When it's grown in China, apparently.  A local news team in Arlington, VA has done some crackerjack work tracking down the truth about a lot of the so-called "organic" food which is sold by Whole Foods.

A lot of the Whole Foods organic produce - mostly frozen foods, according to the news cast - says "Product of China" on the back in tiny letters.  Now in the United States, food has to be cultivated under strict rules and oversight by the USDA if they want to be qualified to use the word "organic" on the label.

However, there is a loophole.  The USDA does not inspect imported foods.  Instead, it passes that job off to private companies.  And it turns out that the private company that Whole Foods uses to certify its produce "has not certified any products in China," according to a letter it sent to the news team.

Even if the private companies were to certify the foods, that certification is based on information from ANOTHER private company, which is on the ground in China.  And corruption is so rife in the food chain and the manufacturing supply chain that any kind of certification is on uncertain footing at best.  

Needless to say, true organic food grown in the United States is hugely expensive.  It costs a lot more to produce, and that cost is passed along to the brokers and the stores and eventually the consumer.  

However, "organic" food grown in China is not very expensive.  But you can sell it at the same premium price. I wonder how much extra money Whole Foods makes every year off that price difference?

And finally, you have to wonder if the benefits to buying organic food are wiped out by the carbon footprint of transporting it across the Pacific.  A big selling point for organic versus conventional is the lack of petroleum products used in its manufacture.  If you buy food grown without petroleum product pesticide, but then you ship it to the United States, doesn't that kind of put you in the hole, carbon footprint-wise?

If I were an American farmer, I would be pretty ticked to learn that you can earn that USDA Organic seal so much more easily if you grow your food in China and import it to the States.  I live in a rural area with a lot of farmland, and I know that people work hard to qualify for USDA Organic certification.  It represents a huge cost, which the farmers can only hope will be recouped down the line by the higher prices they will be able to command for their produce.

Now it turns out that all they had to do was move to China!  Sure, farm your stuff there, throw whatever you want on the crops, bribe the certifier, and you're set!

This kind of thing is an excellent example of why the term "organic" is broken.  Organic certification is a joke, sad to say, and an expensive one at that.

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user That Other Paper