at Wed, 02 Mar 2005 19:17:37 GMT in <1109791057.181000.19270
@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>, (Sheldon) wrote :

>
>johny b wrote:
>> I've recently been trying to eat mostly organic food for a healthier
>> diet. ...
>> I would just like to hear some opinions as to how much healthier the
>> food in these stores which claim to be organic really is.
>
>Organic Foods is a belief system (a religion if you will), if you
>believe it's organic then it is...

Slight nitpick: it would be choosing to buy and eat organic foods, or
alternatively choosing to attribute relevant differences to foods grown
using a certain method versus those grown using another method that would
be a belief system, not the foods themselves. Physical objects aren't
belief systems.

Now, absolutely, choosing organic is a belief system. Then again, so is
choosing conventional (i.e. choosing not to buy organic foods or choosing
to ignore whether a given food were organic or not). At some level all
choices we make reflect a belief system, a set of priorities we've chosen
to assign. There's no way to make these priorities "objective". At some
point every priority system depends on things that are taken as axiomatic:
presumed self-evident truths that are to be taken as a given. And axioms
aren't objective. What you take as a given is entirely a subjective choice.

It seems, broadly, that the beliefs organic consumers tend to subscribe to
are as follows (or at least include some of the below)

1. Taking on additional toxic load from synthetic pesticides and
fertilisers introduced through foods is an unacceptable level of risk.

2. Long-term sustainability of agricultural output is more important than
immediate crop yields or costs.

3. The level of research that is done before a given farming process be
approved for use needs to be exhaustive, or at least considerably more
extensive than what prevails in the industry today. Preferably there should
also be broad opportunity for public input.

4. Concerns over industrially intensive processes and practices used in the
conventional food production market, especially by larger businesses, are
too urgent to be dismissed lightly. Whether these concerns are true in fact
is another matter, but they cannot simply be ignored.

5. Knowing about what might have been done to produce a given
conventionally-grown food leaves a sufficiently bad taste in one's mouth
that even if the actual flavour is identical, it's not going to taste as
good as the organic subjectively.

Meanwhile the beliefs that the conventional consumers seem to subscribe to
generally include some or all of the following:

1. A lower market price for a given food item is a high priority.

2. Processes that improve end-consumer yield are too important to require
research into their consequences beyond a certain limit.

3. If no direct causal relationship can be established between an outcome
and a presumed contributor to the outcome, the most sensible response is to
behave assuming that the presumed contributor has minimal effect on the
outcome.

4. To prevent a short-term crisis from developing into a long-term issue,
most unforeseen problems in the food supply should be dealt with on a case-
by-case basis as they occur.

5. Whether a given farm, crop variety, process, market segment, or producer
segment survives is of little consequence provided the foods being supplied
don't change dramatically in quality or cost.

You can't prove or disprove any of these beliefs, on either side. Either
you accept the proposition or you don't - and that's very much a personal
choice.

I find it disappointing that both sides of the debate seem to rely mostly
on undermining the other side's credibility in order to advance their
argument. That's essentially reducing the debate to a legalistic courtroom
trial - using tactics appropriate to an attorney interviewing a hostile
witness. It assumes, a priori, an adversarial relationship, and that's what
you create - with no opportunity for cooperation, collaboration, discovery
of shared interests and goals, things that would explore the synergies
between each of the 2 methods of production and allow environmentally
unimpeachable progress in farming technology. As it is, there's no real
debate, only a stream of name-calling from both sides of the issue. It
clouds both the issues and the facts and leaves the ordinary consumer
confused with no way to get good information.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)