Green Calgary

Is Organic Worth the Price?

Reader Question

Hello Ashley,

I recently watched a City TV news report that highlighted a new British study on organic foods. Apparently this new study concluded that organic foods did not have any more nutrients than their conventional counterparts. This raises the question: is organic food worth the extra price?

Thank you,
Linda

Ashley's Answer

Dear Linda,

Since I have been advocating the eating of local, organic food all summer I feel this is a very timely and important question to tackle. I caught the ‘Organic Panic’ story on City TV and although they failed to mention it, I think it is important to clarify that this was not a new side-by-side study of organic and conventional foods but, rather, a literature review spanning 50 years. The review was intended to “determine the size and relevance to health of any differences in content of nutrients and other substances in organically and conventionally produced crops and livestock products.” It did not look at contaminant content (such as herbicide, pesticide and fungicide residues) or the environmental impacts of organic and conventional agricultural practices. Nor did it look at the potential impacts of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or the widespread use of irradiation in conventional foods.

This is significant because these factors, perhaps even more than the nutrient content of the food, are what drive people to eat organically. Supporters of organic agriculture, I think, are not just willing to pay for the apple or tomato or steak, but to support a method of farming that improves the soil, reduces fossil fuel use and raises animals in humane and healthy living conditions. This extra care comes at a cost, and we typically pay for it at the checkout in the form of higher prices. But let’s not kid ourselves; conventionally produced crops also come a price and quite a large one, indeed.

A study from the Department of Economics at Iowa State University pegs the externalized costs of conventional agriculture at $5.7 to $16.9 billion annually. These costs are for the loss of habitat and biodiversity, the pollution of ground and surface water, and the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria, many of which decrease productivity, as healthy individuals become sick. We, here at home, pay for this too, as much of our food comes from south of the border. One thing is obvious: whether we pay at the checkout (organics) or in the form of higher taxes and utility bills, or in decreasing personal and environmental health (conventional), we do eventually pay. And nowhere are the costs higher than with the livestock industry.

I’m not here to convince people to become vegans or vegetarians but the impact of raising 10 billion pigs, cows, and chickens in the United States and another 600 million here in Canada each year is astounding. We are facing meat (and egg and dairy) recalls of epic proportions and as the meat industry gets bigger and more centralized, more and more people are becoming sick. Just last week, 825,769 pounds of beef tainted with antibiotic resistant salmonella was recalled in the US. This follows a recall of 466,236 pounds of tainted meat from another processing plant the week before. These outbreaks cost North American’s billions of dollars each year, both in health care costs and lost productivity. There is also new evidence to suggest that a new strain of MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, an infection that kills 18,000 Americans a year, originated on two large midwestern hog operations. A recent Canadian study found MRSA in 9% of 212 pork samples, while scientists at Louisiana State University found MRSA in 4% of pork and 1% of beef samples. Astonishingly, according to Dr. Ann Clark of the University of Guelph, of the 6 million pounds of meat recalled in the past several years, less than 0.1% has come from certified organic farms.

This is likely due to the fact that unlike factory farmed animals, organic livestock are not administered a near constant supply of antibiotics in their feed. They likely suffer less stress, as their living conditions are improved. Industrial livestock operations, where thousands of pigs or hundreds of thousands of chickens are confined under a single roof, rely on low dose “therapeutic drugs” to ward off infections that thrive in cramped and unsanitary quarters. When drugs critical to curing human illness are given as part of the regular feeding regime to fight infection and stimulate growth in livestock, it allows the bacteria to develop resistance, thus creating antibiotic resistant “super bugs”. If we continue churning out animals in this fashion we will continue to be vulnerable. We will see more avian flu (think chicken), more swine flu (think pork), more mad cow disease (think beef). If you are not already convinced, have a look at Eric Scholsser’s Fast Food Nation or Michael Pollan’s revealing essay ‘Power Steer’ for more information on the links between factory farming and the increasing incidence of disease in humans.

I could go on and on about the industrial livestock industry - its impact on climate change, the treatment of animals, food prices, land degradation, groundwater contamination, etc. etc. - but I won’t. The original question was: “Is organic worth the price?” and I think there is enough here for people to decide for themselves. We pay for the cost of the food one way or another, so it seems rationale to support a system that seeks to internalize the hidden costs of food production, instead of leaving the taxpayer or, worse yet, our children to clean up the mess. We all need to look beyond the sticker price and glossy packaging to see (and help others to see) the whole food production picture - from farm to fork and every step in between. If we are not able to see beyond the sticker price, we will have very little hope for solving what may be one of the most critical issues of our time – fixing a very dangerous and precarious food system.

If you are looking for ways to eat organically, while saving money, check out last month’s column: ‘Organic on a Budget’.

Emphatically,
Ashley

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