I thought it was so you know what youre buying was made with less damage to the environment from pesticides.
Common misconception promoted by wellness ghouls.
Organic farming means that fertilisers are made from natural sources not chemical fertilisers.
Pesticides have exactly zero to do with organic vs conventional farming.
Maybe it's different in the US, but in Denmark, organic means no artificial fertilizers as well as no pesticides.
Farming without pesticides would be an excercise in absurdity. There are natural options but “no pesticides” isn’t a thing.
It's possible, I'm not sure, but there are definitely heavy restrictions on the pesticides you can use to call your product organic.
USDA organic absolutely prohibits the majority of pesticides. That's where the standard is most restrictive as there are very few organic pesticides.
They’re still drowned in pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.
It’s just that they have to use ORGANIC pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.
It should also be noted that organic farming typically uses twice the land area per calories produced, so it's in ways worse for the environment since it requires more land to be converted to farms.
The USDA hosting info on the program on the Agricultural Marketing Service site seems a bit on-the-nose for the quote, and I had trouble finding anything useful on that site (not sure if it's an awful site or I'm just tired), but I did finally find a link to the actual regulations defining USDA Organic and the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances for organic production.
The quote is correct in that USDA Organic doesn't distinguish organic produce from conventional in terms of safety, nutrition, or quality. It does distinguish from conventional in a lot of other ways, like land management, GMO being unavailable, and extra announced and unannounced inspections for compliance. I'd be curious to see an environmental impact assessment on organic production vs conventional, and a comparison of the types and associated risks of pesticide residues found on organic/conventional crops: those are the two things that are usually brought up when discussion organic crops. There's a fair bit more to it than I thought. Definitely not just a "marketing tool", though it is definitely that too.
I did see a study a while back specifically on GMO vs non-GMO crops and the non-GMO crops wound up being much worse for the environment because they require far more land and water to get an equivalent yeild. But that study didn't factor in all the other things that go along with organic vs nonorganic farming.
I also have no idea how I would find that study again and I'm far too tired/lazy to use my google fu right now so I don't have anything to back that up with other than "trust me bro".
But when it comes to personal anecdote I have personally seen that there is a huge difference even between conventional farming methods. My grandfather rents out a bunch of farmland on his property but he enforces certain healthier farming methods such as requiring crop rotations, restrictions on the fertilizers and other chemicals used, and forbidding the growing of certain more intensive crops. It isn't quite organic farming but it's much more restrictive than most large scale farming. He wants to keep the land healthy because he also actually lives on that land. Meanwhile his brother owns farmland across the road which he also rents out but imposes no restrictions on the farming practices used so the renter there just grows corn every year and fertilizes the piss out of it so that it actually grows. My grandfathers farmland is perfectly healthy even when just left fallow. Meanwhile his brothers land is a dusty barren washed out hellscape where nothing really grows even when left fallow. It's a striking difference just between the two sides of the road.
It actually really annoys me that gmo is somehow seen as a universally bad thing when it's really not very different from sped up selective breeding, and could do so much to help the environment and even increase animal welfare (what if there were GMO cows that don't need to have their babies stolen to get milk from them).
But my only options are to either ignore any ethical production issues entirely or completely avoid GMO food.
GMO is kind of a red herring. It is often done to allow plants to survive Round Up, which had recently been shown to have toxic effects. There's also compelling evidence that many people who think they can't tolerate gluten actually can't tolerate Round Up.
The genetic modification isn't intrinsically a problem, but the chemicals that plants need to be modified to tolerate are.
Yea I had to do a presentation of food labeling (in the EU I should add). And let me tell you, the fish labelings are bullshit. I mean msc and the other one. They have shit rules that are not even enforced. There have been cases of forced labour on ships that work for msc companies. They also do nothing to protect the sea or the environment at all.
The best labels are the V labels and the EU label. V has strict rules and is known for barging into food productions to check for quality and environmental impact. EU labels are the absolute standard for all products. So although the requirements are not that high they improve the quality of food in Europe and of course sue every company that does not comply.
It looks like it was back in 2000.
In announcing the finalized rules, former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman was careful to delineate how consumers should regard the new organic label, calling it “a marketing tool. . .not a statement about food safety.”
