Does Organic Really Mean Organic?

[flashl]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has renewed its approval for 46 non-organically produced substances to be used in foods and beverages that are labeled “organic.” At the same time, the agency withdrew its approval for a type of food coloring and a food additive.

Under the Organic Foods Production Act, the USDA’s National Organic Standards Board is required to renew approval every five years for any non-organic ingredients that are allowed into organic foods.

The products renewed include five agricultural non-organic products and 41 non-agricultural, non-organic products. The agricultural produced products are corn starch, kelp, pectin, unbleached lecithin and water extracted gums. Some of these are not individual products, but categories; water-extracted gums, for example, include arabic, carob bean, guar and locust bean gums. Kelp may only be used as a thickener or a dietary supplement.

The 41 allowed non-agricultural products include common ingredients such as citric and lactic acid; calcium carbonate; calcium chloride; carnauba wax; bakers, brewers or nutritional yeast; dairy cultures; flavors; sodium carbonate; glycerin; mono- and diglycerides; and xanthan gum.

The USDA withdrew its approval, however, for colors derived from non-synthetic sources and for potassium tartrate derived from tartaric acid.

RINF

[Tumbulu]

1. The processed organic foods are a challenge

They make up a big part of the growth in the industry, but then processing foods uses additives, not all of these are available in an organic version. Such as kelp....maybe the yeasts are in the same category.

In terms of the raw organic ingredients, I think that the standards are pretty strict. I have gone through organic certification for three farms over the course of 18 years. It has become very expensive and a huge huge irritating pain. The paperwork is outrageous.

Why do the organic farmers who are not polluting have to pay all this money to be certified and spend days and days getting paperwork ready for the inspectors and then the chemical farmers just waltz along not having to pay to clean up their pollutants or label their products with the added chemical content?

The paperwork hassle should be for those that apply the chemicals, not those that do not. End of soapbox, sorry.

[flashl]

2. Do Organic farmers use sterile seeds? If not, how do they avoid them? nt

[Tumbulu]

3. Can you tell me what you mean by sterile seeds?

If seeds are sterile, they would not sprout. So, what use would they be? Do you mean for animal feed?

Organic farmers have to try to source organic seeds when they buy them (if they are not saving them from their own farm) and part of the paperwork is proving that you tried at least two seed companies before buying untreated conventional seed. You have to document each of the two calls for each non organic seed planted. The veggie guys go crazy as there are lots of small specialty veggie seeds that are not available organically, but untreated. It is getting better as more seed companies offer organic seed. But it is still hard. I had great difficulty finding organic cowpea seed for a cover crop last year, Even cover crop seeds need to be organic or documented with you efforts to locate them. And of course you can't buy GMO seed.

I feed my sheep and chickens the broken wheat that is left over after cleaning my grain. Those are broken, thus sterile. Is this what you mean?

[flashl]

4. You answered the question. My inquiry was to learn about the source of seeds.

Somewhere in my readings, I understood sterile seeds to be the type of seeds sold by large bio-agri companies to small farmers designed to create farmers as return customers each season.