organic food

The Cornucopia Institute, an organic food industry watchdog group, said it filed a letter with the U.S. Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission opposing the proposed acquisition of WhiteWave Foods by French dairy giant, Groupe Danone, for about $10 billion.

The organic food industry is feeling threatened by a new label on the shelf: “Non-GMO Project Verified.” Organic farmers and manufacturers told NPR that they’re afraid customers don’t realize that non-GMO foods can still be grown with conventional methods, including chemical sprays and synthetic fertilizers.

A report written by a non-profit research center aligned with the organic industry said, “The best choice that consumers can make to combat antibiotic resistance and protect themselves from antibiotic-resistant bacteria is to choose organic.”

Paris-based Danone SA reached a deal to buy WhiteWave Foods for $10.4 billion, a merger "that would hand it a slice of the fast-growing market for organic food and more than double its North American revenue," said the Wall Street Journal. Organic food is 5 percent of the U.S. food sales, with large annual increases.

Virtually no organic honey sold commercially in the U.S. comes from domestic hives, as commodity-crop farmers convert ever more grassland into cropland, leaving honeybees with fewer pesticide-free fields to forage, reports Civil Eats. North Dakota, for instance, which produces more honey than any other state, lost more than 100,000 acres of grassland over the past decade.

Known for his advice, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants," author Michael Pollan says the food system looks much like it did 10 years when he published "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Yet, Pollan tells the website New Food Economy, "The simple question that got me started on the book — where does your food come from? — is now front-of-mind for a lot of people."