Have you purchased organic food and wondered what the chemical is that you need to wash off?

Those are alkaline wax-based coatings, designed to preserve food so it looks nice longer. Just like conventional growers use. But chemical wax coatings made including olive bud oil don't prevent fungi and bacteria common in organic food, and a new program would like to change that.

In a world of instant information, it is very challenging to deceive the public for long, so the organic industry, now in its third official decade, has been forced to stop claiming its products are healthier or better for the environment. Those claims have been debunked for decades and with a $135 billion industry, lucrative enough to be legally actionable. They can't even claim they support small farms, since 2,000,000 family farms produce all but 0.004 of conventional food.

That leaves the marketing representatives who control the National Organic Standards Board within USDA - a special marketing segment that incoming Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins should disband(1) - only able to claim they don't use "synthetic" pesticides. They're still toxic. Copper sulfate, the most popular organic pesticide, is actually more toxic to aquatic wildlife than its modern successors like atrazine, it just works poorly on what it is supposed to work on, but somehow organic consumers believe old is better.

Yet as the industry has grown, marketing representatives have faced a larger problem than how to undermine other farmers without enraging the USDA that allows them to exist. They have to worry about spoilage. To help with that, USDA has awarded the University of Tennessee a $3.5 million grant to study how "oil emulsion coatings" could extend the shelf life of organic food and make it more safe than it is now.

That's right, the organic industry wants to use chemicals to preserve its produce. The trick is how to do it without exempting yet another synthetic chemical so food can still be called Organic.


The organic industry now exempts alkaline wax-based coatings so they can be sprayed on organic food to improve shelf life without disclosure. Organic farmers want scientists to create one that also prevents bacteria and fungi.

Some chemicals already exist for the organic process but while they increase shelf life they don't prevent foodborne bacteria - and if you are growing food with manure you have far more bacteria. Organic shoppers are turned off when they are told that alkaline wax-based coatings on their expensive food are somehow healthier and more natural than alkaline was-based coatings on more affordable food. Being framed as "olive bud oil" is about as convincing as being told "raw milk" mystical health benefits are worth getting Bird Flu.

The academics want to use essential oils in commercial coatings to stay within organic marketing perception yet improve shelf life by reducing cosmetic decay. As the industry has grown, people have become more skeptical of the organic process. Though farmers still charge a premium, the base isn't growing, so they have to reduce losses to maintain profits.  

The problem will remain that organic shoppers, who are primarily wealthier and have never visited a farm, seem to believe organic food can be plucked right out of the ground and eaten without risk. Will they balk when being told their acidic coating is "organic" because it is not conventional wax but they still need to wash their food? The first targets for the science experiments are apricots, blueberries, cantaloupe, peppers, and tomatoes and we'll have to see how they do.

If it works, organic consumers will certainly buy produce with this new chemical coating. It is only a marketing problem, and brilliant marketing strategy is how the whole industry grew to that size in just 25 years.

NOTE:

(1) If not disband - it is a $135 billion industry and USDA considered all farmers *good* farmers - then at least hold them to the same standard competitors have. Right now, there is no surprise spot testing of organic farms and the 'certification' is done by over 70 groups chosen by the NOSB panel. Groups that only make money selling organic certifications. There is no mandatory record-keeping, they exempt themselves. California was the only state that required the organic industry to list its pesticides and stopped after we showed that in the state, organic farming was using up to 600% more chemicals per calorie than normal farmers.