Nestle Says Organic Is Lower in Nutrition – Say WHAT?

Recap of Triple Pundit article (source link at bottom)

“Nestle has a very pro-GMO (genetically modified organism) policy and has invested in GM-coffee research…in 2008, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Chairman of the Board of Nestlé S.A. asked policymakers in Europe to re-evaluate their opposition to GMO.

According to him “You have to be rational. There’s no way you can support life on earth if you go straight from farm to table.”

“Nestle owns San Pellegrino water, PowerBar energy bars, and Skinny Cow ice cream, appealing to buyers concerned with health and the environment…technically none of these brands are organic…Nestle’s profits of 34 billion in 2010 has nothing to do with organics.

“Nestle also claims that organic food is lower in nutrition. Several food companies like Nestle, Kraft Foods and Dole Foods actively propagate this notion.”

When I read stuff like this, I just shake my head.  No way to support life on earth from farm to table? Organic food is lower in nutrition? Genetically modified food is good?  WHAT earth does this guy live on ‘cuz it ain’t the same one I live on (should lunatics have their OWN planet?  I’m beginning to think so.)

Let’s see:  good ol’ Pete has no problem with using child slaves for his chocolate, screws with Mother Nature through GMO, pushes poison, kills babies with his baby formula scam…yeah, sounds like an evil person to me. Hey, isn’t this what the anti-christ supposed to be like…remember that from somewhere…says they’re doing good and helping the world (while they’re setting up to get REALLY ugly when they’re in power!) Oh wait, he’s already DONE that.

And now this junior anti-christ Swiss lunatic wants to mess with my coffee? No thanks, Pete…think I’ll keep my organic and BOYCOTT ALL NESTLE PRODUCTS!

Really gotta go find out what all Nestle sells…I don’t want them in my kitchen!  I don’t even want people like this on the same planet.

Posted by Janet Byers

Recapped Article by Akhila Vijayaraghavan, Triple Pundit (dot) com | September 6th, 2011 >> View Full Article

Organic Coffee is Your Best Bet to Avoid Toxic Chemicals

From Coffee Review:  Coffee drinkers concerned about the impact of agricultural chemicals on environment and society have essentially three alternatives:

• Buy a traditional coffee, grown as coffee was grown from its inception, before agricultural chemicals were invented. All Yemen, almost all Ethiopia, and most Sumatra Mandheling coffees are grown in such a state of innocence, and all are among the world’s finest.
• Buy a certified organic coffee. Certified organic coffees are coffees whose growing conditions and processing have been thoroughly monitored by independent agencies and found to be free of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, chemical fertilizers, and other potentially harmful chemicals. The monitoring agencies visit the farm and verify that no chemicals have been used on the farm for several years, and then follow every step of the processing, preparing, transporting, storage, and roasting. Such careful monitoring is of course expensive, which is one reason certified organic coffees cost more than similar uncertified coffees. Many such certified organic coffees are the product of socially and environmentally progressive cooperatives.
• Buy a coffee labeled “sustainable.” At this writing sustainable is a rather loose term meaning that, in the view of the importer or roaster, designated farmers are doing everything within reason to avoid the use of agricultural chemicals and to pursue enlightened environmental and socially progressive practices in the growing and processing of their coffees.

The “loose” term “sustainable” gives rise to my concern about Starbucks again, darnit! “In the view of the importer or roaster” leaves a LOT of leeway (which means I have to trust that profit will never override this “view” and that any company, not just Starbucks, will choose to always do the right thing for the environment, the health of the farmers and the end consumer.)

Given American corporations great way of “spinning” truth and flat out lying, I have a hard time trusting…I dunno, call me skeptical…

Is Starbucks Really Fair Trade or Are They Just Saying They Are?

There was a huge amount of pressure put on Starbucks for years to carry and brew Fair Trade coffee.  They finally gave into the pressure and started carrying Fair Trade whole bean coffee called “Estima.”  But that’s not brewing and selling primarily Fair Trade coffee, now is it?

I was in the Green Hills Starbucks (in Nashville) last week and asked the guy behind the counter:  “Can I get Fair Trade, organic coffee already brewed?”  His reply floored me:  “Not together you can’t.  We don’t sell both organic and Fair Trade together.  You can have one or the other…but we’re out.”  Weird how my friends (in many different states) decided to see if I was crazy when I say “they ALWAYS say they just ran out!”  So a bunch of them tested me on it and sure enough, they ALL got the same “we just ran out line.”

Ummmmm, so I can choose between toxic chemicals or slave wage coffee ‘cuz Starbucks is always mysteriously out when you request fresh brewed?  Yuck.

Well, when I read the Starbuck’s site, it would seem that they are leading the charge in the Fair Trade /Organic / Sustainable coffee market and that 84% of their coffee is now Fair Trade.   But I suspect they’re “sort of” lying…which means I don’t know if they’re telling the truth or not and it really bugs me!

I’ve noticed a trend in big companies…they use Fair Trade and Sustainable interchangeably…and I personally suspect that is smoke and mirrors, folks. If 99% of the world’s coffee is NOT Fair Trade…then are the “sustainable” farmers Starbucks talks about ACTUALLY getting fair wages and prices for their crops?

By the same token, if farmer’s in developing countries are pressured into using sustainable farming practices…which is probably more expensive for them (but maybe not — petrochemicals and toxic pesticides are actually quite expensive) but don’t get fair prices…will they continue these practices?

Fair Trade means the  farmers are paid a fair living wage for the coffee they grow. Sustainable means farming practices that are good for the environment…but doesn’t mean that farmers who use these practices get a fair price for what they produce!

I’ve come up with something in my head that makes sense to me…”Save the People, Save the Planet.”  PEOPLE are the ones hurting the planet and some are doing so because they see no other way to support their hungry children (and I would do anything for my child as I’m sure you would too.)  So if that means cutting down the rainforest because people will buy the wood, then cut they will.

BUT if you work on saving the people and providing fair prices and allow them the dignity of earning a fair living…then they will work to save precious resources too.  I mean seriously, does anybody THINK that people in poor countries WANT to wipe out the planet we all share?  Of course they don’t!  But they want to feed their kids too and a hungry baby’s cries are more immediate then a desert forming where a lush tropical jungle once stood.

What’s the Difference Between Fair Trade, Sustainable and Organic? – Part 2

Part 2 of 2 of “What’s the Difference Between Fair Trade, Sustainable and Organic?”  >> Page 1 Here

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C: If you’re using practices that end up contaminating the end product with dangerous toxic chemicals, the end product is going to taste bad, so that’s not going to fly.
NM: Ultimately you’re right, but if you had — God forbid — tea contaminated with mercury you wouldn’t taste it, and similarly, many of the (toxic) ways that (farmers) fertilize don’t have an effect on taste.

C:  My understanding, gained through what I’ve been told in a number of places, is that some of the small estates and small individual tea farms in China, as one example, are growing their tea organically partly because they can’t afford expensive chemical fertilizers, so they’re using traditional agriculture, which is, by definition organic, but they won’t ever be able to say that their tea is organically produced even though it is.
NM: Yes, well they certainly won’t be certified, so they can’t be officially organic. And yet, for thousands and thousands of years they’ve been organic … and balanced organic. They’re sustainable and organic, because they recycle everything back to the land.
C: Traditionally, sustainable agriculture is what works. If you’re a small farmer you need to create a system of growing that you can keep going and recycling. What would you say the difference is between sustainable farming versus organic and fair-trade? I mean, I understand what the difference is as expressed in the marketing language, but more specifically …
NM: Well, sustainable really means that you’re not using things up. Just as with organics, there are sustainability purists who say you should never use anything that can’t be replaced. And there are the sustainable realists who say we should at least eke out the non-renewable resources where we can, and wherever we can we’ll use renewable fuels, and if it’s not renewable we’ll go very carefully how we use it and how much of it we use. You have to draw that distinction. My camp is the realistic sustainability one.
C: You can’t set up restrictions that are so harsh that it makes it impossible to produce anything.
NM: People do.
C: I know they do, but they shouldn’t because ultimately it won’t work.
NM: I’ll give you an example of the dilemma that you might get into. I was working with a new tea grower in Hawaii — not one of the small guys that we’ve seen at the Expo, but someone who wanted to do it on a hundred-acre scale, 200-acre scale. He wanted to be organic, said the production must be organic. He was a berry farmer on the mainland, and he always had an organic farm, and he wanted to have an organic tea farm. So we started off and sourced his tea and his raw materials from Africa and got it planted, and his soil was not acid enough, which is unusual for Hawaii, but this was an old sugar-cane plantation and they’d put down a lot of chalk, to benefit the sugar cane. This was 20 years ago, but it was still there. The normal way that you’d acidify soil for tea is to put sulfur on it. Sulfur is recognized by the organic people; they’re happy with it. So he goes off to his supplier and when he sees the sulfur that he’s offered, he says, “where does it come from?” and they say it’s a by-product of the petrochemical industry, and he throws his hands up in horror! So we look and see what else we can get. It’s possible to get sulfur which is rock sulfur, mined sulfur. The dilemma is, would you rape the countryside with big holes, ripping out rock sulfur, or would you use a by-product of the petrochemical industry that has to go somewhere, and is at least greening the petrochemical industry at least a little bit?
C: Why would the organic regulations say that you couldn’t use petro-chemical by-products?
NM: the regulations don’t say that you shouldn’t, but they would prefer that you use the natural sulfur.
C: “Organic” meaning that you take it from the earth regardless of consequences? That makes no sense.
NM: No it doesn’t make a lot of sense. That’s why I say that sustainability and organic should be done with some degree of realism.
C: None of the national or international organizations that are promoting organic farming are really thinking in terms of sustainability, are they? I prefer not to make such a broad statement, but it seems like the focus is on something that’s almost more conceptual than practical.
NM: Absolutely, yeah that is the focus, because it’s all mediated in glass palaces in Europe or America and the people there don’t get out in the field a lot, and don’t see the issues directly and they have a set of ethics that they want to plant.
C: I could tell that, just listening to the people in the panel discussion talk about it. They haven’t all stood in a tea field. The way some of them were talking about the agriculture, they didn’t really understand how it worked. That distance from agriculture and the people directly involved in it also manifests into a somewhat condescending tone among some of the organizations promoting the organic, fair-trade and sustainability agendas. Even the representative from Utz was talking about teaching the farmers like they were five-year-olds and their organization was going to come in and teach them the right way to do things.
NM: Absolutely right. David Walker, President of Walker Tea, LLC, was telling someone a couple of days ago about how he represents a couple of coffee growers in Kenya and helps them get product to market. He was saying that some of these USAID people will come over and say to the Kenyans, “we’re going to teach you how to grow coffee the way the Americans like it.” [laughs] He took one of these coffee industry advisors aside, put his hand on his shoulder and said “these people have been growing coffee for three or four hundred years. They know how to grow coffee. You tell them how you want it. They can do it, but don’t go telling them that you’re going to teach them, because you are not.” So there’s a lot of that element of “experts who know best.”
C: Yes, it can be really preachy. The attitude about it is very removed from the reality of actual workers and actual plantation owners and actual growers, and for that matter, from the science of it, how things work. Although, I will say that the Rainforest Alliance was a little less like that because they seem like they’re a little bit more direct about how they get things done.  >> Read Full Article

What’s the Difference Between Fair Trade, Sustainable and Organic?

Fair trade is an organized social movement and market-based approach that aims to help producers in developing countries make better trading conditions and promote sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a higher price to producers as well as higher social and environmental standards. It focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries, most notably handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, bananas, honey, cotton, wine, fresh fruit, chocolate, flowers and gold.

Sustainable agriculture is the practice of farming using principles of ecology, the study of relationships between organisms and their environment. It has been defined as follows: An integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application that will last over the long term:

• Satisfy human food and fiber needs
• Make the most efficient use of non-renewable resources and on-farm resources and integrate, where appropriate, natural biological cycles and controls
• Sustain the economic viability of farm operations
• Enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole.

Sustainable agriculture in the United States was addressed by the 1990 farm bill. More recently, as consumer and retail demand for sustainable products has risen, organizations such as Food Alliance and Protected Harvest have started to provide measurement standards and certification programs for what constitutes a sustainably grown crop.

Sustainability issues are generally expressed in scientific and environmental terms, as well as in ethical terms of stewardship, but implementing change is a social challenge that entails, among other things, international and national law, urban planning and transport, local and individual lifestyles and ethical consumerism. “The relationship between human rights and human development, corporate power and environmental justice, global poverty and citizen action, suggest that responsible global citizenship is an inescapable element of what may at first glance seem to be simply matters of personal consumer and moral choice.”

Organic farming is the form of agriculture that relies on techniques such as crop rotation, green manure, compost and biological pest control to maintain soil productivity and control pests on a farm. Organic farming excludes or strictly limits the use of manufactured fertilizers, pesticides (which include herbicides, insecticides and fungicides), plant growth regulators such as hormones, livestock antibiotics, food additives, and genetically modified organisms.  

Organic agricultural methods are internationally regulated and legally enforced by many nations, based in large part on the standards set by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), an international umbrella organization for organic farming organizations established in 1972.

IFOAM defines the overarching goal of organic farming as:  “Organic agriculture is a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystems and people. It relies on ecological processes, biodiversity and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than the use of inputs with adverse effects. Organic agriculture combines tradition, innovation and science to benefit the shared environment and promote fair relationships and a good quality of life for all involved..”  — International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements

Since 1990, the market for organic products has grown from nothing, reaching $55 billion in 2009 according to Organic Monitor (www.organicmonitor.com). This demand has driven a similar increase in organically managed farmland. Approximately 37,000,000 hectares (91,000,000 acres) worldwide are now farmed organically, representing approximately 0.9 percent of total world farmland (2009).

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The next page is from an article about tea but I thought a lot of what I put below would help people understand the difference between organic and sustainable and Fair Trade.  The first few lines I put in bold because I want people to understand the dangers of toxic chemicals in coffee!  >> View Page 2