Posted on 01/09/2008 6:04:56 PM PST by BGHater
As Americans hunger for healthier food, new efforts to define the term turn messy
Federal meat regulators this month are soliciting public comments on a label they believe will better define "natural" meat. The label, dubbed "naturally raised," would attest that a cut of meat came from an animal free of antibiotics and growth hormones.
Here's a comment from Urvashi Rangan, a senior scientist at Consumers Union: "It's not quite as bad" as regulators' definition of "natural" itself.
Ouch. Welcome to the complicated battleground over a seemingly simple word. "Natural" is an increasingly important claim to American consumers searching for healthier food.
Yet the word has long had a fuzzy regulatory definition, a condition that's increasingly under fire and not only from advocacy groups such as Consumers Union, but from some foodmakers, too, including several chicken producers and Downers Grove-based Sara Lee Corp.
Both of the nation's main food regulators, the United States Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, are in the midst of significant reviews over what constitutes "natural." Even consumer advocates admit they don't have an easy job.
"Defining natural is very difficult and messy," said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest. Indeed, everything from soda pop to potato chips has been marketed as natural.
Jacobson's group, which tracks food labeling and nutrition issues, at least thinks it knows when a product is not natural. And it's taken to task companies it believes are misusing the natural label, including Northfield-based Kraft Foods Inc.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Natural means that as one of the wealthiest nations in the entire history of the world we can waste our natural resources on the production of lower quality foods.
I used to be a farmer, and produced inorganic corn and raised inorganic hogs.
If I was still farming I would raise exclusively organic, as that is where the money is at.
Shesh.
Natural to me means no sillycone
I visted a biology class once for a while, but could you tell what is an inorganic corn and what is an inorganic hog??
“I visted a biology class once for a while, but could you tell what
is an inorganic corn and what is an inorganic hog??”
Careful.
I’ve learned in our supposedly hyper-technological Western Society...
to NEVER laugh out loud at an elitist “organic” more-than-$100-per-person
restaurant...
when the metrosexual waiter solemnly informs the party that their meal
will have “absolutely no chemicals”.
It is corn and hogs mocking the ‘organic foods’ business.
Mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money! Organic dairying comes and goes around here; different farms try it for a while. Those involved don’t often trust the certifying outfits or the wholesalers and figure that there’s a lot more organic stuff sold in the stores than was ever grown on the farms.
Reminds me of the car commercial that talks about an E85 burning car and tells us that most of the fuel ‘comes from the earth.’ Presumably this is different from the pure gasoline which we get from outer space.
The ‘organic inspectors’ are often dope smokin’, sandalwearing, FM types who know very little about farming.
Morons. They're getting paid big bucks for this by the taxpayers, to sit around and entertain idiot watermellons. All that education money down the tubes, because the morons they educated don't know what a piece of natural meat is. I'd like to send them a pic. They should ask this in the debates, so the country can get the candidates input on what a piece of natural meat is. Just don't ask the 'toon.
I thought natural foods meant they killed it with a bow and arrow ? No ?
Riiiiight. I gonna bet that "natural" food eaten in unnatural quantities is gonna get you just as fat or as sick as any "unatural" food. It's all about the quantities.
A local rancher’s daughter married into an organic cult. She is the child designated to take over the ranch when he retires. She convinced Daddy to go organic. Daddy took a look at the regulations, which are very expensive from the planting of feed upwards (farmer pays for certification and inspection and is at the mercy of private certifying agencies, as well) and then went to the local (huge) organic producers co-operative with this deal: guarantee that you will buy all my beef and I will make the investment. Organic Co-op refused the deal. The farmer, who is just beginning to recover from a year when no one wanted to buy feeder calves because it was more profitable to crop farm, is staying *traditional*.
Local vet tells us that when she is called to an organic dairy, she just wants to cry at the condition of some of the cattle. Many organic producers maintain 2 herds, so they can rotate a sick animal into a traditional herd so it can be treated for parasites/infections.
There are many rumors of loads of organic milk being rejected because of antibiotic content.
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