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Transcript
- 05:50 What is organic?
- 10:09 Can the USDA organic seal be really trusted?
- 18:51 How exactly are organic standards agreed upon?
- 27:34 The synthetic Omega-3 issue
- 34:42 The biggest threat to organic standards
- 45:00 The difference between organic and biodynamic organic
- 48:17 The deal with GMOs – Genetically Modified Organisms
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the Live to 110 podcast. I’m your host, Wendy Myers. Today I am interviewing Mark Kastel, co-founder of the famed Cornucopia Institute. This organization is dedicated to protecting small-scale organic family farms, the wisdom of sustainable and organic agriculture, and the quality and integrity of the food we all eat. The institute regularly engages in campaigns and lobbying efforts to protect or enact laws that favor small-scale farming and organic standards. Today we’re going to be talking about the future of organic standards and how seriously our food supply is in jeopardy. But first I have to do a little disclaimer. Please keep in mind that this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. The Live to 110 podcast is solely informational in nature. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before engaging in any treatment we suggest on the show.
If you’re interested in shedding a few pounds this holiday, I just put a new and improved version of my Live to 110 by Weighing Less E-Guide © on the site. So if you want to learn about the latest science on weight loss or the modern Paleo diet, my version of Paleo, go to myersdetox.com and sign up for my free 35-page Live to 110 by Weighing Less E-guide, and my 14-part series about the Modern Paleo Diet. Today I am honored to have our guest, Mark Kastel on the show. Mark is the co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute, a populous farm policy research group based in Wisconsin. He acts as its Senior Farm Policy Analyst and directs its Organic Integrity Project. From his 20 years prior to Cornucopia’s launch, he was president of M.A. Kastel and Associates Inc. His professional practice included political consulting, lobbying on behalf of family farm groups, and business development work, benefiting small-scale farmers. Mark played a key role through his research and policy work in bringing great media scrutiny to the horrors happening to the cows on dairy farms using RBGH, a synthetic growth hormone used to increase cow’s milk production on dairy farms beginning in the 1980’s. Mark continues to be closely involved in monitoring the seriously flawed management of the National Organic Program at the USDA.
Wendy Myers: Mark, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Mark Kastel: It’s my pleasure. Thanks for the invitation.
Wendy Myers: I know you have many many requests for interviews. You are very much in demand so I just want to thank you again for granting me an interview.
Mark Kastel: That’s great. Well, we share your interest in food and health. Fundamentally, it’s a lot cheaper to be in the cancer prevention business or the pollution prevention business than for all of us as a society to pay for the remediation after the facts. So good food is really the best medicine.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, it really is. It’s the foundation of our health. It’s sad that in the United States, our government is just not protecting our food supply like other countries enjoy. So it’s very upsetting. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that today and get your take on what is happening with our food supply. So why don’t we start with, what exactly is your capacity at the Cornucopia Institute and what are you trying to trying to accomplish there?
Mark Kastel: Well, we’re about to have our 10th anniversary at the beginning of 2014. We formed when we saw the corporate takeover of organics taking place again about 10 years ago. We had consumers opting for an alternative form of agriculture and food production because, quite frankly, they didn’t trust the FDA and the regulators. They didn’t trust the industrial model of food production that depended on toxic agro-chemicals and drugs and inhumane confinement of our livestock. And they were voting in the market place for a different kind of ethic. We saw that being compromised. So Cornucopia acts as organic industry watchdog. We’re a governmental and corporate watchdog. We look at other marketing vehicles that are strict to the organic label or that we think, in terms of commerce, that has the biggest bang for the buck for farmers, and for accessing authentic food for consumers. But we also look at marketing schemes like CSAs – Community-Supported Agriculture, farmer -direct farm markets called local food, to make sure that consumers invest more in terms of money, go out of their way to buy these alternative models of food production, food quality and food safety, that they’re really getting what they paid for.
Wendy Myers: So I think a lot of people are confused with what organic really means so why don’t we begin by defining organic?
Mark Kastel: Well, I should remind your listeners that before, around 1950, after World War II, virtually all farms in the world and certainly in this country were under organic management. We didn’t see the widespread proliferation of toxic agro-chemicals until after the war. A lot of them are by-products of the war machine. There were advocates for organic farming even before the wars because they were really questioning the impacts of synthetic fertilizers and the environment on the quality of our food. But it wasn’t really until the 1980’s where an earnest, commercialization was taking place and organics were becoming more readily available in the market place. First, in the 70s and 80s, at the nation, there were now about 300 cooperatively owned grocery stores, Coop grocer, and national food grocers. Now, today, in mainstream groceries, in Wal-Mart, thousands of farmers’ markets around the country are growing.
So the access has increased dramatically. It’s grown into a 30-billion dollar business sector so we have all the big players in corporate agri-business, whether it’s Dean Foods that’s been in the dairy business, or General Mills, Kellogg’s, Kraft. They all owned organic brands. So originally, to specifically answer your question,” What’s organic?”, there were a lot of definitions. By law, Congress passed the organic foods production act that said that there would only be one definition. And that was a very progressive law that allowed diverse stakeholders in the organic communities – farmers, certifiers, retailers, manufacturers, to all collaborate on setting this standard so that when people bought organic food, they would know what it is. And then they charged the USDA with enforcing this standard to prevent fraud so that ethical industry participants like farmers and business people weren’t disadvantaged by following the law, and to also protect the consumers.
So in a nutshell, Wendy, organics means that we’re farming, producing food in consort with nature, that we concentrate on basic soil fertility for the nutrition of the plants, that we concentrate on preventing pest problems in plants and in livestock, rather than using chemicals to treat. So in general, the short hand is the land that produces organic food, has to be free from synthetic and toxic chemicals, be them tetra chemical-based fertilizers, toxic insecticides, herbicides or weed killers. The animals are prevented from using many synthetic and toxic parasiticides, antibiotics are banned from organic livestock production, as are synthetic hormones for growth promotion. A lot of the hot-button issues including genetic engineering that people have concerns about for good reason, are prohibited in organic production.
Wendy Myers: Well I hear a lot of worry that consumers feel that the USDA organic seal may not be protecting consumers like they thought. Can you explain exactly what the USDA organic seal means and can it be trusted?
Mark Kastel: Well, the only way you can sell other than very small under five thousand dollar local marketers, the only way you can use the word ‘organic’ is to be certified. The use of the organic seal is optional but anyone who is certified has the option to put that seal on their packaging or, if it’s in a farmers’ market, on their sign. What it means is that, we have these standards and an independent third-party certifier comes out, inspects your farm or processing plant, inspects the audit trail, the document trail in terms of where you buy your inputs, if you’re raising chickens, where the chicks come from, where the feed comes from if you’re not raising all your own feed, any kind of healthcare product you’re using, to make sure they conform with the law and to prevent conflicts of interest, because if I’m a farmer and someone comes out to inspect me and I pay this certifier a thousand dollars to assure that there’s not just a wink-wink, nod-nod, everything’s-cool-please-give-me-your-check. The USDA doesn’t actually certify any farms. They, in essence, certify the certifiers. So once every few years, they audit the certifiers, for record-keeping, how they certify, and ensure that they’re enforcing the law properly. So, in other words, if Mark Kastel is an organic farmer, as I was 20+ years ago, you don’t have just my word to take for it. It means that I went through a rigorous process of inspection and the USDA-accredited certifier is also concurring that I’m following the regulations.
Wendy Myers: Okay, good. So it can be trusted. You feel it.
Mark Kastel: Well, the law, according to the way it’s been written, is a good law. It’s sad to report that the USDA has not been as rigorous in terms of their regulatory oversight of the program. And that’s part of where Cornucopia comes in. It’s an industry watchdog. We’re a governmental incorporate watchdog. It’s very important that all organic stakeholders, farmers, and consumers, and business folks, really strive to protect the integrity of the organic label that it doesn’t just become a marketing ploy for big agri-businesses to make a quick buck with. So we’re not entirely satisfied with the way the USDA is implementing the program. It’s certainly worth fighting for. We don’t have many alternatives in the market place. But sadly it’s becoming a bifurcated industry structure. We have CSAs, farmers’ markets, direct marketers. We have the network of Coop grocers around the country which are basically the portal for accessing local organic food in your community. We found virtually no exceptions to trustworthiness in these areas.
Along with those highly reputable organic producers, we have a handful of really wonderful larger companies that are walking their talk. They tend to be independently owned; still owned and managed by the families that founded them. They have a real heart-connection to what they’re doing. They’re certainly in business to make a profit but they don’t seem to be driven solely by that mechanism. There are two that I’d like to call out because there are two that I have a lot of respect for personally, I should emphasize that Cornucopia doesn’t endorse any brands, but I also know the owners; I visited with them, I know what they’ve done in the community. It’s sad to say they are the exception, they actually know the farmers they buy the commodities from and one is Nature’s Path, they’re the largest producer of organic breakfast cereal in the United States and few other diversified products. They’ve proven that you could be quite large and not lose track of the values you were founded upon. Nature’s Path is based in British Columbia, Canada but they have plants in the United States also.
Eden Foods, based in Michigan, have a very diversified line of packaged goods, everything from soy milk to seaweed, and they are controlled by their CEO who still has a really fierce attachment for their brand reputation and what organics means. So just because you have a big brand, doesn’t mean that you’re compromising. So that’s one half of the organic equation and the other half are these large corporations that need to be watched carefully. It doesn’t necessarily mean that if it’s an industrial corporation, they’re not doing the right thing. But all too often we find that they’re willing to make compromises and they trade association that represents them, the Organic Trade Association. They are all willing to buy organic milk for their packages or their cheese products, packaged milk, or cheese products from, I wish I was exaggerating, ten thousand cow factory farms, “organic”, or eggs from barns with a hundred thousand birds that never go outside, or Chinese imports. I’m sorry but we don’t even trust the Chinese for the ingredients on our dog and cat food any longer after the melamine scandal, why would we trust them for the soy beans that go in to the soy milk for our children, or that are fed chickens, or the frozen vegetables that are sold at Whole Foods under the organic label or somewhere else.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, there’s no oversight there.
Mark Kastel: Well, there is oversight. The question is how judicious that oversight is. Because they still have to go through the certification process. But in China, the government and the military control everything so it’s not as independent as we’d like to see it. And there is a long history of an endemic problem with commercial fraud in China, whether it’s intellectual property rights, counterfeiting name brand goods, nutritional supplements. Why would we think organics would be immune from that? If you were doing business with a local store, the Better Business Bureau said that this outlet or its owner had a history of screwing and defrauding its customers. Would you walk through the front door with a smile on your face or would you go to a competitor that has a better reputation? If you were forced to deal with this story, you’d certainly do so with a much more rigorous sense of fact-checking. We don’t see that happening with the USDA so we really encourage, not with just organic food but with any food, that you should be willing to pay premium with local producers, where you could look them in the eye and shake their hand, willing to pay premium for US farmers and ranchers who produce your food and be really concerned about whether it’s imported from China or South America or India or any other country that are bringing commodities in here because they’re not coming in here strictly for superior quality reasons.
Wendy Myers: Let’s lay the ground work a little bit on one reason organic standards may be under threat. Exactly how are organic standards agreed upon?
Mark Kastel: Well, you’re right. That is an area that we spend a lot of time scrutinizing and we encourage your listeners to pay attention to. Let me give a little plug for the Cornucopia Institute here for a second. If these issues are important for you, we’d welcome your membership. We’ve no minimum donation but whether it’s 30 dollars or 3,000, the money obviously fuels our mission and you can join and get access to our information that would help you choose your products carefully in the market place at cornucopia.org If you’re not ready to become a partner in this work, we also have a free newsletter that you can sign up for on cornucopia.org. It’s really important that consumers, our urban allies, partner with our farmer constituency because farmers really don’t have clout in the market place and in Washington, every four years, after we see the presidential candidates kissing the rear end of the ethanol lobbyists in Iowa, you’ll never hear about food or farming again. The difference in the organic movement is that we have just loyal people who really passionately care. We need you to partner with us at Cornucopia, either as a member or a collaborator through our free electronic newsletter. You have the power and we need to work together.
So this area of how the standards are set, how the standards are maintained, is very problematic. Congress enacted a system where the National Organic Standards Board was created. It’s a 15-member body with four farmers, one independent scientist, and certifiers, retailers, conservationists, and all the different stakeholders. That was part of the deal. There were lots of folks that said, “You know, we don’t feel so comfortable handing over responsibility to govern organics to the government.” This was one of the agreements. You couldn’t put, for instance, any synthetic used in organics on the list of approved materials or any non-organic food item. For instance, it’s impossible to make an organic cupcake without baking powder. There is no natural or organic form of baking powder. So that has to be carefully reviewed and that’s the job of the National Organic Standards Board, to review the material and make recommendations at how organic food is produced. Like with chickens, how do we make sure they really get access to the outdoors, real grass and better nutrition for the birds, which means better nutrition for us. So part of this grand deal was creating this board. But the USDA, especially during the Bush administration and now during the Obama administration, has stacked this board with corporate family folks. So during the Bush years, I wish I could tell this was a joke, for the Public Interest Consumer representative, they tapped a full-time executive at General Mills to serve in that position.
There was such an outcry that her nomination was withdrawn. But we have two “farmers” who sit on the board right now. One is a fulltime employee of Organic Valley, which is virtually a billion-dollar on annual sales corporation. It’s a farmer-owned cooperative and they’re really much more sensitive of many of these issues than most of the larger businesses. Most of what they do is good but their representative on the board has voted for a number of synthetic food ingredients that we think is a threat to human health and obviously not upholding the ideals that that Coop represents. Another “farmer” on the board is a full-time staff member at Driscoll’s, the largest conventional and organic berry producer in the country. They don’t actually grow organic strawberries. They contract for production. We question whether both of these individuals could legally be appointed to the board. So far we haven’t prevailed in that debate. But we have a board that’s making decisions that’s not as broad-based as congress had intended, we might end up in court trying to maintain the integrity of that process.
Wendy, it’s not a scientific board so they need help from scientists to evaluate these products. Are they actually safe or not? They approved a couple of items that we think were inappropriate. One of them was Kerogenine which is seaweed derivative, but also a potent inflammatory agent that could cause gastro-intestinal disease in humans. We went back to take a look at who was doing the technical reviews which congress provided for, and we ended up that once again, it looked like these were mostly agri-business executives and consultants to agri-business that found these materials perfectly safe. So the system of checks is broken down that’s why we’ve stepped forward to review all these materials. If your listeners want to drill down and get a better understanding of what’s at stake here, we published a report that can be found on cornucopia.org called The Organic Water Gate. We encourage listeners to take a look at that, at least at the summary to understand what’s at stake here.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, one thing I love about visiting your site is all the food reports and score cards that you have on many different foods. Like you have one on almonds, one on eggs, and dairy and cereals, and a huge report about Kerogenine found in many nut milks, and so much more. It’s just really wonderful that your institute provides these free resources to consumers so they can make healthier choices.
Mark Kastel: Yeah, thank you. We think the real power is the consumer’s purse in the market place so if these companies I pick on, Dean Foods actually sold the company on Wall Street but they still have the same executives. The same investors still own the Horizon Brand. They might think it’s okay to purchase a very large percentage of their milk from farms with thousands of cows, but that doesn’t really conform to what consumers think they’re supporting. And so some of their farms, we found not to be compliant with the law in the past. So we rate, as an example, these score cards you referenced, every organic dairy brand in the country so you can see if they come from family farms where the cows more likely than not, have names, not numbers, or whether they’re coming from these giant industrial dairies. So we’re really kind of plugging the consumer in so that they can form choices to protect their families, to make sure they’re getting what they pay for, superior nutrition, not just the lack of these chemical residues, but superior taste and nutrition. But they’re simultaneously sending a really strong message to the heroes that we support them in this industry and to the bad actors that if you are on our patronage you’re going to have to conform to the values this industry was founded upon.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, definitely one of the organic standards is to not allow synthetic ingredients in our food but with Horizon brand milk that you mentioned, they have on their label Omega-3 rich when it’s actually this synthetic algae oil that’s made by big Bio-tech Syngenta. The USDA is just looking in the other way. I always tell my clients to avoid Horizon Milk because they are not complying. They have these huge factory farms. They’re getting their milk from this synthetic so-called algae omega-3 oil that humans have never consumed before. They’re just definitely not, in my opinion, organic.
Mark Kastel: Well, that was the material that really was our wake up call. My background personally is in agriculture and economics policy. We were looking much more at the farm impacts of organics in our watchdog work. But a couple of years ago, the company that actually makes this it’s a Dutch company called DSM. It’s about the same size as Monsanto. It’s about a 12-billion dollar corporation. What they did was, through genetic mutation, they changed algae so that it could produce more of the oils. We first got involved because they’re in almost all conventional and organic infant formula. They were adding them illegally. We forced them to go through the approval process. When you approve something for organics, it has to be safe for humans, safe for the environment and it has to be essential to organic production.
Approving this material for organic milk is like saying that using atrazine, a toxic herbicide, is essential to produce organic corn. You can produce infant formula and milk and not add these novel algae-based compounds. We knew they were illegal because they were extracted from the biomass that they grow in a laboratory with hexane, a gasoline refinement by-product that’s patently banned in organic production so this has been illegal from the beginning. Other interesting facts is one, there’s no firm science other than one or two studies that were produced by the pharmaceutical companies that lead us to believe that this is efficacious, that it actually, Horizon was touting this in their ads, that it aided brain development. We filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. They were forced to change their communications. It’s really based on some really flimsy science and high profit potential. The other part was that, in infant formula, there had been quite a few adverse reaction reports to the FDA from parents and caregivers. It seems that there at least a subset of infants that can’t tolerate this and become quite ill. So this has no business in organics unless your business in organics is to strictly make a profit so Dean Foods, DSM, flew in lots of lawyers and lobbyists and farmers all saying that we need this in our food supply and it passed the National Organic Standards board by one vote.
We said that we would never, at Cornucopia, allow these materials to get in without our careful scrutiny so we do our own analysis before the National Organic Standards board meets twice a year to make sure that these things are a central. I’ll tell you how to put more DHA in real organic milk. You graze your cattle. The more you have them on fresh grass, the higher the omega-3 oils and antioxidants are. So we don’t need to add these things. They’re gimmicky marketing vehicles but organic value wanted the DHA milk. They aren’t working with the DSM, instead they’re adding fish oil to their milk which in taste test, doesn’t change the taste of it. So if mothers want higher omega-3s in their milk, they can seek out the best brands in the organic score card from Cornucopia. The farmers are really dedicated to grazing. Or they can buy some of Organic Valley’s fish oil or they can buy the very best milk and then go to store, if they really want to have higher levels, and buy fish oil capsules or cod-liver oil supplement for their children. We just want to really concentrate on real food or on authentic organics.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, that’s why I drink only raw, organic, grass-fed milk because it’s not a processed food. It’s just straight from the cow. You don’t have to add anything to it. It’s just real milk.
Mark Kastel: What a miracle. Where are you located, Wendy?
Wendy Myers: I’m in Malibu California.
Mark Kastel: Malibu, California. Wow. You’re lucky because in California, it’s legal to sell raw milk in the grocery store. In Wisconsin, it’s illegal for farmers to invite people to even buy it off their farm, freshest you can get. It’s legal in about half the states, for your listeners. In many of the states where it’s not legal, consumers have taken the law under their own hands and they’ve created private clubs and coops where they work directly with farmers so in, probably, every state, people are drinking fresh raw milk. But it’s a debate. Many folks think that it has some really wonderful nutritional value and I could tell you, from personal experience, that it tastes fantastic. Some people are concerned because there is the potential for contamination. There’s nothing inherently dangerous about raw milk, worst would be contaminated with fecal matter and careful farmers will prevent that but there’s nothing perfect in life. The largest contamination of milk that ever occurred that sickened people came from a dairy in Chicago where they were pasteurizing milk. So we have to be careful as food producers and consumers to make sure we’re buying quality food. Raw milk is certainly an option that many people might want to investigate.
Wendy Myers: Absolutely. So what, in your opinion, is the biggest threat right now to organic standards?
Mark Kastel: Well, I think, from a macro-standpoint, it’s the industrialization and corporatization of organic farms that we really need to, as stakeholders, make sure that if people who at large come in, they’re respecting the, not only the letter of the law but the spirit of the law. Likewise, we need to make sure that the USDA is doing the job in regulatory oversight because consumers that go into a grocery store in Little Rock, Arkansas or Independence, Missouri who might not have access to a natural foods coop, or a specialty retailer like Whole Foods, that might not have the infrastructure of local farmers, they need to be able to trust that organic seal. We need to protect that. From a micro-standpoint, we need to look at the USDA and how they’re operating. One of the aspects of approving synthetics and non-organic material is that the congress decided that they would sunset every five years and would have to be re-evaluated. So since 2002, for over 10 years, the National Organic Standards Board will look at any new research that’s been published to make sure these materials are still safe, any anecdotal reports, has anyone, any entrepreneur in the organic industry developed a certifiable organic alternative? We’ve seen that happen with some food ingredients where there wasn’t anything available organic and now you could buy organic soy lecithin, as an ingredient. If you need that as a manufacturer, you should be obligated to buy it in organic form.
So for the last five years, the National Organic Standards board has re-evaluated that. The corporations and the organic trade associations don’t like the scrutiny that synthetic ingredients are getting. They shoot an edict that every five years, a committee will take a look at it, and if the committee thinks there’s no reason for it to come off the list, the full board will have to evaluate it. Another aspect to this whole dance that the congress choreographed is that for any decisive vote by the NOSB, it takes a two thirds majority, not a simple majority. So it really forces the members of the NOSB, the National Organic Standards Board, to come to a consensus over materials; are they safe or not? To list something initially and to re-list it every five years, it’s taking a two-thirds vote. It’s a pretty good standard and if we had a real National Organic Standards Board comprised of independent stakeholders rather than corporate shills, we would see better oversight. That wasn’t even good enough, having this stacked board for the OTA and USDA. They just decided without any consultation from the board or the public to make the vote every five years at sunset, to be two thirds majority requiring it to be removed from the list instead of a two thirds majority to have it maintained on the list as it has in the past.
They turn this thing on its head and because of the way the NOSB is stacked, it might be impossible to get something that a lot of published peer-reviewed research says is dangerous like Kerogenine out of organics. We are very concerned about this. This likely will end up in a court challenge. We need consumers to pay attention to the process and to stand with Cornucopia and stand with farmers. In the meantime, as you suggested, they need to protect themselves so there is a buyer’s guide on the cornucopia website comparing all organic products. If you buy soy milk or if you buy sour cream, or chocolate milk, or ice cream. In every product category there are brands that you can buy that don’t use Kerogenine. So you shouldn’t wait for the NOSB and USDA to act. You should act on behalf of your own family. Quite frankly, we did that buyer’s guide because it really proves our thesis that Kerogenine is not “essential” to organic production. You don’t need Kerogenine in chocolate milk to make chocolate milk. The difference is, when I was a kid, you had to shake the chocolate milk before you served it. The Kerogenine keeps the chocolate in suspension so you don’t have to worry about shaking it. I think most organic moms would rather shake their chocolate milk than to give their children something that could cause them physical harm.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I agree with you. Is there hope? Do you think that organic standards are safe and will remain intact?
Mark Kastel: Well, the standards are good. We’re talking about enforcement here. And again, for the most part, I think organic products are safe. It’s the exceptions that we’re zeroing in on. It’s worth fighting for because the organic certification process, with all its words, is really still the golden standard. There are very few alternatives on the market wave. If you want the highest quality of the safest food for your family, who are you going to trust? You’re going to trust marketers to tell you that the food is really authentic? Again, if you have access to a good farmer’s market, if you can meet your local farmers, if you can join a CSA and get a box of fresh produce that was picked maybe 10 hours ago rather than 10 days ago, in California you might have fresh California produce but by the time it’s on the train or the truck, even if it’s organic, when it gets to Wisconsin, in the middle of the winter it’s not the freshest food we’re eating. So if you have access to local markets, that’s great. But for a lot of food, If you’re going to buy great cheese, you might not have that produced locally in Malibu. You might need to buy a national brand and you need to trust that brand. You need to trust the organic certification process. We all can’t afford to turn our back on this.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I know a lot of mothers or other people feel like they don’t have time to do all those research. They don’t have time to go to the grocery stores and to the farmer’s markets. But people have to really make some choices and invest some time on their health and their food choices, and reading ingredient lists, and becoming food detectives if they plan on being healthy and living a disease-free life.
Mark Kastel: Well, the organic seal should be the cliff notes version of doing that research but until it is totally trustworthy, then we really encourage you and your listeners to look at these score cards if you want to know which eggs are produced by brands that buy from farmers that truly respect the birds and treat them respectfully and produce eggs that are truly organic with birds that are outside, that’s your tool. You only have to do it once, or you only have to do it periodically, and then figure out which brands are available in the local stores that you deal with. But it’s worth it. We started out the show talking about human health. Most of us came initially to organics because of what it doesn’t have in there and that’s these residues of synthetic chemicals that we know in whatever level, even minute levels, could cause severe health impacts.
But what more and more people are recognizing is that organic food is actually healthier in terms of nutritional constituency so vitamins, antioxidants, amino acids, omega-3 oils, these are many of the health-enhancing compounds that if they’re not in our food, they’re not in us. Synthetic vitamins have a very questionable track record in terms of ethicasy. We really need excellent food. There’s something magical about these compounds when they’re integrated in the food product rather than isolated in a laboratory. And so more and more people want that food and it’s interesting that the composition of the soil which leads to these nutritional advantages has a direct relationship to flavor. So the reason those home-grown tomatoes and local tomatoes taste better is that the soil’s healthier and they could be picked at their height of ripeness for flavor and nutrition. Whereas if they were shipped halfway across the country, by the time they got to the grocery store, they’d look like tomato paste instead of a nice heirloom tomato. Let your taste buds help guide you as well.
Wendy Myers: You know I have a question. What is the difference between an organic farm and a biodynamic organic farm?
Mark Kastel: Well, they both, I would say, practice a form of organic agriculture. Organics can be everything from meeting the letter of the law, which would be the floor, to going beyond organic in terms of many of the cultural practices on the land and how they treat their animals. In biodynamics, I would encourage you to Google that because there’s a few wonderful biodynamic organizations that could go in a much greater detail. They incorporate care for the animals in the land. They go further and also incorporate a spiritual component. They look at the farm as a whole system. The farm, the animals, the regenerative nature, regenerating the nutrients. And they use biodynamic preparations where they might mix up some animal manure and age that over the winter, actually bury that in the ground with some starter compounds.
I’d like to compare that, Wendy, to homeopathic medicine where minute amounts of material might cause a reaction or probiotics where we ingest certain strings of bacteria either in cultured food, yogurts or sour kraut or other food, and it populates our gut with different micro-flora that aids to our health. So what biodynamic farmers do is spray these compounds in minute quantities out there in the fields. If they have the right favorable environment, these microorganisms will grow. A bucket of dirt has literally millions of living critters, organisms and this bacterium and other living creatures help break down the organic matter and turn it into compounds that the plants can use as food. Biodynamics is just another form of organics. It’s a very artful form. I have been very impress with many of its practitioners. So if somebody says they are certified bidemeter, which is the group that certifies them, I would look at that with a high degree of respect.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, the local grocery store I shop at sells biodynamic grapes and I get really excited. There are these tiny little grapes but they’re so good. You can just taste such a huge difference than the grapes that you’re getting at Whole Foods per se.
Mark Kastel: And many times they’re certified organic at the same time. Biodynamics also prevents all the synthetic shortcuts, crutches that conventional farmers use.
Wendy Myers: Well, let’s turn our conversation to GMOs, genetically modified organisms or genetically engineered food. The current head of FDA is a former employee of Monsanto, the biotech giant that has created and owns the patents to many GMO foods. So how and why have big biotechs like Monsanto been able to penetrate and assume pivotal positions in the government and change laws for their profit?
Mark Kastel: Well, it’s sad. This is the difference why people say, “Why aren’t there GMO’s in all the food in Europe?” Really, before, no matter what your passion is, protecting the environment, protecting the food supply, reforming our school systems , there’s somebody who has beaten us to our elected officials with a thousand dollar bill in their hands. So we either have the best government money can buy or at least the best government money can rent. Besides from Michael Taylor who is a lawyer for Monsanto who’s heading the food division of the FDA, the head of the USDA, Tom Vylsac, is the former Biotechnology Industry Governor of the Year. He’s from Iowa. It’s a little off-topic but the new head of the FCC, Federal Communications Commission, is a former executive in the telecommunications industry.
Now he’s supposed to be regulating them. This is where Cornucopia and other governmental watchdogs really need the help of the public to pay attention. We’ve had more GMO’s approved by the USDA or certainly as many under Obama as we did under the Bush administration, Mr. Obama during his first campaign for presidency, promised that he would support labeling for GMO’s in our food supplies. That obviously hasn’t happened. We now see the FDA cracking down on food safety, as well they should because we’ve had lots of big widespread contamination problems but they’re not coming from family-owned organic farms but they might get damaged as collateral victims in their efforts to crack down on food safety. This money in politics is a really poisoning electoral process and is really, I would say, a poison to our food supply because we’re contaminated with GMO’s, we’re contaminated with toxic pathogens, not because they benefit mankind and our society but because they benefit the bottom line of corporations.
Wendy Myers: Do you think that GMO labelling in the US will ever come to pass?
Mark Kastel: I don’t know the answer to that. It’s not likely to happen on the federal basis anytime soon and the industry, corporate agri-business and biotechnology had been able to pour ungodly amount of money into feeding the measure at any state. So the fight is not over. I can guarantee you that there will be efforts in other states that will come up again in California, in Washington. We’re gaining a much higher awareness level. So the people are going out of their way to find food without GMO’s and the best way to do that, the most credible way, is to seek out certified organic food. I can’t really forecast but I can tell you for sure that the fight for labeling will continue.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I was really upset when the measure in California got defeated. I was so sure that we were going to win and change the face of the food supply but it’s not going to happen. Money talks. Ha-ha.
Mark Kastel: Money talks and I think there was a combination of problems in California and Washington. I’m about to write a piece about that. One was that some of the biggest and wealthiest companies in organics sapped this out. I talked about Nature’s Path. That family, I think, contributed 600 thousand dollars to the campaign in California for labeling. It’s a private company. They didn’t have to do that. They stuck their hand in their pocket and pulled out that 600 thousand dollar bill. Someone would’ve thought they were a hero if they’d pulled out a hundred or 200 thousand but these are folks who are really dedicated. In California, during the entire campaign, Whole Foods, it’s a 12-billion dollar corporation. Monsanto’s a 12-billion dollar corporation. Monsanto contributed millions to defeating this in California. Whole foods, during the entire campaign, refused to donate anything. They said, “Well we won’t get involved in politics.” Our response was, “well, this is not partisan and there’s nothing legally preventing you from being involved.” We asked, I think, somewhere within the last three days before the end of the campaign, with 20 or 50 thousand dollars, which would be a lot of money to me but in terms of these small-time million-dollar campaigns and their capacity, was chicken feed.
It was so late that it wasn’t able to be used instantly for advertising purposes or would be doubtfully as usable. We didn’t have the backing of Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s and Hein Celestial these really big companies. UNFI, the major distributor, United Natural Foods Incorporated, they basically all sat on the sidelines. If they had, between them, chipped in some serious money, this might have been won. The other problem, Wendy, was that the campaigns in Washington and California really highlighted the right to know, the right to know what’s in our food. I really passionately believe that too. But they, for whatever reason, stayed away from talking about the problems with GMOs. The fact that, regardless of what the industry sends, there’s virtually been no human health testing. There’s been no testing on laboratory animals or virtually none again. For long-term, whole-life testing. Most of the laboratory experiments had culminated in the animals being slaughtered after 30-90 days. So the longer studies have pointed to problems with organ development, problems with gastro-intestinal health. There are reports that now conclude that the insecticide that they’re incorporating through genetic engineering in corn is finding its way into mothers’ bloodstream and the bloodstream of the fetus. This is such a short term blip in terms of human evolution. We really don’t know what the implications are. We should be talking about this during the labeling campaign. If people deserve the right to know, the question is, “why would they want to know about GMO’s in their food?” We need to give them the facts so they can make intelligent decisions in the grocery stores and at the ballot box.
Wendy Myers: Well, can you tell the listeners a little more about you and what you face on the horizon in the Cornucopia Institute?
Mark Kastel: Sure. This would be a good way to wrap up. In America, there are really only two kinds of power – money and people. We can only win the fight to protect our food supply if we have all elements in the good food movement come together here. I know for many folks and myself included, that there is a spiritual component to our consciousness now in terms of our food supply. It’s not very long ago that in almost every religious vernacular, we said grace before we ate and we meant it. We knew that if we had a bad year and we didn’t get rain and dew at the right time, our children literally starved to death. We’ve started taking that for granted so we have more and more people that are providing a learning opportunity for their kids by guarding themselves, by going to the farmer’s markets and meeting farmers, by talking about the food, by engaging in preparing food with their family.
So it’s not just physical health, it’s mental spiritual health as well. When we hear about these factory farms involved in organics and imports for the third world, we feel betrayed. I think it’s really important for farmers and consumers to educate themselves and then to step up. If you sign up as a member of Cornucopia, let me spell that again for your listeners, people who work here can’t even spell it (Ha-ha), it’s C-O-R-N-U-C-O-P-I-A. So cornucopia.org . If you either join as a member or sign up for free electronic newsletter, you’ll also get our email action alerts. So the next time, your voice can make a difference, of when the government’s not doing their job, or a corporation is abusing consumer trust. Then we can all act together to maintain the authenticity of the organic label and I think that’s really the most important thing on the Horizon, that we all act together to save what we’ve all built and that’s an alternative food supply.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I’ve been getting your newsletters for many many years and I urge all the listeners to join and, at the very least, sign up for the newsletter and get involved, get informed about what’s going on on the organic horizon and you can also participate in the action alerts and sign the petitions and send in the proxies to protect our organic standards and our food supply and, ultimately, our health. Thank you, Mark, for coming on the show. I truly admire you for the wonderful work that you’re doing to protect our food supply. The safety of our food supply is constantly under threat and we need people like yourself in the front lines defending what healthy food we have left. Thank you so much for not only talking the talk but walking the walk. You live on a 160-acre organic farm yourself so thank you for dedicating your life to protecting America’s small family farms and organic standards.
Mark Kastel: Well, thanks very sincerely for your kind words, Wendy. We appreciate you helping connect us with your listenership and we know they care about these issues.
Wendy Myers: Thank you so much. If you want to learn more about the Paleo diet, weight-loss, or how to do a serious detox, not a detox in a box, you can find me on myersdetox.com, you can follow me on Facebook and twitter @Iwillliveto110, and I’m also on youtube at Wendy Live to 110. If you like what you heard on the show, please give the Live to 110 podcast a review on iTunes. I need reviews to push the show further up the charts and into the search engines so I would appreciate it so much if you could just take a couple minutes of your day and give me a nice review. Thank you listeners for tuning in. Remember, you should seriously consider only eating organic food or as your grandparents called it, food. All food was organic just a few decades ago. It’s nothing new. It’s not a trend. Organics have just had to be incorporated into our food supply because of all the dangers in our food supply that Mark talked about today. Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 podcast.
