Paying the Price for Organic

Representative Nathan Deal, Republican of Georgia, has won himself a place on my people-who-are-idiots-at-best-and-evil-at-worst list. Last week, he snuck in a last-minute addition to the 2003 federal spending bill that will totally subvert the Federal Organic Foods Act, which had finally passed last year after more than a decade of work.

You can read in detail about his sneak attack HERE, but in a nutshell, here's what Deal's underhanded deal means: If the price of organic feed for livestock and poultry rises to more than twice the price of conventional feed, then beef and poultry producers can have their products labeled "organic" even if they have been fed conventional pesticide-, herbicide- and hormone-laden feed. In other words, they can feed us a federally-approved lie if it costs too much to be honest.

What a great idea! But why stop there? Let's make everything dependent on price. If the price of beef goes above a certain level, let Oscar Meyer put dog meat in their hot dogs and still be able to call them "all beef." If the price of oats goes too high, let Quaker put sawdust in their oatmeal but still be able to call it 100% oats. If the price of cleaning up a toxic waste site is too high, then allow the government simply to declare it environmentally safe. This revolutionary concept could eviscerate all those pesky government regulations in one simple step.

This all matters to me because I prefer to buy organic for both health reasons and political beliefs. With a $23,000 credit card debt, I don't really have any "disposable income" in the full sense of the term. Whatever money is left over after making my monthly minimum payment could and probably should be applied to further paying down the debt.

However, I daily make choices to make certain things a priority over paying off the debt. I send money to such groups as Amnesty International, National Public Radio, the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy and the International Campaign for Tibet. And I buy organic whenever possible even though it usually costs more and thus means my debt is paid down more slowly. I make these decisions because I want to live a life that follows my political beliefs to the greatest extent possible.

If I am willing to pay the price for organic, then I want what I buy to be be organic, subject to specific standards. And if food growers and processors want me to pay extra for food they label organic, then they must be willing to pay the price as well, even if meeting the standards sometimes costs more. To their credit, many organic producers have protested Deal's deception.

If you'd like to call or email Representative Nathan Deal and tell him to take a belly flop into a cistern of organic fertilizer, click HERE for his Congressional website. And after that, please contact your own Senators and Representative to urge them to repeal this gutting of organic standards. Find them at www.senate.gov and www.house.gov.