Australian Organic Label Needs Work

"Consumers are being led down the garden path when it comes to organic food product certification, advocates of organic farming say. Organic food is big business and local growers are concerned organic certification is being taken advantage of by large wholesalers. Rosheen Holland, who owns Good Earth Garden, a 0.8-hectare organic vegetable farm on Gabriola Island, says provincial and newly formed federal certification doesn’t go far enough to determine what is and isn’t organic.

"We need to have organic food checked in a lab and tested like other food", she said. "Some items being sold as organic are of much lower nutritional quality. Large organic wholesalers don’t use minerals to grow food because it's too expensive.”
Holland says the vegetables she and her husband grow are rich in minerals, have strong nutritional value and are grown as naturally as possible. "Our vegetables keep for three weeks in the fridge", she said. "People are amazed by that. It shows there is good cellular structure." The problem, says Sandra Mark of Edible Strategies, a Vancouver Island-based organization that works to educate the public on food security, is organic food is self-audited by growers, leaving the door open for deception."

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