Blade by Blade: Examining the Industrial Organic

In the second part of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, Michael Pollan focuses on the pasture, noting how tied it is to human existence. While all flesh used to be grass, now a great deal of it is corn, thanks to our thriving food industry that is able to find every use imaginable for corn, from diapers to Twinkies. But as for the pastoral, Pollan spends a great deal of time in the second section of his book looking at how farm’s like Joel Salatin are very different from any USDA organic labels in the supermarket.

Pollan’s examination of the organic industry is at first, very discouraging. Consumers are, yet again being tricked by companies pocketing the money from their profits at the expense of a nation’s health. Like the term “authentic”, “organic” has come to mean many things, but with each welcoming of a wider definition of the word, it comes to mean much less in the eyes of the consumer. Who can we trust? Where do we turn to for food that is safe, unlabeled, and wholesome?

Reading this section of the book was difficult. After fully realizing the pitfalls and mercilessness of the food industry in the first part of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, I was absolutely fine with turning my back on the industry (for the most part), and looking towards the future of organic foods. Yet that too is an industry, as Pollan points out; an industry that has been infiltrated by the same crooks, finding shortcuts to quicker cash, and turning out to be not-so-earth-friendly as one would think.

Pollan is not afraid to get out there and investigate. He does the dirty work for us. Our job is to sit here and read every word of his report with horror. The ways in which he breaks down Whole Foods is fascinating, especially considering that their walls are covered with pictures of farmers who no longer provide food for the consumers of Whole Foods. The organic movement started off considerably hopeful, resisting the pull of the food industry for a great deal of time. But as the demand for organic foods grew, growers found they couldn’t supply the demand on their own without turning to industrial tools. And so, the organic industry was born.

Now, much larger companies own many of these once small and proud growers. While some companies work to improve the food industry and make organic growing more efficient, there are still many companies that fight to make the term “organic” as elastic as possible and to push the envelope as far as they can, without drawing too much attention to themselves.

While Pollan’s exploration of the organic industry doesn’t exactly leave one filled with an overwhelming sense of hope, he does lay out many of the positive as well as negative aspects of the industry, leaving the reader with a somewhat better sense of how to navigate it. What Pollan does best though, is that he provides the reader with awareness—one of the greatest tools we have against the food industry.