"Organic farming, in and of itself, can effectively reduce global warming. Very few of us know that." - Dr. Timothy Salle, Rodale Institute.
"If organic farming methods were practiced on all the planet's food growing land, it would be like taking more than 1.4 billion cars off the road."
Those are just two of the quotes from this Rodale Institute video on climate change. The video is being aired as part of the group's "Demand Organic" campaign and raises some interesting points.
The nonprofit Rodale Institute was founded in 1947 in Pennsylvania and is behind the long-running "our Farming Systems Trial," a U.S. study comparing organic and conventional farming techniques. The group maintains that organic techniques offer the best solution to global warming and famine.
For more information, go to www.RodaleInstitute.org.
If you haven't been to GoodGuide.com, you might want to click through.
PC Magazine placed it in the Top 100 Web Sites of 2009. Crunchies 2008 called it the "startup most likely to make the world a better place." And TechCrunch named it one of the best startups of 2008.
In a nutshell, you can check GoodGuide ratings on food and products you buy regularly, checking ingredients and safety ratings as well as the philanthropic and environmental impact of the manufacturer. You can create a favorites list and an avoid list.
To test it out, we clicked on the top-rated baby products. We look at baby food, specifically carrots. In one screen, we were able to see that the nutritional value of the chosen brand was above average, the ingredients were, quite simply, carrots and water, and the company scored high on philanthropic contributions, but had been cited for violating the Clean Water Act. We were also able to see a closeup view of the product's nutritional label.
You can also browse for the best-rated products in any given category, and you can download GoodGuide's free iPhone App so you can get this information on the spot, in the grocery store aisle. Here's what the marketing team at GoodGuide has to say about it: "Get instant access to over 70,000 products and ratings at your fingertips. Check a product, see top-rated products in a category,and access your personalized favorites list to quickly find safe and healthy products."
GoodGuide.com also runs the latest news stories, from health scares to FDA updates and a few fun features to lighten the mood here and there.
GoodGuide also has a blog, and can be followed on Twitter.
A public interest group that focuses on food and agriculture, The Cornucopia Institute, announced this week that it had filed formal complaints with the USDA's organic program, and Wisconsin and Minnesota officials, alleging that Target Corporation has misled consumers into thinking some conventional food items it sells are organic.
The complaints are the latest salvo into a growing controversy where corporate agribusiness and major retailers have been accused of blurring the line between "natural" products and food that has been grown, processed and properly certified organic under tight federal standards.
"Major food processors have recognized the meteoric rise of the organic industry, and profit potential, and want to create what is in essence 'organic light,' taking advantage of the market cachet but not being willing to do the heavy lifting required to earn the valuable USDA organic seal," said Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at Cornucopia.
The Wisconsin-based farm policy research group discovered Target advertised Silk soymilk in newspapers nationwide, with the term "organic" pictured on the carton's label, when in fact the manufacturer, Dean Foods, had quietly shifted their products away from organics.
Dean Foods, and its WhiteWave division, received media scrutiny, and industry condemnation, this past spring for not notifying retailers or changing the UPC codes, when they quietly switched to conventional soybeans in their core products.
Dean/WhiteWave also received heat in the organic food and agriculture community when they decided to convert some of their Horizon products, the leading organic label in terms of sales volume, to cheaper "natural" (conventional) ingredients. "This really hit a nerve because one of these new Horizon products, Little Blends yogurt, is aimed specifically at toddlers, at an early stage of development, where the nutritional superiority of organic food and its utility in avoiding chemical residues in our food is so critically important," Kastel added.
A front-page story in the Chicago tribune in July outlined a consumer survey that showed the public was unclear about the difference between natural and organic labels and that some corporations, particularly Dean Foods, were taking advantage of the confusion in the marketplace.
The story quoted Suzanne Shelton, president and CEO of the Shelton Group which conducted the survey, as saying, "They (consumers) think 'natural' is regulated by the government but that organic isn't, and of course, it's just the opposite."
This is not the first tangle involving Cornucopia and Target. The giant retailer's private label food line, Archer Farms, which blurs the line selling both natural and organically labeled food, came under scrutiny when Cornucopia discovered that its organic milk supplier, Colorado-based Aurora Dairy, was flagrantly violating federal organic livestock standards and filed a complaint with the USDA.
USDA investigators determined that Aurora had willfully violated 14 federal organic regulations. In what was condemned as a "sweetheart" deal by some in the organic industry, the Bush administration allowed Aurora to stay in business. Unlike some other retailers, Target stuck with Aurora as their milk supplier for their Archer Farms label.
The organic labeling issue is discussed in the October issue of the Exchange magazine, on stands at Outpost co-ops. More information can be found at the Cornucopia Institute's web site at www.cornucopia.org.
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