Organic or not organic?

I read this thing about how organic milk is basically no different than regular milk, that this is all marketing hype designed to guilt us into spending $4.79 for a half gallon of milk.

Mon. Sep 10, 11:59am

why organic wins (at least for milk)

Due to the fact that organic milk comes from cows who are not pumped full of hormones and milked continuously, when you drink organic milk you are drink more of the natural hormones, and vitamins that a cow naturally gives its milk. (cow has a set amount of hormone producing power, the more milk the cow is forced to produce - regularly farmed milk - the fewer amounts of the naturally occurring elements there will be).

Monday, September 10, 2007, 12:13 PM

When it comes to organic I am more or less picky depending on what I'm eating. Fruits and milk not so much. Fruit usually has pesticides on the rind, most of which can be rinsed off and most dairy operations I have visited dope their cows with fewer hormones and anitbotics than feedlots do (hard to feed a cow that much corn without chronic diarreah). Also, I chose instead free range beef which means the cow was fattened in a pasture on a much more reasonable diet of grass combined a bit of corn and worry less whether they had organic corn fed to them by the bucketload. I would rather buy eggs from chickens that are free to run around and naturally nested than packed like sardines into cages and fed organic feed. I chose to support our local dairy operation which is smaller and thus less likely to use corporate farming methods for increasing milk production, plus I like to support small operations and buy local.

Same with produce - I'd rather buy small, local and inorganic than corporately farmed anything. Once I've done that, only then do I look at organics and it does often happen that we have many smaller, local organic operations around so that works well on a couple levels. However I do keep in mind the cost of organics, so given the choice between organic tomatoes from Chili and conventional tomatoes from CA - I chose the CA ones because they used a lot less fossil fuels and generated less pollution on their way to market. Organic or not is a little overly simplistic in my mind. I buy them when it's reasonable to do so, but I also know in the past couple decades there have been stringent regulations and training put into place to minimize the application of pesticides and fertilizers, and I know many small farmers can't afford the high cost to get certified as an organic operation, so I am fine with conventional produce grown in the US.

Monday, September 10, 2007, 2:03 PM

To The OP:

This article from Consumer Reports magazine really helped me. They have other articles about organic foods/meats that you can read for free on their website. Just type in organic.

Link

Monday, September 10, 2007, 9:33 PM

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