Canada's organic food certification system = extortion racket

[Locutus]

Inside the enormous Whole Foods Market in Oakville, west of Toronto, a red and yellow streaked Honeycrisp is plucked from the top of an orchard’s worth of apples in wooden crates near the entrance.

A round sticker near its stem says: “Certified Organic.” At $7.68 a kilo, four of them cost $6.51. Firm, juicy and sufficiently tart, it’s a tasty apple, to be sure.

But what does that sticker mean?

It might mean a lot. And it might mean almost nothing.


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Canada’s organic food certification system like


Next up, low VOC paints and coatings. :lol:

 

[Cliffy]

Unfortunately, if you want truly organic food, you have to grow it yourself. If you look hard enough, you can find a lot of different systems for growing food even if you live in a high rise apartment. But most people don't have the time or are too lazy. What always annoys me in health food stores is that the majority of products on sale are "organic" junk food.

 

[Tonington]

Irony, when a free market think tank publishes a report that chastises CFIA for relying on private sector auditors who have no incentive to crack down on a client that may break rules.

It's also ironic that a report that chastises CFIA for not having science based quality metrics for certification thinks that only one solitary sample from any field or herd/flock needs to be tested.

 

[Angstrom]

What about the guy at the lumber yard with a Grade 1 lumber stamp? How much is that stamp worth?

Thats how the middle man makes his money now a day's

 

[JLM]

Organic Foods: The debate | Reader's Digest

 

[Trex]

Skip the overpriced organic shill product
Take a drive outside the smog
Walk up to a few regional growers doorsteps
Knock and ask how you can get your hands on some seriously tasty food
Repeat

 

[damngrumpy]

Glad you mentioned apples, as an apple farmer I marvel at the people who bag that organic stuff
and line up at the counter to be fleeced for no additional value what so ever,
I know a man who is an organic inspector, he doesn't do it anymore but he is still licenced. The
things he told me if true would curl your hair.
For example he went into a building on one property, in fact he insisted on going in. What is there?
A back pack with roundup and a bottle of it next to the pack. The excuse, or explanation was. The
farmers father had the round up in his truck and left it in the shed for safe keeping. Sure.
The problem is the system is an honour based system. The inspectors for the most part are looking
at the paper work if that is in order all is well and don't ask anything else.
Also the amount of money the inspection companies make is significant so their is no real reason
why they would punish an offender because it would cut into the profits they are making.
The system stinks period. If everyone follows the rules there is no difference between an organic
and a conventionally grown apple. The difference is, you pay about 30% more with out the value
for product.

 

[petros]

Helllllllooooooo. All food comes frm organisms. ALL fertilizers are salts whether bat **** or mined and if there weren't pesticides and fungicides we'd lose half our food to insects, and blights.

Producers aren't in the business of feeding nature first and humans second.

If the Green Beans really wanted better food they'd be first in line to buy the odd shaped apple, the undersize orange, or a carrot that formed two tap roots or was gnawed on by a slug or grasshopper.

More food goes to waste simply because a consumer, Green Bean or rational thinking human has an image of what food is supposed to look like rather than what food really looks like.

Same goes for meat. If two cows were placed side by side and you had to choose, would you choose the beef that was muscular, clear eyed, energetic with good social disposition or one with snot dripping from it's nose, small, lethargic and had trouble keeping up with the herd?

When it came to taste testing two steaks, I guarantee a green bean would choose the so called industrial beef over the one who grazed and was nailed by every beef disease because of a piss poor immune system. Grazed beef stinks like bad feet when cooked and is tough to chew on ot to mention it would cost you three times as much to eat the tough stinky steak.