Organic Food Analysis

Organic has long since been a highly accredited term for food. To be organic is to be pure, natural, and above the dirty industrial system that food production has become. This definition however has become tainted. The truth is that organic foods are anything but healthier. In Michael Pollan’s research book The Omnivore’s Dilemma the validity of organic foods are discredited. Pollan argues about organic food, as it is misleading consumers.
Similarly to a large majority of livestock, the life of an “organic” animal begins on a farm. For its first few years of life a cow will live on a farm grazing and enjoying life as nature intended. Sadly, they are then rounded up and shipped out to an industrial feedlot, aiming to fatten the animals

up and slaughter them. Normal cows are immediately put on a diet of corn, chemicals, antibiotics, and lard. This concoction has been scientifically engineered to most efficiently ready animals for slaughter. The organic cows are given slightly more space to live, but that quickly deteriorates into a filthy pen, which affects their health.
“Retzloff argued that keeping cows in confinement meant that his farmhands
…could keep a closer eye on their health. Of course cows need this sort of surveillance only when they’re living in such close quarters – and can’t be given antibiotics” (Pollan 157).
These organic animals are “cared for more”, but that extra care is only necessary because of the horrid environment they are raised in. Despite the deplorable conditions, and similarities to their non-organic brothers, these cows are labeled organic, mainly due to the loose definition. This does not fit the average consumer’s definition of organic, and yet “organic” cows are treated this way.
The government has decided to regulate the organic food industry. Originally, the intent was to provide a high standard with which to confirm the validity of organic food; however, this idea quickly went out the window when large business started writing the legislation for themselves. “Agribusiness fought to define the word [organic] as loosely as possible, in part to make it easier for mainstream companies to get into organic” (Pollan 154). The large businesses responsible for the need to define what naturally food truly is, was taking it upon themselves to define it. Due to this, the USDA’s guidelines for organic food allow for small, if any, pastures for animals, feed that doesn’t differ from normal animals’ feed, and the use of synthetic materials in organic food. Organic food by the meaning of the word is supposed to be more wholesome, sustainable, and healthy. Agribusiness managed to redefine it as synthetic, and just another way to charge more money for the same type of meat. This is in part due to the advertising of organic foods, that trick consumers into believing the organic lie.
Marketers are masters in the art of deception.

Pictures of happy cows, chickens, and pigs grazing on luscious grasslands litter every grocery store and product in America. This illusion of natural food is the ingenious plan of large business’s advertising. With the loose description of organic available, companies throw it around as though it means nothing, but sadly when combined with the picture of a happy farmer, it is sold as the healthiest food on the market. “The organic label is a marketing tool…It is not a statement about food safety. Nor is ‘organic’ a value judgment about nutrition or quality” (Pollan 179). Pollan uses the example of Rosie the “free-range” chicken. Rosie is from a supposedly organic farm that raises thousands of chickens to be sold at Whole Foods Markets. Rosie’s life is spent in one small chicken house, where she is tightly packed in with several thousand other “Rosies”. Her “free-range” label is allowed because of one small trap door that allows chickens into a few square feet of grass – which is never utilized, by the time the door is opened the chickens are already several months old and do not know how to live outside the chicken coop. Yet the advertisement clearly reads that Rosie is a free range, completely natural chicken. When compared to a truly natural chicken, Rosie is just the same industrial product as any other feedlot

chicken.
As a part of Pollan’s journey, he visits a truly organic farm that uses only sustainable, natural means by which to raise animals.

Polyface Farm is the epitome of organic foods, and yet is not labeled as organic. “Polyface Farm is technically not an organic farm, though by any standard it is more “sustainable” than virtually any organic farm” (Pollan 131). Polyface uses no fertilizers, no chemicals, only the natural system that the earth has been running on for thousands of years. The animals provide nutrients for the soil, and the soil provides nutrients for the animals. This system is the most natural and organic food production system possible on this earth – and yet Polyface is not an “organic” farm. There is no accreditation to the word organic any longer. The epitome of organic food is not sanitary (although consists of only natural components) or regulated enough to be organic. This industry is completely flipped upside

down.
Industrial organic farms have become the standard for healthy living. Organic foods have come to be completely and utterly deceiving consumers. The animals that produce this organic meat are treated as poorly as standard livestock. The definition for organic was created by the companies it was supposed to be restricting. Marketing has taken this word and turned it into a means by which to sell product, not produce healthy food. Truly organic food is not organic. The system of organic food is flawed, and it is up to us, the consumer. To enact change, we must make conscious decisions to purchase well, eat well, and not stand for these lies. Only then will we end this fallacy known as the organic food industry.