USA: campaign against booming organic industry?

As Americans become increasingly aware of the story behind conventional foods, the agrochemical industry has launched a media offensive against the booming organic industry, the Cornucopia Institute reports. The agrochemical industry’s communications specialists have apparently found partners in major media outlets in the USA, like The New York Times and Time magazine, which have recently published articles discouraging people from buying organic foods.

The message is nearly always the same, as industry-friendly researchers and reporters downplay the role and harm caused by agricultural chemicals and focus instead on the differences between a handful of common nutrients, according to the Cornucopia Intitute. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, the conclusion is always that organic foods are not worth the extra price because the nutritional differences are minimal.

In Time magazine, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who once told  viewers that he wanted them to eat organic foods, seems to have changed his tune and turned the decision to buy organic foods into a political and class issue. Dr. Oz wrote that conventional foods are nutritionally equal to organic foods without mentioning pesticide contamination and called buyers of organics “elitist.” The Time cover story on “What to Eat Now” by Dr. Mehmet Oz is available to Time subscribers here: http://www.time.com. Excerpts from the article, with Cornucopia’s responses from Cornucopia Policy Director, Charlotte Vallaeys, are available here: http://www.cornucopia.org