What is the difference between organic and non-organic?

Answer 1

The difference is that organic, in some cases, like milk, can be healthier. Also, organic foods are thoroughly checked for pesticides to make it healthier and taste better. This also goes for cheese and other dairy products.

Organic foods must be certified and have the certifying company indicated. Organic food must meet standards as set out in the US Organic Food Production Act 1990 or in Canada the Organic Productions Regulations.

Organic farming takes into account the effect on the environment and works to function in protection of the land. Consequently, the soil is rich in nutrients, producing healthy plants. No harsh chemical pesticides are used. No genetically modified organisms or genetically modified foods (as they are sometimes called) are permitted. Irradiation is not used as a method of preservation. Hormones in the rearing of livestock isn't used.

Organic food also limits permitted food additives. Keeping these to natural.

Also, organic food has more insect damage because growers can't use insecticides. And organic produce is usually smaller because growers can't use fertilizers, or herbicides, which would reduce competition from weeds. And it is less nutritious because the competing weeds "steal" some of the nutrients the plants need. And organic food is usually more costly, because 1, growing foods without all the conventional methods is more costly, and 2, yields are usually less, so cost has to be spread out over smaller quantities.

In addition, organic food will generally spoil more quickly than conventional food. Organic food manufacturers are not allowed to add preservatives to food or to irradiate it, techniques that increase the shelf-life of foods. For some reason, organic promoters talk about preservatives and irradiation as if they are BAD things, but I've never seen any evidence that this is true. Frankly, I don't see how anyone could make the case that stopping food from spoiling is anything but good. Spoiled food is not healthy. It makes you sick. It can even kill you. So what's wrong with adding something that keeps it from spoiling? Beats me.

Organic food is also not allowed to have any "growth hormones" added. This is another thing that I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Growth hormones make animals grow bigger and faster. This results in more food on your plate for less money. Good thing, right? But the organic promoters claim there are adverse effects on human health from consuming these hormones. Again, I've never seen any evidence that this is true. But on its surface, it seems ridiculous to me. The animals don't just STORE these hormones in their tissue, to be consumed later by humans eating the meat. The hormones are USED by the bodies to put on more weight, and are no longer present in the tissue after they are used, and therefore are not present in the meat produced from the animals.

Organic growers are also not allowed to use "genetically modified" ("GM") crop seeds. Crops like corn, soybeans, cotton, and others have been genetically modified by seed companies to include certain genes that do not occur naturally in these crops. One of these genes (known as the "Roundup Ready" gene) makes the crop resistant to the herbicide glyphosate (trade name Roundup). This allows crop farmers to broadcast Roundup directly on crops to kill weeds without worrying about killing the crops themselves. Roundup is very cheap, very effective, and very safe to humans (cup for cup, coffee will kill you a lot quicker than straight Roundup will). Introduction of this gene saves farmers billions of dollars that would have been spent on more costly herbicides and more costly application methods, and they pass these savings on to consumers. It also minimizes contamination of the environment by herbicides. Another GM gene is the "Bt" gene. This gene was taken from a bacteria species, Bacillus thuringiensis, which produces a protein that kills insects. When this gene is added to a crop, the plant produces the insecticidal protein and stores it in its tissue, so that any insect attacking the plant will die. Because the plant has a built-in insecticide, farmers don't have to spray huge quantities of insecticides over large areas, possibly contaminating water sources (considering drift) and poisoning beneficial insects and other animal species. And you don't have to worry about killing other insects or hurting wildlife because the only species that are going to be poisoned are the ones that are attacking the crops, and by definition, they're not beneficial. And as soon as the plant dies, it stops producing the protein, and it breaks down long before anyone consumes the food. How anyone could call this a "bad" thing, I haven't a clue. But, right or wrong, organic growers are dead set against genetic modification, in all its forms. In fact, that's one of the few things they are all in 100% agreement about when it comes to defining what is and what is not "organic" (there's actually a lot of disagreement even among "organic" growers on how to define it). But these genetic modifications significantly reduce the cost of growing crops while simultaneously increasing yields by preventing loss due to pest infestations. And they minimize the environmental impact of conventional farming as well.

But speaking of the environment, there's one way in which growing organic foods is more harmful to the environment than conventional foods. Because organic growers can't use man-made fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, genetically modified seeds, and all the other modern innovations that result in the high yields that conventional farmers obtain, it takes more acreage to grow a given quantity of organic food than the same quantity of conventional food. But the world only has so many acres of land available for farming. Pretty much all of the "good" farming land is already being used for farming. The more agricultural production is converted to organic, the more land will be required to keep the production high enough to feed the world. But to get more land, we have to start using land that is not so suitable for farming, meaning we'll require even more land, because even compared to organic crops on good farmland, organic crops planted on forest land CONVERTED to farm land get lousy yields. So you're going to have to use several times as much land. For example, say you can grow 100 bushels of conventional corn on good farm land, but only 50 bushels of organic corn on the same land. You're going to have to get another whole acre of good farmland to maintain production at 100 bushels if you convert to organic. But there's no more "good" farm land available, so you're going to have to clear some forest land. But that forest land gets half the yield that good farm land gets, so you really need to clear 2 acres of forest land, plus the original acre of good land, to grow 100 bushels of organic corn. When you do the math, you discover that it takes THREE TIMES as much land to grow 100 bushels of organic corn as it does to grow the same quantity of conventional corn. So. Where are we going to get all this additional acreage from? Just to maintain our ability to feed the world's population, we'll have to chop down billions and billions of acres of forest land. In fact, I believe we could clear every acre of forest in the world, and it still wouldn't give us enough cropland to feed the world. But that will never happen. Nevertheless, keep in mind when you are considering buying organic food, that everything you eat requires three times as much land to grow as conventional food. If it takes an acre of conventionally-grown food to feed one person, then for every person who switches to organic food, it will take an additional TWO acres, of converted FOREST land, to supply the same amount of organic food. Do you want two acres of forest land to be cut down so you can have your organic food?

Whether organic food "tastes better" is very subjective and dependent upon the taste buds of the consumer, so a blanket statement like the one in the first answer is patently ridiculous. However, for consumers who are accustomed to the taste of conventional foods, organic foods will, in most cases, taste worse than conventional foods. There is a reason that beef is advertised as "grain fed" or "corn fed". It's because feeding grains to cattle results in more "marbling" than feeding them grass. The marbling makes beef taste better - and that is as close as you can get to an objective fact in this subjective area. But, usually, organic beef is fed grass. And it won't taste good at all to people who are used to grain-fed beef.

Furthermore, organic food is NOT healthier than conventional food. That's an advertising ploy used to convince you to part with more of your hard-earned money for less food and less healthy food. It is true that organic foods are not contaminated by pesticides. But for the most part, neither is conventional food. It's not like the farmers are spraying a gallon of methyl parathion on every head of lettuce before they ship it to the grocery store. Conventional farmers do not spray anything directly on produce. On the non-edible parts of the plant, sure; on the soil, definitely; but not on the edible parts of the plant. Also, most of these pesticides break down rapidly in the environment, leaving little if any residue on plants or their edible parts. For grains and other row crops, we don't consume those directly - they go through several stages of processing (for example, wheat is threshed, then milled into flour, then baked into bread), and by the time they get to our table, the product is fundamentally changed, and herbicides just don't survive all those processes. So much of this "concern" about herbicides in food is just undue alarmism. The fact is, there has never been a reported case of human death due to pesticide contamination of food. On the other hand, ORGANIC food DOES constitute a very REAL risk of death. Organic growers are not allowed to use man-made fertilizers. So they use manure (usually from cattle) instead. But cattle manure contains E coli bacteria. If you're wondering where you've heard that term, E coli, before, that's the bacteria that has caused several outbreaks of food poisoning in the US and around the world in recent years. If this stuff gets on produce, it makes people very sick, and some of them die. The last outbreak of E coli in the US (I think it was in 2006 or 2007) was traced to spinach from an ORGANIC grower, which was contaminated by cattle manure. That outbreak killed 6 people and made hundreds more sick.

(Note: You can get E coli from conventional ground beef, which includes most of the animal that cannot be used as higher cuts like steak or roasts. Some of this tissue comes from near the anus, and if the slaughterhouse is not careful, they can get a little manure in the ground beef, thus introducing E coli into the product. But this is just as true for organic beef as it is for conventional beef, so organic ground beef is not any healthier than conventional in this regard. But conventionally-grown crops do NOT use manure as fertilizer. So, clearly, organic produce is far LESS healthy than conventional produce.)

You see, these are all the things the organic foods lobby doesn't want you to know about. They advertise it as "sustainable", but it takes three times as much land to grow it. They advertise it as "healthy", but it's lacking in nutrients and potentially contains E coli. They say it "tastes better", but that's subjective, and, to the extent that it can be tested objectively, totally false. Is there anything they won't LIE about to you? Well, the price. They can't lie to you about that because it's right there on the sticker, three times as high as the conventional product right next to it. Do you really want to pay three times as much for food that 1) is not as healthy, 2) potentially causes food poisoning, 3) doesn't taste as good, and 4) does more harm to the environment? I didn't think so.

Answer 2

Organic is all natural and made from the Earth. Non organic uses chemicals and man made products.