ORGANIC FIGHTS BACK

Consumers want organic foods, and are willing to pay, even though they're constantly being told (falsely) that such foods are no more nutritious or less harmful than conventional. The only major obstacle is the credibility of the "organic" designation. Last week, that obstacle was flattened - at least for now. A rider to the 2003 spending bill, "Written for the benefit of a Georgia poultry farm, would have allowed farmers to label meat and dairy products as organic without using 100 percent organic feed if the price of organic feed was more than twice that of conventional feed." Thanks to Patrick Leahy and Sam Farr, this BS was eliminated from the bill. As to the anti-organic rider, "it was just such a sleazy way of going about it because consumers wouldn't know what they were buying," said Barbara Haumann, spokeswoman for the Organic Trade Association. Yep, sleazy - the meat industry's middle name.