On the heels of the new Food Safety Modernization Act, which threatens the health of Americans and the livelihood of small and organic farmers, comes a wonderful story from the UK: The European Union is actually co-funding a $2.8 million campaign to spread the word in the UK that organic food is better for you. This is a far cry from the FDA and FTC censorship that seems to be trying to regulate all things healthy and natural out of existence on this side of the pond.
The campaign, which will run for a total of nine months over the next three years, aims to move organic from elite status to run-of-the-mill, everyday fare. The slogan is “Why I Love Organic,” and it’s all about why organic food is better for your health and the environment.
The economic woes we’ve seen in the U.S. the last few years have not been limited to America. The effects have been worldwide; everyone’s tightening their belt. Because organic food tends to be more expensive than conventionally grown food – loaded with pesticides, insecticides, and so on – the organic food market has seen a bit of a drop in the UK of late. Sales dropped 13% in 2009, and have not yet recovered.
Other European countries have continued to see growth in the organic market, largely due to public policy that specifies certain proportions of organic food. But there is no such policy in the UK.
There also hasn’t been a drop in the U.S. organic market – which has continued to grow despite the economy. There are no U.S. laws in place that protect the organic market; but as Americans become more aware of the dangers of pesticides they are demanding safer food.
That demand is obviously a threat to Big-Agribusiness– which is why we have the Food Safety Modernization Act. If you can’t win public support on your own merit, you simply activate your 1,200 registered lobbyists (yes, that’s really how many lobbyists Big-Agribusiness has in Washington) to get new laws passed.
The problem, of course, is that ‘safe’ food, which is what the FDA says is the concern, isn’t loaded with pesticides and other chemicals, still has the nutrients it was born with, and isn’t genetically modified into something that may or may not be rice. Regulating farmers who produce and sell food without the chemical and genetic mutation isn’t going to protect our health at all.
Similarly with FTC censorship targeting manufacturers of natural remedies, our health is being endangered by attempts to regulate vitamins, minerals, enzymes and other nutrients out of existence – leaving us with a never-ending stream of drugs that, for the most part, don’t make us healthier at all.
Time to take a lesson from Europe. Not only would following their lead on this make us healthier, it would also drastically reduce health care costs. Surely there must be something else we can do with that money.