Re: Organic definitions
It seems that there are at least a few definitions out there that people have in mind when they use the term, whether or not they are being used correctly is another question.
Here is a place that may help your research.
http://www.ocia.org/
Organic Crop Improvement Association
One example: beef and other cow by-produccts (eggs, butter, dairy, cheese) from organically raised cows. This menas the cows should not have been raised on hormones and steroids so as to increase their production of milk, or make their body parts (future steaks and roasts) bigger. This also means the cows were not fed grains, grasses or other cows (as in dead cows turned into feed for live cows) that had been treated with chemicals, pesticides, hormones or steroids. Even when all of this is done to the strictest letter of the concept, these cows still have to breath air and drink water and generally be exposed to the same environmental elements all of us do. Do they get special air to help keep them organic? I doubt it. Are they given only pure spring or distilled water to drink? Possible, but I doubt it. Were they kept in a bubble to shield them from the various hazzards of the enviornment? No likely. Still, a good idea with practical limitations. These limitations themselves could become a lot closer to eliminated if people in large numbers were to become inclined and united to make it so, but for now this is an unfulfilled and fanciful pipedream.
My opinion is that like a lot of things in this world, the idea of growing organically started out as a good one but as it evolved it became more about control - not to provide for the common good of all, but to protect for the common profit of a few at the expense of the rest. As far as this goes, the addition of "certified organic" to the overall formula and intention of the idea may also have been for good inentions and reasons looking to build on providing good benefits, but this component has evolved to also contribute to the overall condition of tightly controlling and regulating something so as to make it easier for a few to profit at the expense of the rest. Despite all of this, I still support the small business person, the momNpops and the little dirt farmers over the corporate controllers, and will continue to do so any and every day of the week. If momNpop happen to be offering a product advertised as organically grown and or certified, chances are good I may try it.
The idea in an of itself is still a good one, still valid. The thing that's become difficult to stomach is, to repeat, like a lot of things, the system of control and regulation that's evolved and grown up around the idea that eventually stifles and dictates exacty how the idea gets implemented.