Are Wild Fish Too Natural to Be Organic?
Jacob Sullum | November 30, 2006, 12:22pm
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is trying to figure out what makes fish organic. If you're thinking it's all the carbon molecules, clearly you haven't been paying attention to the debate over which products should qualify for an "organic" label, which attracts consumers who are willing to pay more for food so they can feel better about eating it. Organic in this sense is not a chemical description but a set of seemingly abitrary rules that, like Jewish dietary laws, set one group of people apart from others. As with kosher food, some consumers believe "organic" food is healthier than conventional food. Others say it is better for the environment, or (in the case of dairy, egg, and meat products) less cruel to animals. But since the U.S. government started regulating use of the term, it is whatever the USDA says it is. For produce, it means no artificial pesticides or fertilizer. For livestock, it means organic feed, no antibiotics, and relatively roomy accommodations. But what does it mean for fish?
Companies that sell wild fish say nothing could be more natural. But keepers of the organic faith worry about depletion of fish stocks, which is bad for the environment, and insist that the "organic" label, strictly speaking, applies only to agriculture, which catching fish is not. In that sense, wild fish are too natural to be organic. There also are problems with farm-raised fish: overcrowding, polluted water, and the difficulty of finding organic feed for fish that eat other fish. An expert tells The New York Times that distinguishing between organic and convenional (inorganic?) fish "is a strange concept" and that "the more you look at it, particularly for particular kinds of fish, it gets even stranger.” Observant Jews have a much easier time: Anything with fins and scales will do.
dc | November 30, 2006, 2:01pm | #
I think you left off the biggest advantage of 'organic' (I hate the label, too--'organic salt' is hilarious): that it just fucking tastes goood. For serious. Maybe it's just cause I'm from SE Alaska where it's next to impossible to find a non-cardboard tomato or an orange with juice all the way through but really, guys, you should try this organic stuff, it'll blow your damn mind wide open.
My favorite organic product (and the hardest to give up--I'm currently not well-heeled enough to have my pick of nutritives) is probably milk. The difference is just night and day, to me. So much tastier, creamier, yummy-in-my-tummier... Also good bets: tomatoes, eggs, carrots, any fruit. Good organic food just blows the lid right off of megafarmed, refrigerated, artificially-"ripened" pieceofshit produce that is the bane of modern American life.
As an Alaskan, I have strong emotions about the fish thing as well. I suspect that what the organic-heads ought to be promoting in fish sales is wild-caught fish, as opposed to "farmed" fish (fish not agriculture whaaaa?). Real, wild Alaskan salmon... well, see the comments above on my organic food opinions. It just kicks the goddamn pants off of the pasty, white, mercury-laden lard-assed sorry sonsabitches they raise at fish farms.
I think it's strange that libertarian-types get their panties all in a twist about organic food (I see the Volokhers rant about it every so often, too). Doesn't make any sense to me. I think it's an involuntary reaction to the presence of hippies (totally understandable). But if you can stand their stench for long enough, I heartily encourage you to amble down to Trader Joe's or your local farmer's market and get yourself some real food. (And look for wild Alaskan salmon and halibut, while you're at it, it's seriously good and you'll be supporting independent Alaskan fishermen.) I see buying organic food/wild-caught fish as the perfect opportunity to show how capitalism and the market can actually work to promote quality and not just half-assed economies of scale. (And you'll be happier/healthier to boot.) Let's not doom the future to cheap schlocky chemical-ridden tomatoes and diseased inbred hemophiliac fish.
Remember, just cause hippies like it, doesn't necessarily mean it's bad (cases in point: drugs, Jimi Hendrix, the Adam West Batman, Herman Hesse).
Damn, now I'm hungry.
Robert Goodman | November 30, 2006, 4:14pm | #
"What food is organic is a philosophical question, and as with Kosher, the government shouldn't be meddling in what is basically a religious matter. Let environmental groups sort this out -- have a Green Council of Nicea, if you will. It's their orthodoxy, not mine."
Sorry, no can do. What happens when a court case comes up, in which the complainant seeks a refund for purchase of a product, saying it was incorrectly labeled "organic"?
It's the same issue as same-sex "marriage". Law & enforcement (courts, police) cannot stay out of determining the
fact of whether someone is married or whether a fish is organic. And that should depend on what understanding the parties had of the words, and that
should depend on custom and
should be determinable by some authority.
There are basically 2 ways to settle such questions. One is by decree, wherein the authority is installed in advance. That may be a regulatory agency, a legislature, a king, or an activist judge (ruling on what
should be rather than what is). The other way is by fact-finding, in which no particular authority is privileged, but is an authority on the basis of knowledge & reputation -- like the dictionary. I usually prefer the latter method, although the former does have the advantage of greater certainty. I see nothing wrong with privileging an authority to make up & define a
new term, such as when setting weights & measures using words with no history. (If there'd never before been such a thing as a "pound", and Congress wanted to define one, that's fine with me.)
Therefore I'd like to see the meaning of such things as "organic" and "married" worked out via common law of contract, wherein the court would try to determine what was in the minds of the persons using the words, with an eye toward custom. That does mean that at first there'd be considerable uncertainty, and therefore some loss by the early users of the terms, to the benefit (via precedent) of those who would come later. Fortunately that problem was worked out long ago for the terms "married", "spouse", etc., and it will only harm the legal system to attempt to change those understandings by decree.
It is always possible for private parties to gain certainty by themselves making reference to an authority when they use words like "organic". "This product organic XYZ", where XYZ is the name of an organization that defines the word a certain way, should provide sufficient factual basis to make any court determination easy. However, as long as there are courts, it will never be possible for them to avoid all fact finding regarding the meaning of words in contracts.
* * * * * *
Oh, and since the use of the word in the chemical sense
derives from earlier usage referring to living things, I'd say it should be possible to come up with a plausible distinction between "organic" and "inorganic" for substances containing no reduced carbon. For example, we could consider NaCl to be "organic" if obtained from the juice of a living thing -- from urine, for instance.
