Organic Ass
It was a bit of a struggle to get organic food into this house, both financially, in our tighter-budget days, internally, and interpersonally. In spite of Mo's um, helpful suggestions regarding my reasons for going organic, and my own view that I was potentially participating in some idiot Wayne Dyer-esque 28 days to instant vegetable serenity program of the gullible, I insist on paying extra for the organic stuff. I eat it and I tell myself "Man, this organic burdock souffle tastes waaay better than the inorganic burdock root souffle I made last week" while Mo orders tandoori.
I am not particulary eco-conscious, a slow-food militant, or vegetarian. I am aware that as a legislated term "organic" can mean something other than the "organic" of my mind's eye, where lambs gambol happily through the multi-culture agrarian plots as ladybugs eat aphids; children and organic farmers sing "If I Had a Hammer", holding hands, naked and unafraid, playing bongoes in the dirt. Like that. I imagined "organic", in the hands of certain corporate types, could mean "made in a lab" or something like that. What I am attempting to address here is the use of duplicitous labelling (like this is somehow new) exists even in the furry hippie world of organic food production.
Recently I shopped at the local grocery store, not the commune I regularly frequent, to purchase eggs. A brand of free range eggs was noted for the following tout (which I think I get wrong): FREE RANGE EGGS Our chickens have access to the outdoors.
I imagine a barn full of chickens, shorn of beaks, all looking at a screen-door which is never opened. Our chickens HAVE ACCESS to the outdoors... we just don't give it to them.
I am not particulary eco-conscious, a slow-food militant, or vegetarian. I am aware that as a legislated term "organic" can mean something other than the "organic" of my mind's eye, where lambs gambol happily through the multi-culture agrarian plots as ladybugs eat aphids; children and organic farmers sing "If I Had a Hammer", holding hands, naked and unafraid, playing bongoes in the dirt. Like that. I imagined "organic", in the hands of certain corporate types, could mean "made in a lab" or something like that. What I am attempting to address here is the use of duplicitous labelling (like this is somehow new) exists even in the furry hippie world of organic food production.
Recently I shopped at the local grocery store, not the commune I regularly frequent, to purchase eggs. A brand of free range eggs was noted for the following tout (which I think I get wrong): FREE RANGE EGGS Our chickens have access to the outdoors.
I imagine a barn full of chickens, shorn of beaks, all looking at a screen-door which is never opened. Our chickens HAVE ACCESS to the outdoors... we just don't give it to them.
posted by p-man at 11:11 a.m.
4 Comments:
Good for you, I am all for eating organic. It started with wanting to avoid meat and dairy that had been raised with antibiotics or extra hormone-boosts. That leads to free-range, since if you aren't going to pump chickens up with disease-killing drugs, you've got to give them a bit of space. Eggs especially benefit from being organic - the last time I ate a boiled egg that wasn't organic it tasted distinctly off to me. Organic is more costly, but everyone needs an indulgence, right?
That said, I only use burdock root in my (overpriced, probably not organic) shampoo. Eating it is just plain crazy.
I don't get how eggs can be free range. I mean, I understand how chickens can be free range, but does that effect eggs?
Is there free range sperm?
I am totally cynical of the packaging on food to the point where I don't even care anymore. And my hippie parents both raised chickens and grew a lot of our fresh produce. Everything says "natural" on it nowadays, and that's probably because everything originally does come from nature - even those hormones. It's just a matter of how much they process it. See? You can tell I've totally given up.
I do grow my own tomatoes though, because they taste better that way.
One thing I don`t get is organic honey -- how can they be absolutely, 100% sure that the bees haven`t sucked nectar from a plant sprayed with DDT? Or do they restrict the bees to an area planted with nothing but organic vegetation for thousands of miles in all directions?
And I like Lumpyheadsmom`s concept of "free range eggs," free to roll wherever their little hearts desire.
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