do prefer “natural” in a magical or irrational way, but organic agriculture is fundamentally shaped around substantial insights, not magical beliefs: namely, that the high-energy chemical, mechanical, and genetic techniques of conventional agriculture threaten not only human health (starting with heavily exposed field workers, often omitted from the pesticides debate) but much larger systems, including the basis of agriculture itself. Fertilizer runoff creates oceanic dead zones; “green revolution” hybrids and GMOs erode genetic diversity, ultimately increasing food system vulnerability; pesticides bludgeon biodiversity; industrial farming degrades soil health and increases farmers’ dependence on cash-sucking agribusiness inputs; etc. Organic agriculture is an attempt to do less harm.
Organic methods boost biodiversity at every ecosystem level: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6496-organic-farming-boosts-biodiversity.html . They produce lower per-acre yields but higher yield per unit of process inputs (i.e., they can be more efficient by non-acreage metrics). Agroecological farming methods (largely overlapping with the best “organic”), far from being “elitist,” disproportionately benefit smaller and poorer farmers and are likely more sustainable and resilient: http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20110308_a-hrc-16-49_agroecology_en.pdf and references therein.
PROF. FOLTA: Thanks for rational speech. I submit that while it is easy to find individuals whose resistance to GMOs is “grounded in myth and ideology,” it does not follow that there are no scientifically grounded concerns about GMOs — much less that an anti-GMO stance is “vicious” (!). Introgression of transgenes into wild populations is a rational concern (and has already happened with maize); engineered seed-supplier dependence is a rational concern; lower yields from GMOs (optimized for their marketable special properties, not yields) are a rational concern; increased application of pesticides to some GMOs, with consequent increased human exposure and accelerated evolution of resistance by pests, is a rational concern; the non-intentional alteration of aspects of crop biochemistry with possible direct health effects is a rational concern (and an unknown freshly renewed with every new transgene); transgene uptake by the human gut microbiome is a rational concern; greatly enhanced penetration of the food system by intellectual property law is . . . I could go on. I do not say that there is an open-and-shut case on these questions, but it is not “vicious” to want them resolved before, rather than after, globally deploying a potentially unlimited number of GMO varieties.
Sorry dude, I don’t know how to kick a hacky-sack. Nor, I suspect, does this guy: http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/gmos-and-health-scientific-basis-serious-concern-and-immediate-action?page=2#_edn4 . I don’t mind being contested, but the irrelevant hippie-punching could go.
Finally, I’d like to add that a defense of “organic” is not necessarily a claim that organic methods cannot be improved (by, e.g., research in agroecology) or a defense of every product labeled “organic.” As an earlier commenter notes, there is co-optation going on — essentially industrial agriculture minus a certain list of inputs — and that’s what I’d call “Big Organic.” Large soil-eroding fields worked by exploited Mexicans and bombed with “natural” pesticides might produce food marketable as “organic” but are at radical odds with the core vision.
Hey, it’s big country and people are free to eat anything they want… If many favor ingesting chemicals, or having animal excrement in their food, or “gobbling down” some nutritionally dead and lacking “Soylent Green” flotsam at the nearest drive through fast food pig trough, so be it. Knowledge is power (and can also be healthy for you, too). I am not saying organic is the great silver bullet of eating, but rather would say grow your own if you can, or at least know the person or people that grow and produce your food. For example by buying from a local Farmer’s Market where the food is local, more than likely grown naturally and organic as well, and you get to know your food producer. The other great benefit to this is that the money spent there goes back into the local economy.
It’s a big country and if people want to ingest chemicals and unhealthy “Soylent Green” foodstuffs, then it’s their business. Those that know better eat what is healthier in the long run, and stay healthy and active long into their later years of life. By the way, you don’t have to eat only organic food to do so, but make sure it’s naturally produced and grown. Anyone can do that if they have the means to just simply grow what they can to eat, or patronize a local Farmers Market if they cannot do so.
… because rather we like it or not our Cells are Huge and are bodies (if your on a standard “american” diet are filled with Toxins.
So turning to a whole food diet, as Matt Monarch, avocates, is smart, prudent and should be mandated. WE need to get healthy to stay well. We have to have the best sources of that to keep it real. Which means we have to grow our own organic foods with our own organic materials. We must learn to reuse, compost and repurpose for a while and get our lives in balance. This must be TRENDY. So why not just make it law.. and if you break the “law” then the lawful thing to do would be help in the project to bring real food back to Humanities table.. and do further the campaign to end substitutes and artificials.
~Aeon
Major new peer-reviewed metastudy finds significant measurable differences between organic and conventional foodstuffs: http://csanr.wsu.edu/m2m/papers/organic_meta_analysis/bjn_2014_full_paper.pdf .
A sucker is born every minute. And they will grow up and buy Organic food.
Very wonderful visual appeal on this website, I’d value it 10.