No longer trusting the labels
An opinion piece in the current edition of High Country News really caught my attention. In “‘Organic’ Goes Down a Slippery Slope,” author Ari Levaux writes: “Even as the demand for organic food continues to explode, organic farmers in America are getting thrown under the very beet cart they helped to build.”
The problem, according to Levaux, is that American-based multinational food corporations have hijacked the very organic bandwagon they recently jumped onto. He cites what happened when mega-corporation Dean Foods acquired Silk products, formerly known as WhiteWave Silk. The cartons of Silk soymilk sold in most supermarkets today still say Distributed by WhiteWave of Colorado and Made in USA, but are no longer labeled organic. I wonder how a product containing Chinese soybeans can be “Made” in USA. Perhaps it would be more honest to say Assembled in USA from imported ingredients.
It’s one thing to buy T-shirts and sneakers from Chinese companies but most of us have a different feeling about food. After melamine in milk products imported from China sickened many children, we are justifiably leery of ingesting an imported dairy product. But some Silk products are now processed with the neurotoxin hexane, listed by the EPA as an air pollutant, according to Levaux. Yet hexane-processed soymilk may be labeled “natural” in this country.
As a fan of the original WhiteWave Silk soymilk, I noticed the label change and asked for, but never received, a definitive answer from grocers. Under the new ownership, Silk gained a wider presence on supermarket shelves and dairy cases, where once it was available only in natural food markets.
WhiteWave had always been committed to supporting domestic organic farmers but that is no longer the case. Dean Foods notified all Silk’s organic soybean farmers that they would have to meet the much lower price of Chinese soybeans. And, as soy is a labor-intensive crop, they could not meet that price with higher local costs.
What we’re seeing here is a disturbing trend in this country’s food producing and distributing companies. Large conglomerates buy up innovative small companies with trusted products and good names. They retain the name and packaging, cashing in on the hard work and marketing done by the original developers. One has to read the labels very carefully to discover what has been lost in the transition.
I’ve checked out Yoplait, once the yogurt of choice for those who cared about quality, originally made in France. Now the label includes high fructose corn syrup and is considered by nutritionists and whole food experts as close to the bottom for quality, replaced at the top by domestically produced Stonyfield Farm organics of Londonderry, New Hampshire.
Consumers have a hard time keeping up with unwelcome changes to their favorite foods and brands. Who has time to check out the Web sites of every product they buy? And companies with something to hide aren’t forced to disclose cheap substitutes for quality ingredients. Of course, the sites just tell what they want us to know. And food-labeling laws are much less rigorous in this country than in Europe where farming practices and food production laws are written for consumer and environmental protection.
Here, such legislation is written by lobbyists for the enrichment of their corporate clients in agribusiness and food processing, whose success is measured not by quality but by their increased stock price. They’ve joined the burgeoning organic movement solely to regain market share. And we lose.
So in my quest to find organic foods made from domestic ingredients, particularly soybeans, I discovered that Organic Valley makes a vanilla soymilk (perfect on bland-tasting natural cereals) that caries the USDA Organic and Oregon Tilth Organic certifications. The dietary fiber listed on the label comes entirely from organic domestically grown soybeans. Organic Valley Family of Farms is also the largest organic farmer-owned cooperative in America. Its soybeans are identity-protected and not genetically modified. The Web site even has a link called Find Your Farmer, which you can access by typing in the day, month and year printed on the top of the carton you’ve purchased. Amazing.
As usual, my first attempt to find my farmer failed because the only number I could see on the carton was the expiration date, which was automatically rejected as invalid. I will solve this minor glitch when I have more time.
Meanwhile, it seems we’re going to have to be more diligent about where our food comes from and what adulterations it may contain. My old practice of sticking with the company name I know henceforth comes with a caveat: May include ingredients from China. Label certifications, like Natural and USDA Inspected, don’t mean beans, at least not soybeans.