Fwd: [SoFlaVegans] How Wal-Mart Will Kill Organic Food

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Note: forwarded message attached.Ronald A. Fells

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How Wal-Mart Will Kill Organic Food

By JR

May 18 2006

 

http://www.buyblue.org/node/6252/print

http://www.buyblue.org/node/6252

 

 

Last Friday, you may have seen yet another NYT story

on Wal-Mart and organic food [1]. Here is the key

paragraph:

 

Most of the nation's major food producers are hard

at work developing organic versions of their

best-selling products, like Kellogg's Rice Krispies

and Kraft's macaroni and cheese.

 

Why the sudden activity? In large part because

Wal-Mart wants to sell more organic food -- and

because of its size and power, Wal-Mart usually gets

what it wants.

 

If you think this is good news, then you don't know

Wal-Mart. Michael Pollan, journalist, author [2], and

(much to my surprise) blogger for the New York Times

[3] explains why behind the paper's subscription iron

curtain:

 

When Wal-Mart announced its plan to offer

consumers a wide selection of organic foods, the

company claimed it would keep the price premium for

organic to no more than 10 percent. This in itself is

grounds for concern -- in my view, it virtually

guarantees that Wal-Mart's version of cheap,

industrialized organic food will not be sustainable in

any meaningful sense of the word...Why? Because to

index the price of organic to the price of

conventional food is to give up, right from the start,

on the idea -- once enshrined in the organic movement

-- that food should be priced responsibly. Cheap

industrial food, the organic movement has argued, only

seems cheap, because the real costs are charged to the

environment (in the form of water and air pollution

and depletion of the soil); to the public purse (in

the form of subsidies to conventional commodity

producers); and to the public health (in the cost of

diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease), not to

mention to the welfare of the farm- and food-factory

workers and the well-being of the animals.

 

In the same post he explains why the words Wal-Mart

and organic are like oil and water:

 

We have already seen what happens when the logic

of industry is applied to organic food production.

Synthetic pesticides are simply replaced by approved

organic pesticides; synthetic fertilizer is simply

replaced by compost and manures and mined forms of

nitrogen imported from South America. The result is a

greener factory farm, to be sure, but a factory

nevertheless.

The industrialization of organic agriculture,

which Wal-Mart's entry will hasten, has given us

" organic feedlots " -- two words that I never thought

would find their way into the same clause. To supply

the burgeoning demand for cheap organic milk,

agribusiness companies are setting up 5000-head

dairies, often in the desert. The milking cows never

touch a blade of grass, but instead spend their lives

standing around a dry lot " loafing area " munching

organic grain -- grain that takes a toll on both the

animals' health (these ruminants evolved to eat grass

after all) and the nutritional value of their milk.

Frequently the milk is then ultra-pasteurized (a high

heat process that further diminishes its nutritional

value) before being shipped across the country. This

is the sort of milk we're going to see a lot more of

in our supermarkets, as long as Wal-Mart honors its

commitment to keep organic milk cheap.

 

So please, let's stop talking about how Wal-Mart is

doing a great thing for organic food. It is nothing

but a corporate snow job aimed at progressives who

really ought to know better.

Source URL:

http://www.buyblue.org/node/6252

 

Links:

[1]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/business/12organic.html?pagewanted=1

[2] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/9/145823/8859

[3] http://pollan.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=21

 

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