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<br /> t
<br /> commodity circulating in the global economy. as 0.1 part per billion,the herbicide will growing food organically doesdt pollute the ,
<br /> Oh,but wait. ..I meant to talk about all chemically emasculate a male frog,causing rivers and water table with nitrates from
<br /> the good that will come of Wal-Mart's its gonads to produce eggs—in effect, synthetic fertilizer or expose farm workers
<br /> commitment to organic.Sorry about that. turning males into hermaphrodites.Atrazine to toxic pesticides.And the fact that animals
<br /> When you're talking about global capitalism, is often present in American waterways raised organically don't receive antibiotics
<br /> it can be hard to separate the good news at much higher concentrations than 0.1 or synthetic growth hormones.Sounds like
<br /> from the bad.Because of its scale and part per billion.But American regulators a better agriculture to me—and Wal-Mart
<br /> efficiency and notorious ruthlessness,Wal- Senerally won't ban a pesticide until the has just put the force of its great many
<br /> Mart will force down the price of bodies,or cancer cases,begin to pile up supermarkets behind it.
<br /> organics,and that is a good thing But before you pour yourselF a
<br /> for all the consumers who can't celebratory glass of Wal-Mart organic
<br /> afford to spend more for food than milk,you might want to ask a few
<br /> they already do.Wal-Mart will also questions about how the company plans
<br /> educate the millions of Americans . - to achieve its laudable goals.Assuming
<br /> who don't yet know exactly what � r t � � �` E, = � F � + ::� that it's possible at all,how exactly
<br /> i t
<br /> organic Food is or precisely how it would Wal-Mart get the price of organic
<br /> differs from conventionally grown food down to a level just 10 percent
<br /> food. ': r _ _ _, higher than that of its everyday food?
<br /> The vast expansion of organic r I � _` � 5 % � �t. To do so would virtually guarantee that
<br /> farmland it will take to feed Wal- Wal-Mart's version of cheap organic
<br /> Mart's new appetite is also an ' • - • - food is not sustainable,at least not in
<br /> unambiguous good for the world's any meaningful sense of that word.To
<br /> environment,since it will result '� ' ; E ; '. < < � � � index the price of organic to the price
<br /> in substantially less pesticide and of conventional is to give up,right from
<br /> chemical fertilizer being applied to the start,on the idea,once enshrined
<br /> the land—somewhere.Whatever you in the organic movement,that food
<br /> think about the prospect of organic � � � should be priced not high or low but
<br /> Coca-Cola,when it comes,and come responsibly.As the organic movement
<br /> it surely will,tens of thousands of has long maintained,cheap industrial
<br /> acres of the world's cornfields—
<br /> =+""'' food is cheap only because the real costs
<br /> enough to make all that organic high- of producing it are not reflected in the
<br /> , fructose corn syrup—will no longer price at the checkout.Rather,those
<br /> receive an annual shower of pesticides costs are charged to the environment,in
<br /> like Atrazine.O.K.,you're probably „ the form of soil depletion and pollution
<br /> registering a flicker oF cognitive � t � (industrial agriculture is now our
<br /> dissonance at the conjunction of the ���, biggest polluter);to the public purse,
<br /> words"organic"and"high-fructose
<br /> �'`'�' in the form of subsidies to conventional
<br /> corn syrup,"but keep your eye for a commodity farmers;to the public
<br /> moment on that Atrazine. health,in the form of an epidemic of
<br /> —until,that is,scientists can prove the link diabetes and obesity that is expected to
<br /> Atrazine is a powerful herbicide applied to cost the economy more than$100 billion
<br /> 70 percent of America's cornfields.Traces of between the suspect molecule and illness
<br /> in humans or ecological catastrophe.So per year;and to the welfare of the farm-
<br /> the chemical routinely turn up in American and food-factory workers,not to mention
<br /> streams and wells and even in the rain;the Atrazine is,at least in the American food
<br /> system,deemed innocent until proved guilty the well-being of the animals we eat.As
<br /> F.D.A.also finds residues of Atrazine in our Wendell Berry once wrote,the motto of our
<br /> food. —a standard of proof extremely difficult
<br /> to achieve,since it awaits the results of conventional food system—at the center of
<br /> So what?Well,the chemical,which was chemical testing on humans that we,rightly, �'hich stands Wal-Mart,the biggest purveyor
<br /> recendy banned by the European Union, don't perEorm. of cheap food in America—should be:
<br /> is a suspected carcinogen and endocrine Cheap at any price!
<br /> disruptor that has been linked to low s erm I don't know about you,but as the father
<br /> P To say you can sell organic food for 10 percent
<br /> counts among farmers.A couple of years of an adolescent boy,I sort of like the idea
<br /> of keeping such a molecule out of my son's more than you sell irresponsibly priced food
<br /> ago,a U.C.Berkeley herpetologist named suggests that you don't really get it—that
<br /> Tyrone Hayes,while doing research on diet,even if the scientists and nutritionists
<br /> behalf of Syngenta,Atrazine's manufacturer, say they still don't have proof that organic You plan to bring business-as-usual principles
<br /> food is any safer or healthier.I also like that of industrial"efficiency"and"economies of
<br /> found that even at concentrations as low scale"to a system of food production that
<br /> 2•LAKEWINDS NATURAL FOODS•APRIL/MAY 2007
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