Attack on organic foods is just plain wrong

Editor:

I’ve never understood why The Echo devotes so much space to Al Clarke’s incoherent ramblings. Are the people of Creemore really running to their mailboxes each week, eager to hear about Al’s latest vacation, described in excruciating detail? It seems unlikely. His latest installment (organic foods are grossly overrated, impractical, Jan. 8) crosses the line from simply tedious, to outright false and misleading.

I would be the first to agree with Al that we should eat closer to home, pay more for our food and reject bottled water, but his attack on organic foods is just plain wrong.

The Canadian organic regulations are incredibly detailed and prescriptive, and organic foods are subject to rigorous third-party inspection at every step of production, from field to table.

To say that organic products are “weirdly regulated” as Al does, is false. Labels like “natural” and “free-range” are essentially meaningless, but the term “organic” carries the force of law in Canada, backed up by independent oversight.

Al also trots out the old “organic can’t feed the world” argument, which was long ago debunked. Decades of research by the Rodale Institute in the United States has shown that, over the long term, organic yields are equal to those of conventional producers, and organic actually outperforms conventional in years with adverse weather conditions. Al’s argument also misses the most important point: the biggest problem with our industrial food system is that it produces food that is unhealthy, and far too much of it. This glut of cheap food results in massive waste (as Al points out) and epidemics of diet-related illnesses like diabetes and heart disease. The British medical journal The Lancet has found that, worldwide, obesity now kills three times as many people as malnutrition.

Al finishes by conjuring up a completely ridiculous character, an “organic diehard, plastic bottled water swilling, Birkenstock wearing fanatic.” Has such a person ever existed anywhere other than in Al Clarke’s mind? Next time, let’s hope Al returns to his usual subject matter, like a review of whatever movie he happened to watch last weekend. It’s better to be boring than offensive.

Brent Preston,

The New Farm, Maple Valley.