THE SELLING OF THE O WORD

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The second question stirs even murkier waters. An organic carrot looks like an inorganic carrot. The only obvious difference is the price: 15%, 30%, maybe even 100%o more. So how do shoppers know they are getting what they pay for-and-nothing else? Won't some conventional growers be tempted to lie and pocket the extra income?

The answer to both questions hinges on one word: certification. There needs to be a mechanism both for strictly defining organ ic and for ensuring compliance with that definition. As one California grower said, "Certification is the only way to turn this movement into an industry."

And that's where the real confusion begins. A bewildering potpourri of certification groups and standards have sprung up to address these concerns. For instance, two years ago the California supermarket chain Raley's began selling produce that was certified by NutriClean, an independent laboratory, as having "no detected pesticide residue." The promotion was a tremendous success: "We've never had an ad campaign as successful as this one," a store spokesperson said. Since then supermarket chains as far east as New York have gotten in on the act, spending as much as $20,000 a month to get some of their produce certified as clean by NutriClean.

O rganic's marriage of healthy food and healthy environment is currently intact—but under attack.

The "new" organic grower: megafarmers who use $80,000 Salad Vacs to suck pests off eight rows at once.

But are NutriClean grapes, carrots and potatoes organic? Many people are reluctant to say so. Bob Scowcroft is executive director of California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), the country's oldest and largest certification group. (CCOF's 500 growers raise 84 crops, from almonds to worms, on farms ranging from 1/10 acre to 2,630 acres.) Scowcroft, who calls himself "one of the first organic bureaucrats," is quick to point out that pesticide-free does not equal organic. "What about growing practices? Does the grower mine or build the soil? Is he working toward a sustainable system or using techniques that have harmful effects on the environment?"

Stan Rhodes, president of NutriClean, concedes the difference: "NutriClean does not certify growers; we certify fields of food."

He doesn't deny that his growers may use a pesticide, but he claims, "If they use it, we test for it." He even readily admits that food his company approves isn't absolutely clean. "No food is. We're not living in the Garden of Eden anymore. When you test down to levels of five and six parts per billion, you'll find residues in all food." Still, Rhodes's state-of-the-art testing technology and strict standards offer much greater assurance of food purity than do our government testing programs (see the sidebar "Is Our Food Safe?"). But if that's all there is to certification, the issue is trivialized to a game of Beat the Test. To address the larger questions of growing practices, most other certifiers take a broader approach.

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