The "organic" label means that food's grown without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, but Lee says some shoppers think it means "healthy" in other ways.(Photo courtesy of Mica M CC-BY-SA)
Researchers have known for a while that food labels, such as “low in fat,” can mislead dieters into thinking they’re eating healthy. Shawn Allee reports the “organic” label could lead dieters astray, too.
Transcript
Researchers have known for a while that food labels, such as “low in fat,” can mislead dieters into thinking they’re eating healthy.
Shawn Allee reports the “organic” label could lead dieters astray, too.
Cornell University ran an experiment to look at how people think about food made with organic ingredients.
One researcher was Jenny Lee.
Lee gave people cookies – some were labeled organic, some not.
Then people guessed the calorie count.
“We found that those who ate cookies with the organic label rated those cookies to be lower in calories than those who ate cookies without the organic label.”
Actually, they were exactly the same cookies: organic Oreos.
The “organic” label means that food’s grown without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, but Lee says some shoppers think it means “healthy” in other ways.
“You have to be a little suspicious about what the label’s actually claiming and not to draw any other inferences.”
Lee says people need to think about what they expect from food labeled “organic,” since organic products are becoming common in mainstream grocery stores.
Mark Kastel, director of an industry watchdog group, says some so-called organic cows were being raised on factory farms instead of on pastures. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
They cost more, but sales of organic foods are rising. Even in this down economy, organic food sales are going up 3-times faster than other foods. Julie Grant reports… that’s happening as the government is working to make sure everything that’s labeled organic actually is organic:
Transcript
They cost more, but sales of organic foods are rising. Even in this down economy, organic food sales are going up 3-times faster than other foods. Julie Grant reports… that’s happening as the government is working to make sure everything that’s labeled organic actually is organic.
Near where I live in Ohio, it costs more to buy a half-gallon of organic milk than it does to buy a whole gallon of regular milk. So, that circular green and white seal that says “USDA Organic” better mean something.
Mark Kastel is director of the Cornucopia Institute. It’s an organic industry watchdog group. He says over the past decade, more and more people are buying organic – and the market share has grown. So, big business has moved in to get a piece of the action.
Kastel says some so-called organic cows were being raised on factory farms instead of on pastures.
“You really can’t milk 2-thousand or 5-thousand or 7-thousand cows and move them back and forth every day to pasture to graze them every day as the organic law requires.”
Kastel says part of the problem with milk production was that the rules didn’t specifically state how long cows had to be out on pasture. So, some weren’t getting any time eating grass – and were still being certified organic.
Kastel was among those who complained to the folks at the USDA’s national organic program about this.
“Corporate investments in large factory farms that are gaming the system and creating the illusion of practicing organics.”
That’s one reason why the Cornucopia Institute requested an audit of the National Organic Program.
“We need the force of law to come down and make sure that the organic label still means something.”
The USDA has responded. It started an audit of the organic program last year. At the same time, the program got more money… and hired a new director.
Miles McAvoy has inspected hundreds of organic farms and is now in charge of the national organic program. His first order of business was to help with that audit of the program. It found a lot of problems. But McAvoy is glad it was done.
“Basically, the report to me is a roadmap. It really outlines a lot of the fundamental problems that the national organic program has had and so it enables us to focus on those areas that really need to be addressed right away.”
The audit found that the organic program wasn’t cracking down on producers that labeled their foods organic, even if they violated organic rules. It found that the program wasn’t processing complaints in a timely way, and it wasn’t doing a good job inspecting farms in foreign countries. That meant that products imported from China and elsewhere might have the organic label, but not have been inspected properly.
McAvoy says the program just didn’t have enough money before to do everything it was supposed to do.
“Given the resources that the program had at the time, they did the best job that they could…”
Until recently, the national organic program had only eight people on staff.
McAvoy plans to hire more than 20 this year. And his office has already addressed most of the issues from the audit.
Organic watchdog Mark Kastel is pleased with the direction of the program. He says even the issue of cow pasture has been resolved. Milk labeled organic must now come from cows that are allowed to graze at least 120 days each year.
Kastel says the problems have come from a few bad actors. He says people are willing to pay more for organics because they want to support certain types of farms:
“I think we’re in a position with the current administration in Washington where we’ll be able to make sure those promises are kept.”
So the USDA Certified Organic label does mean something when you’re handing over more money to make sure animals and the land are treated better.
Author David Kirby says cattle eating cattle by-product could risk another outbreak of mad cow disease. The FDA says there’s no measurable risk. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
The hamburger you put on the grill this weekend could be from cattle raised on feed that includes chicken feces. Lester Graham reports…a year-old Food and Drug Administration rule says it’s safe:
Transcript
The hamburger you put on the grill this weekend could be from cattle raised on feed that includes chicken feces. Lester Graham reports…a year-old Food and Drug Administration rule says it’s safe.
The rule came about after the mad cow disease outbreak. It made some changes, but still allows putting chicken litter – that’s the straw, feathers, chicken manure and scattered food left after raising chickens in a building– into cattle feed.
David Kirby wrote a book entitled “Animal Factory.” He says the government buckled to the chicken industry because the industry didn’t have a place to go with all the chicken litter.
“There’s too much to spread on local farmland, so they very often put it into cattle feed. It contains urea which cows can convert into protein.”
Chickens are messy. They scatter their feed and it gets into the chicken litter that’s put in some cattle feed. Some chicken feed contains beef by-products. Kirby says cattle eating cattle by-product could risk another outbreak of mad cow disease. The FDA says there’s no measurable risk.
It takes 25% of all the fresh water Americans use just to produce food that ends up being wasted. (Photo courtesy of Samara Freemark)
EN Brasserie hosts special dinners where customers pay good money to eat the kinds of things most Americans throw away. (Photo courtesy of Samara Freemark)
Berg says Americans don’t necessarily understand how much food gets wasted before it even makes it to the table. (Photo courtesy of Samara Freemark)
Government researchers recently put out a study that says American’s throw away forty percent of their food. Samara Freemark reports:
Transcript
Americans waste a lot of food – by some estimates, almost half of the total amount in the food supply. Samara Freemark reports that the problem goes way beyond cleaning your plate.
A couple of months ago, government researchers put out a study that said Americans waste 40% of their food.
When I read that figure, it seemed incredibly high. So high that when I sat down with a food policy expert, I was actually a little embarrassed to ask her about it.
“I saw this number, 40%. Is that possible? It seems high to me.”
“I think the wasting of 40% of food, I actually think that could be a low number.”
That’s Jennifer Berg. She’s the director of the graduate program in food studies at New York University, and she spends a lot of time thinking about the food waste problem – in particular, about its huge environmental impacts.
It turns out, it takes 25% of all the fresh water Americans use just to produce food that eventually ends up in the garbage. It takes a lot of fuel to move that food around; packaging it takes plastic and paper, and throwing it away fills up landfills.
“There’s that old, you know ‘an orange peel…’ An orange peel takes years to break down. You know, a banana peel, half a loaf of bread. All that stuff goes into landfills. It doesn’t matter whether it’s organic matter or not. It doesn’t decompose. It doesn’t break down, when it’s all put together like that.”
Berg says Americans get plenty of messages about cleaning their plates.
But they don’t necessarily understand how much food gets wasted before it even makes it to the table.
“If you think about meat. Other countries, they will consume 85% of a cow. We will consume 30%. 20%. We only eat very specific cuts. We want our food totally filleted, we want it boned. We just eat very very specific food.”
I wanted to see what a waste-free meal looked like, so I took a trip to EN Japanese brasserie in Manhattan.
For the past couple of months, EN Brasserie has hosted special dinners where customers pay good money to eat the kinds of things most Americans throw away.
Reika Alexander owns the restaurant. She came up with the idea for the dinners when she moved to New York and saw how much food people in the city threw out.
“I realized that New Yorkers create so much garbage. When I saw that my heart was really aching. We have to do something about that.”
Alexander showed me some of the food she’d be serving that night. The first thing she handed me was a plate of fried eel backbones.
“We import live eels. So we get the whole thing. So we deep fry the bone part. It’s like a really flavorful rice cracker. Want to try. You just eat it? Like the bone? The whole bone? It’s good, right? It’s really good. The bones just fall apart in your mouth.”
There was a platter of rice topped with scraps of fish and vegetable trimmings. A salad made from salmon skin. And a cauldron of soup with whole fish heads bobbing in the broth.
“The eye, it’s so flavorful and delicious. The fish eyes have so much flavor. It makes a beautiful fish stock.”
At the dinner that night I asked college student Cordelia Blanchard what she was eating.
“I don’t know. I think the idea is that what’s left over the chefs just throw in a pot, and that’s what we have the pleasure of eating tonight. It makes me want to be more creative about how I combine what’s left in the kitchen sink.”
Which is the kind of attitude that restaurant owner Reika Alexander likes. Still, she says, she doesn’t expect the average American to sit down to a dinner of eel bones and fish eyes any time soon.
The blight hitting tomatoes is actually the same blight responsible for the Irish potato famine in the mid-19 century. (Photo by T. A. Zitter, courtesy of Cornell University)
If you’ve been waiting all season
for that quintessential taste of
summer – a juicy, ripe tomato from
the garden – you might be disappointed.
This year a tomato blight has swept
across the Northeast and is moving
into Midwestern gardens and farms.
Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
If you’ve been waiting all season
for that quintessential taste of
summer – a juicy, ripe tomato from
the garden – you might be disappointed.
This year a tomato blight has swept
across the Northeast and is moving
into Midwestern gardens and farms.
Julie Grant reports:
Walk around this outdoor farm market in Cleveland and just say the words ‘tomato blight’ – nearly anyone in earshot has a story to tell.
Susan Myers says her home garden has given over to what she thinks is late blight.
“But it’s pretty serious. I mean, it’s like wiping out everything. I have lots of tomatoes and all the leaves are dropping. I’ve never, ever had that before.”
It doesn’t look like the farmers here are having trouble with tomato blight. Most tables are piled high with bright reds and yellows.
Skip Conant has a beautiful display of heirloom tomatoes – but he’s not sure how many more weeks he’ll have fruit to offer.
Conant: “We definitely have tomato blight. It’s been a cool, wet spring, so, yeah. There’s a fair amount tomato blight.”
Grant: “What does it look like?”
Conant: “You’ll see a yellowing and curling on the leaves and then the stem will turn brown. The plant will become a very brown. Die from basically the inside out or the bottom up.”
It’s hard to tell yet if these Midwestern growers are starting to see the same blight that decimated the northeast tomatoes.
Bill Fry is a plant pathologist at Cornell University. He’s studied late blight for 35 years. Fry says it looks like irregular shaped black spots, and can appear on the leaves or the fruit. It can destroy an entire crop in just a few days.
This is the same blight responsible for the Irish potato famine in the mid-19 century. Growers have seen late blight since then. But Fry says, not at these epidemic proportions.
“The fact that it’s just everywhere is, I think, is the major difference from previous years.”
This wasn’t the first cool, wet spring on record. So, why has the blight so bad this year?
It’s kind of ironic. Fry and his colleagues have been studying the problem and think it’s probably because so many people are gardening. Millions more than just last year. And lots of those people bought tomato plants at stores like Home Depot, Kmart, Lowe’s and Wal-Mart.
“Infected plants were sold throughout the northeast in the box stores. They were transplanted to home gardens and from there the pathogen disbursed to other home gardens, to conventional and organic farms.”
Fry says you might not even notice at the supermarket. Commercial tomato growers spray lots of fungicide to keep away the blight. But organic tomatoes are getting harder to find.
But chefs and tomato lovers who’ve waited all season for those locally-grown heirloom – and especially organic – tomatoes aren’t finding what they want in markets in the northeast.
Back at the Cleveland market, chef and restaurant owner Karen Small has been waiting for tomato season – and it finally hit. She depends on this market for her produce and stops at just about every stand.
But as Small hears farmer after farmer describe what they think is late blight – she’s worried about the weeks to come.
“We’re accustomed to having tomatoes well into September, and maybe that’s not going to happen this year.”
Small plans to go home and rip out the tomato plants in her home garden – after hearing late blight described so many times, she’s pretty sure her tomatoes are infected.
Some organic watchdog groups say the National Organics Program has been too loose with its rules.
(Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)
Congress wants to dig deeper into an ongoing investigation of the National Organics Program. The program puts the little green “USDA Organic” label on products. Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
Congress wants to dig deeper into an ongoing investigation of the National Organics Program. The program puts the little green “USDA Organic” label on products. Mark Brush has more:
Congress passed a bill that will put more money toward investigating the USDA’s organic program.
Some organic watchdog groups say the National Organics Program has been too loose with its rules.
Mark Kastel is with the Cornucopia Institute. He’s one of those critics.
“They have been accused by reputable independent auditors of having ignored the will of Congress in how they are managing the organic program – favoring large factory farms – favoring unscrutinized products being imported from China – all this competing with our family farmers here in the United States.”
Kastel says that’s not the way it’s supposed to work.
But he says the USDA organic label is still the gold standard. And most producers follow the law.
He and some leaders in Congress say an expanded review of the program will make sure that little green label keeps its credibility.
Organic steak is hard to find, partly because so few slaughterhouses are certified organic. (Photo by David Benbennick, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Organic farmers would love to have you dig into more of their pork, chicken and beef. It’s not just because they’re proud about how they raise their animals – it’s because certified organic meat fetches high prices. But organic meat is harder to find than you’d expect, and it’s partly because there are few organically-certified slaughterhouses.
Shawn Allee found a farming community that came up with a solution:
Transcript
Organic farmers would love to have you dig into more of their pork, chicken and beef.
It’s not just because they’re proud about how they raise their animals – it’s because certified organic meat fetches high prices.
But organic meat is harder to find than you’d expect, and it’s partly because there are few organically-certified slaughterhouses.
Shawn Allee found a farming community that came up with a solution:
Dennis and Emily Wettstein turned their Illinois farm organic a while ago, mostly because conventional farming wasn’t practical for them.
“All the money seemed to go to pay for the fertilizers and the chemicals. And then I was more or less allergic to the chemicals. And so we were interested in getting away from that, especially if we were going to raise a family out here.”
The Wettsteins didn’t just raise grain organically – they kept chemicals and hormones out of their cattle.
“We started raising meat for ourselves and our families. Then, pretty soon, just word of mouth, friends and neighbors wanted meat.”
And, they found people who’d pay top dollar for their meat.
“We sell at the Oak Park farmers market.”
That’s just west of Chicago.
“Right. The Oak Park market managers, they are working on all the farmers to go towards organic.”
And that worked for the Wettsteins – they had USDA certified organic chicken.
“There’s one other meat vendor there – it’s not organic. So, we have no competition. We feel that, with that label on there, we can set our price to where we can make a profit.”
But Emily Wettstein says that term – organic – gave them trouble when it came to beef and other meat.
“We were getting a little bit pressured from other people, ‘Well, you can’t call your item organic. You don’t have a processing facility with the term of certified organic.'”
Here was the problem: For meat to get labeled USDA certified organic, it’s gotta be certified from the farm to the slaughterhouse.
The Wettsteins had someone to process organic chicken, but they were out of luck with pigs and cows.
There was no certified slaughterhouse for beef or pork in Illinois.
So, the Wettsteins and some relatives prodded meat lockers to get certified.
There was one taker.
“I’m inside a meat locker that’s about a fifteen minute drive from the Wettstein farm. It’s owned by Scott Bittner, and I’m here to understand what organic certification means for his business. How do I put this, there’s a headless, hoofless, skinless cow hanging from your ceiling. Where are we exactly?”
We’re on the kill floor. We had seventeen, eighteen cattle today. Seven of those were organic.
So, walk me through how you have to treat that organic cow differently.
It’s the first thing we did this morning – that’s one thing. Other than that, it’s segregating it in the cooler from the non-organic product and then processing it at a later time, which, again, you have to do first thing in the morning.
So, the basic idea is segregation?
Yeah, it is. The whole way through. Exactly.
Bittner’s simplifying things, but not much.
He has to clean or swap equipment between batches of organic and conventional meat.
There are rules on the kinds of chemicals he can use. And he hires a certification company to monitor his paper work.
Bittner says overall, it’s easy, and he’s surprised more slaughterhouses haven’t done it.
“Here we’re doing all our fabricating – grinding sausage, ground beef. Cutting some chops, ribs.”
“How does it feel to be the only guy who can process an organic side of beef?”
“I want to keep it quiet – I don’t want too many people to get started doing what I’m doing because it’s nice. I get two or three customers every year that I didn’t have before. When you go to bed at night and think about this economy being the way it is, every little bit helps.”
Bittner says farmers drive animals up to four hours to slaughter their animals here.
He says he’s proud of his work but can’t take too much credit; he knows he’s got a local organic slaughtering monopoly going.
That might change some day, but for now it’s reason enough to keep his knives sharp.
Some farmers think this spot is a perfect place for a White House organic farm. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Some people think American agriculture needs a makeover. They question why we waste so much fuel moving food long distances. A growing movement is calling for farmers and everybody else to produce more locally-grown, organic food. Shawn Allee reports some people want the President to set a good example:
Transcript
Some people think American agriculture needs a makeover. They question why we waste so much fuel moving food long distances. A growing movement is calling for farmers and everybody else to produce more locally-grown, organic food. Shawn Allee reports some people want the President to set a good example:
Last October Michael Pollan published a letter to the President in the New York Times.
Pollan is a sort of agricultural policy gadfly. His open letter to the President was full of big, policy-wonkish ideas about how to encourage local food production. But Pollan also wrote one small suggestion. NPR’s Terry Gross picked up on it.
GROSS: “You would like the next president to instead of having a White House lawn to basically have a White House garden. The president would set an example for the rest of us by having this garden of locally-grown foods?” (laughs)
POLLAN: “Now why is that preposterous, Terry? I mean, that’s actually one of the more practical things I proposed.”
Pollan went into how the President could even share some of his veggies with food banks.
POLLAN:” So you have this powerful image of the White House feeding Americans. What could be better than that?”
Some people heard this interview or read Pollon’s article and thought, “right on” – there should be a White House farmer. One family from central Illinois was especially intrigued. Terra Brockman talked about it with her father and sister.
BROCKMAN: “Well, it’s a great idea, but why don’t we bring it down to earth and make it real?”
ALLEE: “So, basically you translated it into reality by creating a contest on a Web site. White House Farmer dot com, as I understand it.”
BROCKMAN: “Yeah, we figured it was a way that we could get it out nationally without much time or money and ask people all across the country, ‘who do you think would be a good White House farmer?’ and have people nominate their farmers.”
Now, Brockman built her contest Web site even though President Obama never even talked about the idea of a White House farmer. But she’s hopeful because the White House actually has an agricultural past. At one time sheep grazed on the White House lawn, and during World War II Eleanor Roosevelt grew a Victory Garden there.
BROCKMAN: “It’s not like this is so, so way out there. And really, whatever the President does is pretty symbolic and people do pay attention.”
People paid attention to White Houser Farmer dot com, anyway.
The site gathered around 57 thousand online votes in just a few days.
And exactly who is the unofficial new White House Farmer?
That would be Claire Strader, from Madison, Wisconsin.
Strader invited me to see the land she works.
STRADER: “We’re at Troy Gardens. It’s in a parcel of land in the city of Madison, on the North Side. I haven’t actually seen the farm for a few months because the snow’s been so deep.”
ALLEE: “Can we get closer to the farm area?”
STRADER: “Yeah.”
Strader is the head farmer at Troy Gardens. She trains city people to grow food here. She also makes the soil fertile through organic growing techniques.
STRADER: “You can just start to see now, the green flush over the whole field. That’s our cover crop of rye. It looks really good. I’m happy to see it.”
ALLEE: “Could you tear yourself away to go to DC and leave all this behind?”
STRADER: “It would be difficult to pick up and leave it behind, but it would be a tremendous honor and a lot of potential to spread the good word of organic agriculture and the positive impacts that would have on our country in the future. It would be hard to accept and hard to reject.”
Even with a White House Farmer chosen for him, President Obama still hasn’t said anything about the idea.
But Strader says she and some top contest vote-getters are trying to sway him – even if he’d pick someone else to run his garden.
Strader says she loves the idea of cucumbers and zucchinis growing at the White House… even if she’s not there to pick them.
Most paints are still high in VOCs – volatile organic compounds (Source: DanielCase at Wikimedia Commons)
When it’s time for a new
coat of paint, you might want a paint
that doesn’t smell so bad that it
leaves your head spinning. More states
are shaking up paint laws – and forcing
companies to roll out paints that aren’t
as bad for the environment. But some
people question if they will work as well
as the old stuff. Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
When it’s time for a new
coat of paint, you might want a paint
that doesn’t smell so bad that it
leaves your head spinning. More states
are shaking up paint laws – and forcing
companies to roll out paints that aren’t
as bad for the environment. But some
people question if they will work as well
as the old stuff. Julie Grant reports:
Matt Testa started painting for his family’s real estate
business when he was a kid. He remembers his parents
worrying that all the chemicals in the paint would ignite a fire
– so they turned off appliance pilot lights before painting a
kitchen.
(sound of painting)
Today, as a builder and general contractor, Testa says most
paints are still high in VOCs – volatile organic compounds.
Even though a lot of people don’t like it.
“Well, when we’ve used some high VOC products, of course
there’s occasional dizziness on large commercial jobs.
We’ve had to clear buildings at times because of people
reporting headaches and other things with the fumes that
were being given off.”
Testa says you can almost taste those chemicals in your
nose and mouth hours after painting. But the VOCs don’t
just affect painters. When you open a can of paint, or
primer, or wood stain, the chemicals get into the air – and
cause ozone pollution, which contributes to smog.
“When you do the math, they’re talking about a quarter
pound per gallon. And you think of the millions and millions
of gallons of paints that are used, you’re talking about a
huge amount of VOCs.”
In recent years, states on the east and west coasts have
started cracking down on paint makers. Smoggy southern
California has the toughest laws against VOCs in paints.
The Northeast has also forced manufacturers to reduce their
chemical load.
And now tougher paint laws are spreading to states in the
middle of the country. Ohio, for instance, has had a tough
time meeting federal clean air standards. It’s hoping that
stirring up the paint laws will make a difference.
(sound of paint store)
That’ll mean changes at the store. When you buy paints,
primers, stains – they will be based less on oil – and more
on water.
Steve Revnew is marketing director for Sherwin Williams –
and its 3,300 stores nationwide. Walking around one of his
Ohio stores, he says they have to roll out a new line of
products.
“For example, some of the oil based stains, wiping stains
that you traditionally would use on your wood work and
those types of things, as they’re known today, that
technology will no longer be available.”
Companies such as Sherwin Williams have seen the
chemical limits coming for many years. Revnew says
they’ve developed new stains, paints and enamels with
fewer harsh chemicals – using new resin and polymer
technology.
He picks up a can of enamel – “In 2009, we’ll be introducing
a whole new product line that is VOC compliant. It will still
provide you the hard, durable finish for metal, wood,
concrete – those types of things. Only it will be VOC
compliant.”
The changes have some professional painters in the store
concerned. They worry that water-based paints and stains
won’t coat as well or last as long as the oil-based coatings.
Now that contractor Matt Testa has kids of his own, he’s glad
VOCs are being brushed aside. But if reducing the
chemicals means things need to be re-painted more often,
he says the changes won’t do anything to improve air
quality.
“Yeah, if you have to go back and repaint it, you’re really
going to leave a bigger footprint environmentally from the
truck trips, the amount of the paint you put back up, all the
delivery of that paint, etc.”
Testa says consumers will have to see for themselves if
these new, environmentally friendly products work as well as
the higher VOC paints.
Farmed
fish, such as salmon, eat a lot of wild fish that happen to
swim into their pens. And that means they could be eating
over-fished species.
(Photo courtesy of the US Fish & Wildlife Service)
To be labeled organic, animals
have to be fed all organic food. But
under the new proposal that won’t be
the case for fish. Julie Grant reports
that in the recommendations for organic
fish, the standard is much lower:
Transcript
To be labeled organic, animals
have to be fed all organic food. But
under the new proposal that won’t be
the case for fish. Julie Grant reports
that in the recommendations for organic
fish, the standard is much lower:
Some fish is raised in huge net-pens in the ocean. Farmed
fish, such as salmon, eat a lot of wild fish that happen to
swim into their pens. And that means they could be eating
over-fished species.
New recommendations by the National Organic Standards
Board would go ahead and allow farmed fish to eat up to
25% wild food – as long as it’s not from endangered species.
George Leonard is director of aqua-culture with the Ocean
Conservancy. He says these standards would weaken the
organic label.
“You don’t change the organic standard to be consistent with
current practices, you hold the organic standard steady and
you allow or you incentive the industry to change their
practices to reach that standard.”
The new “organic fish” recommendations still need final
approval from the USDA.
The "organic" label means that food's grown without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, but Lee says some shoppers think it means "healthy" in other ways.(Photo courtesy of Mica M CC-BY-SA)
