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Are 'Natural, Organic, Eco-Friendly' Products Really What Label Claims?
Once upon a time, Burt Shavitz, a beekeeper in Dexter, sold honey in pickle jars from the back of his pickup truck. He lived in the wilderness in a turkey coop with no running water or electricity.
In 1984, he met named Roxanne Quimby and together they started a business of natural-inspired health care products made from honey, including the Burt's Bees line.
According to an Alernet.org article by Andrea Whitfill, the company was sold to Clorox in 2007 for more than $900 million. While Quimby lives off of her $300 million profit, Shavitz, at 73 and $4 million wealthier, "continues to reside amidst nature in his now-expanded turkey coop, which still remains absent of electricity or running water."
The point of this story should not be about what people do with their profits, but what happens to the quality of the products that consumers put their faith in because they come from independent, socially responsible entrepreneurs that are reputed to be natural, organic and/or eco-friendly.
Selling such a product to a company like Clorox, a bleach company with a history of using chemicals in its products that sometimes require warning labels, is enough to give any consumer pause.
Tom's of Maine, originally a small, environmentally conscious company, is now owned by Colgate-Palmolive, whose commodities include Ajax, Anbesol and Speed Stick. Ben & Jerry's ice cream was sold to Unilever, which also owns Breyers, in 2000 for more than $300 million.
Odwalla, which sold fresh-squeezed juices, is now owned by Coca-Cola, while Pepsi bought Naked Juice in 2006 for an estimated $450 million.
Bottled water is an issue all to itself. According to Whitfill, corporations are taking control of water supplies while promoting a larger market for bottled water and creating massive non-biodegradable waste from plastic bottles.
And frequently tap water is of higher quality and more closely tested than bottled.
"Contrary to the image of water flowing from pristine mountain springs, more than a quarter of bottled water actually comes from municipal water supplies," writes Michael Blanding, senior writer at Boston Magazine. "The industry is dominated by three companies, who together control more than half the market: Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle, which produces several 'local' brands, including Poland Spring, Arrowhead, Deer Park, Ozarka and Calistoga."
Now, time for breakfast. Apparently, Kashi cereals, catering to the healthy set, was bought out by Kellogg's, the 12th-largest company in North American food sales, according to Food Processing.
In 2004, Kraft Foods, producer of processed cheeses and Kool-Aid, and also a subsidiary of Altria, which owns Philip Morris USA, a cigarette producer, bought the natural-cereal maker Back to Nature.
It almost goes without saying that many of these kinds of corporate connections are kept under wraps, the consumer unaware.
And when the government certifies a food substance as "organic," it rarely has anything to do with an assessment of how it is locally produced or how workers are being treated, and so on.
"What's important to keep in mind is that these big corporations are getting into organics not because they have doubts about their prior business practices or doubts about chemical, industrial agriculture," asserts Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association.
"They're getting in because they want to make a lot of money."
It could be argued that capitalism, in this way, could create more niche markets when people shy away from buying mass-produced items, filling new voids.
And, it would be unrealistic to expect consumers to completely stop purchasing products of questionable origins, as if asking us to stop bathing, brushing our teeth, washing our clothes, cleaning our homes, eating, etc.
Yet consumer awareness needs to be raised about the products we spend our money on. Our health and the environment we live in should not be reduced to a "brand-image" concept that serves to benefit only industries and manufacturers.
Instinctively, I don't trust large conglomerates and corporations to provide me with a natural product. It's too likely that money corrupts even the most well-intentioned businesspeople, thereby ruining the concept of good and healthy products. I will always view a product from a cottage industry, an independent producer, the local little guy, with a tad more respect than the mass-produced one.
Yes, powerful conglomerates have big marketing budgets and existing distribution systems that can get items in the hands of more people.
But, do they really care as much about the concerns of the knowledgeable buyer?
Are the original contents, recipes and production methods used by the founders of these brands being altered? Is there a deterioration in quality?
It's hard to know because, these days, it's just too difficult to figure out who owns what.
9 Comments so far
Show AllYes,that is why I purchase local from farmers markets and my local Co-Op as much as is possible and if you can grow some of your own food that is even better. Also, I do not eat meat and shop as little that is possible, at the big food chain stores who are now jumping on the Organic wagon.
See http://www.organicconsumers.org/Organic/orgChart.pdf for a 2007 chart showing the corporate ownership of many once-independent organic brands
and an earlier version at http://www.organicconsumers.org/Corp/mergers.cfm
"It's too likely that money corrupts even the most well-intentioned businesspeople, thereby ruining the concept of good and healthy products."
Unless politicians are immune to money corruption, why do we insist on letting them decide when We the People can make all the decisions direct democratically? If you don't like what the public decides you have an equal chance to change it.
Implicit in this wave of corporate buy-outs of formerly organic brands is a tacit admission from the food giants: they are fully aware of the public attitude to their flagship products, and their bloated corporate bureaucracies are capable of only one thing...buying up the competition.
While I do not begrudge those entrepreneurs who took advantage of their hard work and cased out when the time was right for them in their lives, I would like to see an organic brand or two remain in its' original hands...Whole Foods notwithstanding.
In the beginning there was the "Word". The word was "Organic". In an effort to standardize the production of organic food, and protect consumers the fledgling producers sold the "Word" to the federal government. The oversight of the "Word" was sold to certifying agencies, who charged the producers to use the "Word". Small growers and producers who used their own income to subsidize the participation and contribution to local markets were eliminated from the fuzzy warmth of the "Word". Their association with the "Word" was severed, and local small growers were left to 'wither on the vine'. Successive legislation regarding the "Word" has without exception favored large business practices. Struggling growers and marketers have found themselves in an economic hold that does not favor survival.
This is just another example of capitalism and government cooperating to the exclusion of local control of the economy. Until people take back the rights of expression the "Word" will be with us and them.
It is not the corporation that is the problem, but rather it is the ownership of the corporation by another corporation that results in much of the ills that we attribute to the corporations in that it has enabled the greedy and immoral to accumulate control of the economy far beyond their contributions to it. A corporation is created and granted a charter for a purpose. But when a corporation is bought by another corporation it almost always becomes a mute slave of the other corporation who for the most part is concerned only with short-term profit. Our system has legitimized the use of "slave corporations".
It is a blatent hypocracy when corporations claim the right to personhood and all its rights while claiming the right to own other corporations. If a corporation is a person in law how then can it own or be owned by another person when such is forbidden in our laws?
A corporation that is free can concentrate on the task that it was incorporated for. The ownership will tend to know the business and take a longer term interest in the business, and likely have some pride in the business, their reputation, and connection with the customers. A slave corporation will more likely tend to the short-term happiness of its owner's need for profit and quite likely its owner will have little interest or pride in the business beyond the bottom line.
It is time to talk about ending corporate slavery, about emancipating the slave-corporations so that only free corporations can do business here.
And if we still had some say in what "organic" means a good place to start would be to push to have "organic" mean that the producer of the product was either an individual, a co-op or a free-corporation.
This is one of the many obvious reasons why the far left promotes localism. Exchange only with those you know and trust, knowing that blind exchange with strangers leads to deception, exploitation, destruction.
You can image extending the organic certification to localist certification. Localist production that holds to a certain set of fair trade, full costs, truthful marketing principles, same way organic certification holds to certain production principles. Local producers can for example pledge to NOT seek to control or manipulate markets or market demands. Certification can require asset ownership and enterprise size be limited to ten man-powers, and distribution limits to 100 miles. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more benefits awaiting the people when they up the ante on production certification. Get to work, people!
The United States government regulates the organic industry through the Dept of Agriculture, and hierarchy of agencies. Check out the site for yourselves. These are the same people who regulate hot dogs. These regulations have been governed by executive order and memorandum during the bush white house years. Question, ... Do you think that non organized individual consumers have a voice in the organic food industry?
What is going on here is the big capitalist vs the little capitalist, or as what Marx called the bourgeoisie vs the petit bourgeoisie. While some little capitalists will provide good jobs, better, healthier and maybe more sustainable products, they still operate within the larger global capitalist system - whether they like it or not. So, while buying local, organic, whatever, is a good idea, it is not "the solution" as demonstrated by the above article. The real solution requires addressing the system of capitalism itself whose goal will never be health or sustainability, but the maximization of profit, regardless of the costs to our health, our community, or ultimately, the planet.