Yes, I think people who are really interested will always be able to figure it out somehow. But the “nefarious business” I was referring to is this: A group of small “real organic” farmers who couldn’t afford the fees/paperwork involved in the big-industry-favoring USDA organic program got together and created their own label: “Certified Naturally Grown.” And now the USDA is refusing to allow the use of that label on packages because it’s in the process of officially defining what “naturally raised” means. So all that work those farmers did, setting up this grassroots system… is it out the window? That’s the nefarious part.

What’s next? Someone said that they’d seen local meat advertised as “beef with no weird stuff.” It’s become a bizarre marketing cat-and-mouse game. I imagine you’re aware that Pennsylvania is making it illegal to label milk from cows not treated with artificial growth hormones. I guess the strategy is to keep preventing small farmers from telling customers why their food is better than big agribusiness’s “food.” Muzzling the competition in the marketing arena is key when a package label is all a “consumer” has to go on… The real way around that is to create local systems (farmers’ markets, etc.), in which people have more than a label to rely on for information about their food.

Marketing wars… how very American, really.

This is a serious case of deception. It is an attempt to place profit before health. And, we have to stand up against it. I fear government involvement in issues such as these since powerful industries have been spoonfeeding politicians for years.

Kevin — The weird thing now is that in trying to strengthen (in their way) the official definition of “natural,” the USDA is preventing truly natural farmers from using the label. Ugh.