Do You Trust the USDA ORGANIC Label?

Absolutely not if you're trying to go truly organic, but it's a good start and, as a consumer, a much better choice than ingesting all the crap in most foods. Read the specs and you'll see that there is a lot of room for unhealthy ____cidal use, but the bigger loophole is in processing. The whole thing is rigged for larger-scale producers, which turns me off of it.

Even though they are a voluntary organization without rigorous inspection, I would trust Certified Naturally Grown (www.naturallygrown.org) more than USDA-NOP. I am in the works of developing an organic orchard business and would rather go CNG than USDA even if it limits my market access.

http://www.cityfarmer.inf...

Let's start this in our communities. My county, Palm Beach, has 1.2 million people.

Imagine if for each person there was a $50/week expense at the grocery store...that equals $60,000,000.

Take that $60,000,000 and multiply it by 52 weeks / year and that's $3.1 Billion dollars on Food.

If we start local farms in every home and community, like My Farm in San Francisco, we could start a new agricultural Revolution!

I want to start in Florida...anyone want to help!!

About the USDA Organic: There are many loop holes in the USDA Organic program in areas that help large companies and hurt the small farmers. I know this because I work for a dietary supplement company that uses organic ingredients.

Yours in Health and Freedom

and meat, or I buy it locally from a group that farms the old fashion way before all the fertilizers and chemical additives

http://globaleconomicanal...

is that USDA "organic" includes crops raised using organic chemicals. That is organic in the sense that they are carbon based, so it doesn't mean chemical free. I've never read the rules myself, but that's what I heard from a friend who runs a family farm. They seem to think that the USDA organic label isn't worth a hill of beans.

Get to know your local growers. Remove the middle man as much as possible. Some local organic farms have tours you can go on where they show how they grow things.

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I trust that they will pass regulations not to protect the people, but to give big business an advantage over small business. "organic" is just a media buzz word and what the USDA has done is not strengthen consumer protection, but has weakened states rights to regulate and allowed foreign imports to meet these lower standards. They are slightly higher then non organic, but I would not look for the USDA symbol but buy locally grown and hydroponic. Hydroponic growth is really the wave of the future but has been fought by the USDA. It has no impact on soil and earth because they are not used and less water is required because it goes directly to the roots and not spread over the land. Hydroponic farms also require less land because you can build them vertically. Itr also puts less stress on the farm worker because they do not have to be bending down all of the time. The problem is that they require fertilizer and the USDA thinks if you use fertilizer you are not as good as "organic". Organic farms must rely on the earths natural methods of decomposition. Cover your fields in cow shit or even dead cows and that is ok, but to use a man made fertilizer is not. I can understand the concerns when it comes to traditional farming where most of the fertilizers seep into the land and water supply and are not taken up by the roots of the plants, but in hydroponic farming this is not an issue because it is done in a closed system. This closed system also allows for more seasonal crops to be produced almost year round on less land, with less impact on the environment. As for taste and nutrition, they are usually higher then organic. The problem is with the USDA, which has been fighting with them to be classified as "organic" and has put huge restrictions on what is defined as "organic" fertilizers. The USDA has done its best to limit hydroponic production by granting the favorable status to "organic" food and by doing this has slowed the growth of the most productive and environmentally safe way to produce quality food in favor of the slowest manner to produce food. With organic you have to show no pesticides were used on the soil in the last 20 years. With Hydroponics, you do not use soil. You can almost grow anything anywhere. To control the people you must first control the food supply. That is what the USDA is doing. By granting the status of "organic" to some food sources it allows them to charge more but limits the means in which they can produce and in most ways what they produce is of less quality and by a means less far productive then hydroponics and that means taken at its highest point is that on one acre of a hydroponic farm you can produce 10 times more then an "organic". That dose not even take into consideration that "organic" farms must be based in soil that already has natural nutrients. Its definition is based on soil, that which is already in the land and makes land with a better natural configuration more valuable then land with lesser mineral deposits. The truth with hydroponics is you can grow a crop in a desert using less land and water. The truth also is that hydroponics is the best way to grow weed and might be why the US government is so against it. Don't grow weed, big pharm dose not want competition. Today kids are more addicted to what they can steal from their parents drug cabinet and what their parents give to them then so called "illegal drugs" . Thank the FDA for that one!

i think the buy local and grow local movement is great for libertarians. makes us really focus on our communities in a small scale.

It's getting difficult to trust anything from the government these days as they are doing such a great job of being untrustworthy in nearly everything they do.

I don't trust anything with the word "Department" in it.

Have heard some good things and just read a study tracing the origins of inorganic arsenic (from pesticides) levels in rice. The organic rice had the lowest levels.

I've noticed better flavor from some organically grown produce. However, my high school cooking teacher had said hormones are used to produce the big bumps on the bottoms of apples because it's believed they are more appealing to consumers (silly). I've seen supermarket organic apples with unnaturally huge bumps.
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...the United States federal government are Dickheads and Assholes... Oh wait that wasn't the question...

do i trust the government? no!

we are having free range rabbit. Shot by my eleven year old son on his first ever hunt. The day after that we will be having wild pheasant. Shot by my seventeen year old son on opening day. The day after that....well you get the idea.

Labels on meet here dont have USDA..they have Canada-USA-Mexico

Freedom is another way to God...A corrupt government is a straight way to hell.

If you'll look at the label of any of these dairy products, you'll notice that any of these products is super heated (all nutrients—I mean ALL nutrients—are killed). Why consume something that doesn't benefit your body in any way?

--Cliff, Sioux City, Iowa

anything the government does. Go to www.cornucopia.org and see how Dean Foods was allowed to confine their cows and pass the milk off as organic. When I first started buying organic 10 years ago the small companies I trusted, then when organics got popular, General Mills, Mars, etc. started buying these family farms. Most of their products come from China. Oh yeah I trust organic from China! Buy local, that is the only answer.

That's like saying free-range chickens are free-range! The USDA regulations are such that chickens penned up in a barn so tight that they can't walk around without stepping on each other are considered free-range.

I just took tomorrow's dinner out of the freezer - we are having either Greta or Larry roast. We know exactly what they ate and what they were treated with. To us, that is better than the "organic" label. They are actually pasture-raised, not pasture-raised or organic through a USDA loophole.

until I resigned. No, I do not trust them.

it was probably more genuine than now. It is a government seal after all and you all know that our government loves you.

They're all a scam.....believe me. You need to do some on-line checking for locally grown organic....like farmers markets, etc. Denver has a few of these.

Deb

I only believe half of what I see.

it has to be better than the chemical, additive, preservative, added to the
other now sold-
grow your own as soon as you can
rabbits crap use that for fertilizer, make your own compost
use that for fertilizer
there are alot of alternatives to buying in a store
work with neighbors and do some trading

"Our Day is Coming"


★★★thank you RON PAUL★★★

but, I do trust the background, reputation and statements of individual companies.

Is this a joke post? There have been loopholes big enough for a tractor to drive through under USDA organic standards.

anyone is passing non-organic products off as organic, but the usda's definition of "organic" is not anywhere close.

They need to have a different standard: "sustainable." Sustainability is much more important, and sustainably-produced food will usually be organic, or mostly organic.

The problem with organic is that it cuts out a lot of sustainable garden techniques that do no harm. I don't feed my chickens "organic" feed, but I guarantee you that my eggs are produced in a more sustainable way than the "organic" eggs you buy at Whole Foods. But my eggs wouldn't be allowed onto the shelf at Whole Foods!

There is a giant industry, "big organic," that is organic, but is not much better than the non-organic industry. "Organic" by itself doesn't do it-- food economies need to be completely torn down and rebuilt.

Google "Joel Salatin" and/or "polyface farm" or "beyond organic" for more.

that the USDA is one of the only agencies that is EXTREMELY on point. when you make a purchase you can trust the usda label. cant say the same thing for the fda.

I reserve the right to govern myself.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Benjamin Franklin
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BEEF FROM URUGUAY?

Others, like QAI and the various state tilths, yes.

USDA Organic is not 100% organic, only 90-95%. The other 5% can be gods-knows-what garbage.

Not for a New York minute. The USDA makes rules that suit their Big Ag buddies. When they re-defined "grass fed beef" to include beef raised in confined feeding operations (CAFO's) if some natural feedstuffs, like corn on stalks, is included in their feed, I lost any trust at all in anything the USDA says. They are the agricultural equivalent of the FDA, prostitutes who serve their corporate masters, nothing more.

Pat

BOHICA!!

Good question! How'd ya know what I was thinkin' years ago.

Actually organic requirements, even though I haven't actually studied them, only heard a couple of things, may be over-strict?

Lookin' through organic fertilizers you'll find that there also embedded with misrepresentation, deceptive labeling, etc., of the products. Go to OMRI for an independent analysis of organic fertilizers. Hopefully their independent huh.

http://www.omri.org/

http://www.omri.org/OMRI_...

affirmation: President Paul 2008

Good question. Our farm has been certified organic since 1989. I'll get back to this later tonight; I've got things to do before the sun goes down.

since we are 99% organic. However, someone at work said they saw a peice on TV that said as long as it was USA grown you could pretty much trust it, but if grown out of the USA no. I try to buy as much as I can that is locally grown. A lot of the fresh fruits and vegatables I see labled organic come from South America. Our local stuff is seasonal. I can and freeze as much as I have time to do. I never ever trust strawberries that aren't in season or locally grown. We do without.