What is “organic”?
Organic refers to the way agricultural productsfood and fiberare grown and processed. Organic food production is based on a system of farming that maintains and replenishes soil fertility without the use of toxic and persistent pesticides and fertilizers. Organic foods are minimally processed without artificial ingredients, preservatives, or irradiation to maintain the integrity of the food.
Organic agriculture is a system of farming practices that seeks to use ecological methods of production. Its goal is to learn from and mimic natural processes in order to produce the food we eat while also allowing our farmers to be better stewards of the land. Organic farmers forego the use of synthetic petro-chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and weed killers in favor of more environmentally benign inputs and techniques. Organic agriculture combines both old and new ideas and practices to produce healthy, tasty, vitamin-rich crops. Unlike words such as “natural” or “healthy” which you may see on product labels, Organic is a legally defined and monitored production method for farms and agricultural products. Certified Organic products are grown on farms which comply with the USDA’s National Organic Program standards and which are inspected annually by third-party certification agencies to maintain their certification. Under US law, produce which was not grown on certified or
Organic food is grown or raised without synthetic fertilisers or pesticides/herbicides or hormones. This is at its most simple … there’s a large book of rules produced by our certification body – the Soil Association – which must be followed to ensure maximum protection for the environment, and that animal welfare is of the highest standard.
Organic means produce and other ingredients grown without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms, or ionizing radiation. For Animals produced for meat, poultry, dairy products, fiber, they are raised without use of antibiotics, growth hormones, and are fed strictly organic feed. Because the word organic was beginning to be used to market foods, concerned advocates of organic products pursued the certification of organic products to ensure those claming to grow their products organically are true to their word. The NOP (National Organic Program) has their own definition that can be found on the internet.
We thought this definition from Wikipedia summed things up nicely: Requirements vary from country to country, and generally involve a set of production standards for growing, storage, processing, packaging and shipping that include: • avoidance of most synthetic chemical inputs (e.g. fertilizer, pesticides, antibiotics, food additives, etc), genetically modified organisms, irradiation, and the use of sewage sludge; • use of farmland that has been free from chemicals for a number of years (often, three or more); • keeping detailed written production and sales records (audit trail); • maintaining strict physical separation of organic products from non-certified products; • undergoing periodic on-site inspections.
