Food Ethics: Is Organic the Right Choice?

August 5, 2009

3:18

Organic foods have no unique health benefits, says a study out of London. But are there greater ethics involved?

It’s a revolution, you can call it a revolution and it’s just starting here and every year I hear more interest and more people want to try it. There’s a revolution underway in America. I think our biggest problem overall is we don’t have enough supply we’ve got people clamoring for this food.” (Forecast Earth)

Organic food is apparently better for you with more nutrients, free of harmful chemicals and a little more expensive. But a new study finds if you fork out for chemical-free food think again.

“New research shows organic food have no nutritional or health benefits over non-organic foods. Researchers in London could not find any significant reason to go to organic.”

We’ve examining media perspectives on whether organic really is that much healthier and kinder to the environment than conventional, industrial farming. Our research shows media outlets are reporting organic lovers are calling the study flawed while industrialists see it as proof going organic is more about status than substance.

Blake Hurst, a Missouri farmer defends industrial farming as indifferent to the “all natural way” in an article in…

…The American called ‘The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-Intellectuals’.

“The biggest environmental harm I have done as a farmer is the topsoil (and nutrients) I used to send down the Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico before we began to practice no-till farming, made possible only by the use of herbicides. The combination of herbicides and genetically modified seed has made my farm more sustainable, not less, and actually reduces the pollution I send down the river.”

Hurst’s article in The American was largely in response to…

…Michael Pollan’s book ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ a damning account of industrial farming.

Pollan justifies his position this way in New York Times magazine.

Pollan says using “chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas)” and “pesticides (made from petroleum)” means that,
“when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.”

Research Channel.org shares some astounding research from the University of Wisconsin. The research has the perspective it’s not about whether the consumer picks organic or not, but rather the need to produce more food, hinting industrial methods are proven and here to stay.

“The world faces a future that needs more food for a growing global population. In this century it’s expected we’ll have to grow double the amount of food we grow now. But all the world’s good farmland and a lot of bad farmland is already in use.” … “We already using green revolution technologies, improved seeds, improved pest control, a complete roster of plant nutrients, how double it again or triple it again from today in a short span of time?”

Do these findings - that organic has no more nutritional value than non-organic – change how you’ll shop at your local grocery store? Or have you always been anti-organic?