Organically Flawed

In the sense of its first meaning (1509, according to Merriam-Webster), the word organic described something intrinsic to the whole of a thing, and not incidental. 

As someone who has traveled to certified organic coffee farms, I have known for some time that a lot of organic coffee isn’t. To many farmers who produce certified organic coffee, and to the certifiers they work with, the category is a joke; albeit a sometimes profitable one. Despite this, I buy organic foods here in the U.S. and pay attention to the premium that it costs. I do this despite my belief that the organically certified food I buy is likely tainted with pesticides and other toxic chemicals. I have hung in there hoping that, over time, the increased demand for organic foods would lead to better regulation and oversight.  The inception of the USDA’s National Organic Protocol (N.O.P.) helped assure me that my plan was working.

Recently, though, I learned, again by an example from the coffee trade, that the N.O.P. is worse than toothless — the folks administering it at the USDA are either corrupt, clueless, and/or simply absent. It’s O.K., it turns out, for a chemical that is unsafe to  use at home on your floors, to be in the coffee you drink. In fact, it’s so O.K. that it can even be labeled Certified Organic.  It is unknown who made this ruling, or on what basis, but it’s there, in all of its gloriously corrupt nonsense, on the USDA’s virtual bulletin board. (This substance, by the way, is also a top achiever as a Greenhouse Gas.)

I don’t want to vilify a particular product or company here. More important is that the deconstruction of the administrative state that President Trump promised us during his campaign and while in office, is proceeding apace (yes, one of those “promises kept” he’ll be campaigning on later this year).

Several months ago I started reading “The Fifth Risk,” by Michael Lewis. The book details the gleeful disembowelment of our nation’s regulatory apparatus. I drifted away from it, though, thinking there were even more urgent topics in this messy era to obsess over. Then I learned of the FDA’s recent ruling allowing certain certified organic coffee products to have a maximum level of an added toxic compound and known carcinogen. Shortly before this, a more sentient (or, at least, still motile) arm of our government’s God-Forsaken administrative structure banned the use of this same chemical in household DIY products (people using it in unventilated spaces tend to die). I have now returned to the book, and bought it for friends and colleagues.  The administrative state isn’t so much being deconstructed as it is getting gang-banged by a bunch of  jeering sociopaths in a tableau out of A Clockwork Orange. The tenures of Scott Pruitt and then Andrew Wheeler at the E.P.A and Ben Carson at H.U.D. aren’t aberrational, but exemplary of the desired archetype; organic, in fact.

Anyway, an attorney that was hired several years ago to keep the above-mentioned chemical out of coffee, recently sent an assistant to the USDA’s D.C. offices. The lawyer’s emails and voicemails to people there were going un-answered. The aide reported back that the place was like the scene of a mini-Rapture — while papers, files and chairs were thrown about, the offices were empty of workers, cubicle after cubicle.

Meaning, at this nation’s highest level, has gone the way of dodo birds. Lie does not mean lie; crime does not equal crime; a sacred oath is not even a promise, and our Constitution does not say what it does. But to see that process corroding the interstices of our government’s regulatory apparatus in real time is even more frightening. Is physical law next? Will the atoms and molecules that comprise the coffee cup you’re drinking from go rogue in mid-sip and shuffle off into a plasma of disassociated quarks? “We’ll see,” as our President often notes, but in the meantime save that old dictionary, it could become a collector’s item if our current trends continue. Or you can use its pages to mop up your coffee as your cup de-pixilates.

So, I guess there is something that’s truly organic here, the corrupt bearing of the USDA, in regard to its defective progeny, the National Organic Protocol, recapitulates the warp & woof of the institution that bore it, and now provides it succor. 

Some footnotes:

• Getting back to coffee, the gist is that coffee drinkers cannot assume, just because a cup of coffee is Certified Organic by the USDA, that the coffee has never seen chemicals or isn’t tainted by them; in fact, it may have been bathed in them and contain residual amounts. If you want coffee that has been grown and processed and handled without exposure to chemicals you’re going to have to do your own research and find out directly from the folks you get your coffee from whether or not it’s truly organic. There are farms out there that produce truly organic coffee and roasters and retail outlets that are scrupulous in regard to maintaining the integrity of those coffees.
• It is up to the reader (if, in fact, there is one) as to whether it’s important if coffee is organic or not. You may decide that it’s not important to buy and drink organic coffee. My concern here is about the legitimacy of our institutions, their integrity, and specifically about truth in labeling in regard to the issue I am raising here. Our government should not endorse illegitimate claims of purity (or “organicity,” if you prefer).
• I haven’t previously staked out any political ground here, so I want to say this is not intended as a rant against a particular political agenda, be it liberal or conservative, or of any particular party. I do not support unbridled regulation and I believe strongly in free enterprise, as do many of the coffee farmers I know. I believe in a level playing field and that corruption and bribery, especially in the halls of our government should be treated like the crimes that they are. We count on our fellow citizens obeying the law, stopping red lights and driving on the right side of the road. You can’t be an enemy of regulation without believing that stop signs are for guidance only.