
(Courtesy of The New York Times)
While organic food continues to explode in popularity and is increasingly becoming the food that everyone wants to eat – even Walmart and Target are boosting their organic options – the support for organic continues to erode at its most important levels.
Our government is trying to decimate organic by chipping away at federal organic standards. Namely, the USDA has undermined the intent of the National Organic Program by altering the incredibly important Sunset Rule, which would make it much easier for specially-approved synthetic ingredients to stay in organic much longer than they should.
Our President said in 2007 that he would label GMOs but has yet to do anything about this. GMOs pose an existential threat to organic, and the most powerful way to get people to stop eating this FrankenFood is to have GMOs labeled on the outside of food products. If people knew that they were eating foods that have been genetically-engineered, they would start asking questions, might avoid them altogether, and would be more inclined to eat organic.
And now we have the popular and influential food columnist of The New York Times, Mark Bittman, who, shockingly, has come out against organic and in defense of GMOs.
In his article Leave Organic Out of This, Bittman concludes that sustainable agriculture and healthier eating are the most important struggles in food, both of which have real validity.