The Big Confusing O - What Does "Organic" Mean?

The daisies in your window are organic. The coffee you're drinking is, too. So is the paper cup it's in. Your dog is. Your lawn is. Your salad is. Your newspaper. So is your baseball glove. And the bat. Officially, the word organic refers to anything that is now, or ever was, alive. Even National Public Radio hosts are organic. It's true.

Though I am always interested in eating well, and choosing the freshest, least-interfered-with with foods - whenever I see something labeled organic, my cluttered brain makes a dozen woefully untravelled connections, takes an unfamiliar exit and deposits me way back in 8th grade, where I learned the aforementioned facts about organicness. Things that are, or were ever, alive, are organic. That's it. So, technically, a $25 brussel sprout from Whole Foods Market that has been grown free from pesticides, fertilized only with a mixture of baby tears and excrement collected from outhouses at Earth Day rallys, and bicycled to market in the basket of Ed Begley, Jr.'s recycled Schwinn, is no more organic than a Flamin' Hot Cheeto.

That's technically speaking. For years, many of us, I suspect, had a basic conceptual feeling about what organic meant when we saw it stamped on products we bought. We pictured healthy ingredients and Birkenstocks, sunshine and granola bars. I went a little further. I saw my organic products coming from an idyllic, Eden-esque sort of paradise, where they were planted, tended and sown with love, and without
chemicals (save the occasional wayward LSD tablet), by breast-feeding hippies who fairly-traded them from the back of psychedelically painted busses, while not shaving their armpits. I felt righteous and closer to the earth whenever I bought something that conjured this scenario for me, even if the item in question was actually made entirely of No Pest Strips, and marinated in Bernstein's Italian Dressing and DDT.

Like many words, it almost doesn't matter anymore what organic actually means. It has become part of the vernacular (several vernaculars, really), and as such, assumes the meaning the writer or speaker in question wants it to assume. When a deep dark green vegan activist uses the word, he means something very different than a USDA administrator, or a corporate marketing guy who, targeting upscale mothers of young children, manages to squeeze it onto a bag of Tropical Flavored Skittles. So, if the actual definition of the word is useless, and the various vernacular usages tied up in ideology, then what's the point of using it at all? We could just say, These carrots were grown without the use of pesticides! It would work fine for me. But that could only happen in a marketing-free world; and, the permanence of marketing in our culture is more certain than death or taxes has ever been. We'll still be marketing things long after there's nothing left to sell. I can just see it; post-apocalyptic salespeople stumbling around in the dust and confusion, spinning language to get other disoriented wanderers to buy their sticks and rocks. "Act now and get and get this set of Ginsu...sticks, free with your order!" But I digress.

In 2002, after years of negotiating with organic farmers who (and this has got to be a first) wanted stricter standards for their products than those the government had in mind, the USDA put it's own spin on organic. The National Organic Program (NOP) certification for organic labeling was officially implemented. By 2004, the USDA (caving to the pressure of big businesses, who wanted to be able to package dildoes, frisbees, and nuclear reactors in pretty paper stamped with globes and recycling logos, and call them organic), the USDA back-pedalled on some of its own standards. New policies allowed fertilizers and pesticides that contained "unknown" ingredients, and discontinued the regulation of non-agricultural products. Any non-agricultural producuts, no matter how they were produced, could be labeled organic! Organic farmers and tree huggers rebelled, and petitions, calls, and letters forced the USDA to recall their directives. Later, however, they snuck them right back in while everybody was watching the American Idol finals, or tuning in to see if Anna Nichole Smith was still dead, or something of equal importance.

Some people feel that the USDA certification has helped bring organics to the mainstream, yet many others believe it has so severely mainstreamed and neutralized the concept, that it has assisted large agri-businesses in displacing family farmers. Walmart can (and does) sell many non-agricultural products that meet no standards whatsoever, but are labeled organic. Small family businesses that produce similar items using ethical, sustainable, organic processes can't begin to compete.

At the end of it all, the actual word is no more useful than it ever was. Organic apples may or may not been treated with sludge, bioengineered organisms, and irradiation. Walmart can sell you disposable diapers that are labeled organic, but Peace and Sarah's All Natural General Store can't sell you an organic tomato (even though it is) because of some loophole in the policy that requires all organic farmers to use some entirely unnecessary piece of equipment that is completely unaffordable for small farmers.
My recommendation? Peace and Sarah should just make a tiny little adjustment on their packaging, and leave it at that. We'll all spread the word, starting right here, right now - only buy locally grown produce labeled "orgasmic".