When is Organic Not Organic?

This is the way organic is dealt with in Japan. It allows for organic jam to be sold, for instance, when pectin is not yet available in organic form (and I do love that organic apricot jam!). Pectin is just a vegetable thickener, the stuff that makes up most of a tomato. Pectin-free jam is available in Japan, but it's completely different, just fruit in thin sugar syrup, not what the typical consumer wants when they buy jam.

A lot of this stuff is just used in minute quantities. For example, I think the kelp they're referring to is kanten, a sort of seaweed derived gelatin like substance used in tiny quantities to thicken. The only reason it's not organic is they take it from the ocean, and the inspection protocol doesn't have provisions for how to certify the ocean as an organic "field."

As long as they update the list as organic equivalents become available, and the labels are clear about which ingredients are organic (as they are in Japan), it seems like a good compromise.

I admit I'm out of my realm of knowledge with this post, but what Mark posted makes a lot of sense to me.

Brian

The origins of the "organic food" movement was to grow or raise food that was done in as short of a path as possible from source to consumer. By knowing what you were eating, you were gaining control over the military-industrial complex (remember that phrase? Power to the People? Love It Or Leave It?)

Interest in organic is now on the rise because consumers are worried about over-processed food and the health risks of pesticides, contamination by antibiotic-resistant microbes, and genetically modified food. Many people are buying food labeled "organic" with no real understanding what it means - it just gives them a feeling of reassurance. And so, as markets do, the food industry is responding, and the USDA is doing its standard job of trying to regulate with not too heavy of a hand.

According to the original idea of organic, "organic jam" made with separate pectin is pretty odd. How do you make jam at home with low pectin fruit, like strawberries? You cook the fruit with some apple (not too much apple - you can make rock hard jam that way). You can do the same commercially. But, it's a lot easier to just add pectin, which, of course, lengthens the path from food to consumer.

Hmm, I've never made Jam without pectin.

I make jam at home with pectin I make from citrus fruit peels, so I suppose if the pectin is from an organic orange, it would make it an organic jam, no?

Mark said:
As long as they update the list as organic equivalents become available, and the labels are clear about which ingredients are organic (as they are in Japan), it seems like a good compromise.

Don't you understand? With this legislation, they will never have to source those ingredients in an organic form!! This destroys the marketplace for a future with organic pectin, when it can never compete with the commercial variety, yet they are given equal footing in the end-product.

An abysmal cop-out and the beginning of the end for organic.

If it's not organic, it should not be labled organic, period. People have a right to KNOW what they are buying. Sort of, mostly and pretty close don't cut it. No one gets endorsed as a sort of, mostly or pretty close doctor to deliver health care advice. Our food should be no different as it is the first ingredient of our health.

I do agree that when you get to include non-organically grown ingredients in packages of food labelled as organic then it doesn't create any incentive to produce these things organically. However, I don't think this is the "beginning of the end" for the organic industry.

I don't think of organically grown foods in isolation but as part of a package of three things I try to shop for: whole foods, local foods, and organic foods. I sometimes find this all together (locally grown, organic carrots for example) but sometimes I have to make trade offs - for example am I better off purchasing the organic strawberries with no taste that have been shipped long distances from a huge operation in Calif -(I live in Canada) or should I buy a pail of them from the guy one town over at the farmer's market even if they are not organic? Well, in this case I pick the local produce for several reasons, taste and energy reduction being two of them. On the other hand, I will purchase organic bananas from who knows where because I'm not willing to forego bananas forever and they won't be grown in my neighborhood anytime soon - I just choose them less often.

I also agree in principle with the jam makers who control their own ingredients - I could buy supermarket organic tomato-carrot soup with non-organic additives but frankly it's just as easy to throw organic basil, tomatoes, carrots into a smoothie maker for less than a minute, and organic local berries that you freeze and blend with organic low fat yogurt make great sorbet-like smoothies in about 30 seconds. It's not always possible but there is an awful lot you can make yourself with food you are comfortable with.

I seriously oppose this. We should be able to accept that when we choose to eat processed foods containing organic ingredients that they will not be 100% organic. If you can't deal with that then you should learn to be less rigid in your eating habits or only choose whole foods over processed ones.

But changing the law so that the labels lie about the proportion of ingredients that are organic seems really disreputable. Tell me 85%, I'm cool with that. But don't tell me it's 100% when it's really 85%!

Sigh.

I grew up with the naive idea that government regulatory agencies, while frequently inept, were basically there to protect us. Whether its the FDA or USDA or whatever, I'm feeling less and less confident these days that it's true.

Oligofructose-enriched inulin...a proprietary patented product aka Raftilose Synergy 1, a prebiotic fiber from Orafti Group (Malvern, PA); Fructooligosaccharides are degradation products of inulin.

Lecithin can be isolated from either egg yolk or soy beans (but with soybeans it's mechanically or chemically extracted using hexane) - it's allowed use in organic foods would mean we'd not only be allowing a chemically processed ingredient into organic, but GMO crop by-products since a good amount of the soy grown in the US today is GM.

Gelatin is also used in fillings, sweets, as a stabiliser in fruit-juices and milk-drinks and as a source of dietary fiber in foods.

Konjac is used as a vegan substitute for gelatin.

Allowing Whey Protein Concentrates gets into the whole conventional dairy, complete with rBGH, feedlots, antibiotics, etc.

"Starches" is so broad it's crazy - corn (including GMO), wheat (including GMO), potato, etc. - what's the purpose of organic if you're going to use GMO by-products in the end package?

Chipotle peppers are just smoke-dried jalepenos - what they can't be grown organically?

The gums are used as stabilizers in packaged foods, thickeners in yogurt and dairy and helps maintain homogeneity and texture in processed dairy products and extend shelf live of baked goods.....there is already organic gums available.

it's clearly not organic - the edges should not be blurred by allowing this the happen. For me - to be organic is an all or nothing deal. call it something else and don't mess with our understanding of organic food

"Organic" processed foods (which would be where most of these ingredients would be used) is kind of an oxymoron as well. I knew a guy who only ate "organic" foods, but the organic things he ate were things like mac and cheese, canned soups, cakes, etc. I think I'd rather eat whole foods that aren't necessarily "organic" versus worrying about whether or not the gelatins and casings on my organic hot dogs are also organic.

There are already a lot of rules in place about some of these ingredients...kosher and halal food rules make it difficult for many manufacturers to use gelatin, for example, because it comes from pork. I doubt these rules will be reversed by the USDA anytime soon.

Just don't sell it as organic unless it is organic. If it contains non-organic pectin it is not organic. Buy it. Eat it. Enjoy it but don't claim that it is organic.

I don't get what the big upset is all about. I'm pretty sure that current regulations allow products to be labeled "organic" and use the USDA organic seal as long as they only have 95% organic ingredients. If they're 99% organic, they can label it as 100% organic.

Don't people read nutritional labels and ingredients list anyways?

I actually think that this is a huge opportunity for food processors to CONVERT to organic sources, as they will effectively have a monopoly over the ingredient and everyone will have to buy from them until others get on the boat.

@soozeequeue

Are the pesticides used on those strawberries produced locally? Because conventional strawberries, as far as I know, require a LOT of pesticides.

Jon said:
I actually think that this is a huge opportunity for food processors to CONVERT to organic sources, as they will effectively have a monopoly over the ingredient and everyone will have to buy from them until others get on the boat.[...]

The biggest problem I see if that the above list includes ingredients from GMO crops (most definitely as far from "organic" as one can imagine) and conventional ranching practices like routine use of antibiotics, growth hormones, and confined feedlots - practices most would agree are contrary to not only the spirit of "organic" but the actual hands-on practices that made it what it is today.

I personally will not eat any wheat, corn or other conventional crop produced with GMO seeds, in part because I do not believe we have enough human data to support the idea that long-term consumption is benign to our metabolism, in part on principle because I don't think farmers should be limited to purchase seed only from large corporations who hold patents to that seed, and lastly, in part because of the unknowns in the environment with long-term planting of GMO crops, which we're slowly learning do impact the surrounding ecosystem in ways we didn't think possible when they were first being introduced.

It's estimated that 80% of processed foods contain one or more ingredient from a GMO crop - almost all cereals, breads, frozen meals, etc. have these ingredients and they are not required to be labeled on the package; it's one reason why many packaging organic foods specify theirs contain "no GMO" ingredients.

Some will argue most people don't care...and I agree, most don't...but some of us do and if "organic" is modified to allow the ingredients above, we'll have no reliable way to know products we're buying are free from GMO ingredients, if they're an ingredient we're choosing not to eat.

The way I see it, rather than water-down the meaning of "organic" (which is what is happening), why not ask why some ingredients are not possible or available?

Perhaps the problem isn't the lack of the ingredient, but what we're trying to create using the ingredient?

Do we really need gums/fillers to make yogurt thicker, creamier, sweeter? Or is the desire to add such ingredients more to enhance profits because you can use less milk when you modify the recipe and use gums?

@Regina W

"Some will argue most people don't care...and I agree, most don't...but some of us do and if "organic" is modified to allow the ingredients above, we'll have no reliable way to know products we're buying are free from GMO ingredients, if they're an ingredient we're choosing not to eat."

I think ingredient labels will be just as reliable as they are today. As you said, some companies explicitly state "non-gmo" (while I doubt that has any legal standing, akin to "natural"). I once was trying to find some organic dark chocolate, but winded up empty handed because they all contained soy lecithin of an undisclosed origin.

"The way I see it, rather than water-down the meaning of "organic" (which is what is happening), why not ask why some ingredients are not possible or available?"

I read an article about soy lecithin before. I think there are a few, or maybe only one US manufacturer of organic soy lecithin, but companies complained because it was not available in the amount they needed, did not have to same properties/equal quality, and of course, more expensive.

I agree with many of your points though.

Jon - i don't remember anything specific about the strawberries, and the ones I bought may have been pesticide free, but that's not the point. The point I was making had nothing to do with one specific food, it was that many of us make trade offs because if you would like to consume local, organic and whole foods you will not always find all those things together, or at least where I live your diet would be very limited. The point was also that if you are concerned about the environment as well as what you consume - after all, it's all interrelated - then something that has to be trucked a couple thousand miles may not be my first choice, even if its the only organic choice.

Well, hmmm.... Why can't the USDA just add a classification entitled something like, "Part Organic", and then require that foods like the apricot jam are labeled thusly (is that a word?):

organic apricots, organic sugar, non-organic pectin.

That way, the consumer would know (if they cared to check) that the main ingredients in the product do, indeed, come from organic, presumably non-polluted sources, and the rest are 'commercially' produced, and aren't organic.

Or would that just make way too much sense, and not cost a whole bunch of our tax dollars?

What about 'organic' products shipped from China? They may have been grown and/or made to the strictest standards (highly unlikely), but if they're shipped over here on wood pallets or in wood packing crates, they have been contaminated by the pesticides that all wood shipping containers must be pressure-treated with by law, in order to keep out longhorn beetles.

"they will never have to source those ingredients in an organic form"

All it takes is one small manufacturer to use an organic form of an ingredient on the list and label it that way, and that will put competitive pressure on another small manufacturer, and they'll do it, and then they'll petition to have it taken off the list. So the ubiquitous and mysterious "they" (large military-industrial food producers who are members of the Trilateral Commission?) will not be able to control things.

I think the underlying assumption in most of the opposition to proposals like this is that you can't trust the USDA to do the right thing in the future. Assuming for the sake of argument that they will, in fact, update the list when organic substitutes become available, it doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

At any rate, the protocol is online and anybody can submit a public comment, and there are plenty of consumer oriented organizations submitting public comments, so rather than fume in blog comments, why not get on over to the USDA site, or even show up at a hearing when they're scheduled. I think you'll find these guys to be very reasonable if you deal with them directly. It's easy to demonize from afar.

Another thing: the guys at the USDA and the FDA are listed in the US Government Manual, and they do answer the phone when called.

To get an idea of how these proposals and comment periods work, I recommend reading (or skimming) the trans fat labeling materials at the FDA site. Consumers won that one, and the process by which they did shows how open and fair it can be. The summaries by the FDA staff are eminently reasonable. "They" don't control the puppet strings.