The Attack on Organic

If you haven't seen it already, this video from last Thursday's The Daily Show is a much watch. Titled "Little Crop of Horrors," it is Sam Bee's humorous special report on how Michelle Obama's organic garden is elitist and could simultaneously cause starvation, obesity and cancer.

It takes stuff like The Daily Show to point out how absurd the typical objections to organic food truly are. The saddest part is that the lies being fed to us by so-called experts are based on studies funded by chemical companies. Big oil, big fertilizer, big pesticide have to convince us that dumping tons of their synthetic chemicals into the environment is the only way to grow good crops in order for their companies to survive.  In fact they even sell genetically engineers seeds that require stronger and more potent doses of their chemicals to grow. Of course, they are going to say whatever they can to ensure they keep selling product – even if what they are doing harms people and the planet.

But people believe what they are sold in advertisements. And these businesses know how to use the language of organic to their own ends – saying that farming without synthetic chemicals is uncaring, unsustainable, and unhealthy. It reminded me of food activist Michael Pollan's recent lament on Democracy Now!. After his recent books have pointed out the health and environmental dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup, he has noticed a number of products advertising that they are made with "real cane sugar" as if it's a health claim. They took his warning about how we are slipping synthetic sweetener into everything as a way to sell sugar as the healthy option. It's not that people are missing the point, it's that the point has been twisted to serve those it originally tried to fight. (Pollan's advice by the way, is to simply don't buy any food you have ever seen advertised.) But Pollan also comments, "the language of sustainability and the critique of industrial food is being picked up by some of the major players within industrial food, either as an effort to co-opt the rhetoric or simply confuse the consumer and the citizen."

It is this deliberate confusing of the public that gets to me. I have no issue with advertising in general – if you've got a product to sell, sell it. I even don't get too bothered by the "buy our wrinkle cream and you too will look as young and sexy as our 19 year old airbrushed model" sort of advertising either. We all know that stuff is a lie, but we buy the stuff anyway because we wish it were true. But having Monsanto claim that over-farming, trends towards mono-crop varieties, and continued use of synthetic chemicals in farming are "sustainable" is a damned lie. Sure people have the right to define words however they like, but this is one of those times where I really don't want the bad guys to win just because they have more money and power.

So once again, thank you The Daily Show, for being the voice to speak truth to power.