Is organic food worth the cost ?
source: mother nature network By Russell McLendonFri, Oct 08 2010 at 11:09 AM EST
U.S. organic farming has grown wildly for the last two decades, but with food demand rising and cash-strapped shoppers pinching pennies, are greener still the place to be?
美國有機農場近二十年來如雨後春筍般冒出 但隨著食物需求上升以及現金拮据的購物者縮緊褲帶 錙銖必較 環保有機農場仍舊是值得前進的地方嗎?
organic growth有機生長
Certified organic farmland has spread rapidly across the U.S in the past decade,with more consumers now paying extra to avoid potential dangers like pesticide residues on their food.
經過認證的有機農田在過去十年迅速蔓延整個美國，現在更多的消費者支付額外以避免潛在的危險如農藥殘留的食物。
The phrase "organic farming" was coined in 1940 by Lord Northbourne, a British author and Olympic athlete who helped launch the organic movement. Joined by fellow organic pioneers like J.I. Rodale, Lady Eve Balfour and Albert Howard, he championed farms as natural ecosystems, and railed against chemical fertilizers and pesticides. "The farm itself must have a biological completeness," he wrote. "It must be a living entity ... which has within itself a balanced organic life."
“有機農業”這個詞彙是在1940年由Northbourne勳爵創造，這位英國作家暨奧運會運動員幫助發起了有機運動。這些有機農業先驅者如JJ.羅達爾，夏娃貝爾福夫人和阿爾伯特霍華德，他倡導農場應有其自然生態系統並對化肥和農藥抱怨。他說：“農業生物本身必須具有生物完整性，”他寫道。 “它必須是一個有生命的實體 ... ...它本身就是一個平衡的有機生活。”
While those words still resonate with many farmers and shoppers today, however, they were drowned out for decades by famine. Earth's human population grew 293 percent in the 20th century — compared with an average of 22 percent each of the previous nine centuries — and farmers couldn't keep up. As hunger spread, an Iowa agronomist named Norman Borlaug came to the rescue in the early '40s, using manmade pesticides, fertilizers and crossbred crops to start the Green Revolution, which saved countless lives and won him the 1970 Nobel Prize.
在今天這些話，對許多農民和消費者依然鏗鏘有力，但是，他們已經被幾十年的飢荒給淹沒了。地球上的人口-相較於每前九個世紀平均22％的增長相比-已在20世紀增長了293％ - 農民根本無法跟上。由於飢餓的蔓延，在40年代早期，愛荷華州一名為諾曼博洛格農學家趕來營救，使用人工殺蟲劑，化肥和雜交作物開始的綠色革命，挽救了無數生命，他贏得了1970年諾貝爾獎。
It also highlighted a common critique of organic farming: It's already hard to feed billions of people, even without rules against spraying chemicals or swapping genes. Borlaug's methods often raised yields while reducing acreage, and it seemed for years he'd proven the organic movement wrong.
它也強調了一個常見的對有機農業批判：那就是: 即使對噴灑化學品或基因交換沒有規範，它已經很難養活數十億人。博洛格的方法經常提高產量，同時減少種植面積，多年來他似乎已證明了有機運動的錯誤。
But "chemical farming," as Lord Northbourne called it, lost some luster when synthetic pesticides and fertilizers were linked to environmental ills like cancer, blue baby syndrome, dying eagles and dead zones. Ecologists warned of gene pollution from genetically modified organisms, and overuse of livestock antibiotics was widely blamed for drug-resistant "superbugs." This created an opening for organic farming in the late 20th century, and today there are an estimated 1.4 million organic farms worldwide, including some 13,000 certified in the U.S. Yet despite these gains, organic farms still struggle to match the output of conventional ones — no small detail since there are now about 6.9 billion people on Earth, three times the 1940 population. And with that number forecast to hit 9 billion by 2050, the future of organic farming remains unclear.
但“化學農業”就如Northbourne宣稱，當合成農藥和化肥對環境有聯繫的弊病，如癌症，藍嬰症候群，瀕死的禿鷹和死亡區域 (The giant, lifeless expanse appears every summer, but historic flooding along the Mississippi River could make 2011 a record-breaking year).使其光澤銳減。生態學家警告說，轉基因生物的基因污染，以及過度使用抗生素的家畜被廣泛指責為抗藥性“超級細菌”。這使有機農業在20世紀末開放，今天估計世界各地有140萬個有機農場，包括在美國已獲認證的 13,000個。儘管有這些收益，有機農場仍然抗爭，以配合常規的輸出 – 粗估因為現在在地球上有69億人，此是1940年人口的三倍。而隨著這一數字預計到2050年將達到90億，未來有機農業仍動向未明。
It often seems especially murky during economic dips like the recent recession, when higher-priced products of all kinds tend to suffer. But does organic food's premium price translate into any real health or environmental benefits? Critics like Alex Avery don't think so — the conservative author and researcher has compared "organic-food fanatics" to the terrorist group Hezbollah, and wrote a book in 2006 called "The Truth About Organic Foods" that, according to his website, "strips bare organic myths." While supporters say organic farming merely reveals the true cost of food, Avery and other critics say it makes food unaffordable. Aside from supporting synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, they've focused their ire lately on critics of genetically modified organisms. "For nearly a decade these agri-extremists have attempted to totally block agricultural biotechnology," Avery wrote in 2003, calling GMOs "the most important and critically needed agricultural advance in human history."
如最近的衰退時期經濟特別顯得低迷，價格較高的產品傾向受到影響。但有機食品的溢價真能轉化為實際的健康或對環境助益嗎？批評者像亞歷艾利不這麼認為 - 保守的作者和研究人員比擬了“有機食品的狂熱分子”如恐怖組織真主黨，並在2006年寫了一本書名為“關於有機食品的真相”，根據他的網站， “裸露的有機神話。”雖然有機農業的支持者說有機食品只是揭示了食品的真實成本，艾利和其他批評者認為它使食物無法承受。除了支持化學合成的農藥和化肥，他們已經關注他們最近對轉基因生物體不滿的批評。 “近十年這些農業極端分子企圖完全阻止農業生物技術，”艾弗里在2003年寫到，稱轉基因生物“是人類歷史前進的最重要和最急需的農業。”
For more on the backstory, upsides and downsides of organic farming, below is a look at how the field has evolved over the last 70 years, and what might happen next.
欲了解有關背景故事，對等和有機耕作的缺點，下面是過去70年此領域怎麼發展，未來將會發生什麼。
A brief history of organic farming
有機農業簡史
Early farmers had no choice but organic farming, and they still achieved some major milestones over the years, like taming the first grains in Mesopotamia or turning a thin grass called teosinte into plump, protein-packed corn.
早期的農民只能發展有機農業，多年來他們仍然取得了一些重大的里程碑，如在美索不達米亞改良的第一批作物，或把將瘦小的墨西哥類蜀黍變成豐滿，蛋白質含量豐富的玉米。
Agriculture has stayed largely organic for most of its 10,000-year history, from the first Fertile Crescent plots to the plantations of colonial America. Some plants would control pests and soil quality naturally, and humans helped by rotating their crops; if extra fertilizer was needed, manure usually filled in. But some farmers used toxic additives as early as 4,500 years ago, when Sumerians dusted crops with sulphur to kill insects. Within a few centuries, the Chinese were killing lice with heavy metals like arsenic and mercury, a strategy later applied to crop pests.
農業維持在有機耕作已近10000年的歷史，從最先的肥沃月彎土地到美國殖民墾地。有些植物可自然的控制蟲害和土壤品質，人類幫助輪種作物；如果需要額外的肥料，通常加入糞便。但有些農民早在4500年前使用的有毒添加劑，即當蘇美爾人用硫磺噴撒作物以殺死昆蟲。在幾個世紀以來，中國人使用重金屬如砷，汞等殺蝨子，此種策略在以後應用到農作物病蟲害。
Arsenic remained king of bug killers from medieval times up to the mid-1900s, when science found something more effective. DDT had been created in 1874, but it was overlooked as an insecticide until 1939, when Swiss chemist Paul Müller made a world-changing discovery that won him a Nobel Prize. German chemists had already invented a process by then for synthesizing ammonia to make nitrogen fertilizers, for which they also won Nobel Prizes. Borlaug then mixed these and other modern tactics to fight famines in Mexico, India and the Philippines, securing his own place in history.
從中世紀到20世紀中期當科學發現更有效的東西以前，砷仍是蟲類的殺手王。 DDT在1874年已被發明，但它被忽視了直到1939年才作為殺蟲劑。當瑞士化學家保羅繆勒提出了這改變世界的發明，使他贏得了諾貝爾獎。德國化學家已經發明了一種過程，然後合成氨，以製造氮肥，為此，他們也贏得了諾貝爾獎。博洛格混合這些和其他先進的策略對抗在墨西哥，印度和菲律賓的飢荒，在歷史上保衛自己的領域。
Meanwhile, a rival revolution still simmered below the surface, advocating ancient tools like compost and cover crops. It was led in the U.S. by magazine magnate and Rodale Institute founder J.I. Rodale, who popularized organic farming in the 1960s and '70s as environmental attitudes were already in flux. When Congress officially defined "organic" in 1990 and set up national certification rules, it quickly triggered an organic bonanza. USDA-certified acreage grew by an average 16 percent a year from 2000 to 2008, and still grew 5 percent in 2009 even amid the recession, points out U.S. National Organic Program spokeswoman Soo Kim. "I'm no forecaster," she says, "but I'd have to say there's a strong demand for it, and I would expect that to continue."
同時，競爭對手仍在檯面下醞釀革命，擁護先人使用的工具如堆肥，作物覆蓋等等。它是由美國雜誌巨頭和羅代爾研究所姬羅達爾-這位在60年代推廣有機農業耕作創始人-所領導的且70年代的環境態度已經不斷變遷。當國會在1990年正式定義“有機”並建立了國家認證規則，它很快引發一個有機的富礦。從2000年至2008年美國農業部認證的種植面積增長了16％，即使在2009年的經濟衰退中，仍然增長了5％，指出美國國家有機計劃的發言人蘇金。 “我不是預報員”她說，“但我不得不請訴一個強烈的需求，即我期望有機事業能繼續下去。”
What does 'organic' mean?
“有機”代表什麼意思？
"Organic farming" suffered an identity crisis until the late 20th century, but today the term is regulated by governments and independent certifiers around the world. The National Organic Program handles organic issues in the U.S., a duty it was given by the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990. It defines organic farming as any qualified system that's designed "to respond to site-specific conditions by integrating cultural, biological and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance and conserve biodiversity." The NOP website has details, including a list of allowed and prohibited substances, an archive of organic regulations, and a guide to accredited certifying agents. For casual grocery shopping, though, keep these four tips in mind when checking food labels:
一直到20世紀後期“有機農業”都遭遇身份危機，但今天這個術語是受政府和世界各地的獨立認證機構規範。在美國，國家有機農業計劃處理有機問題，職責由1990年有機食品生產法所賦予的。它定義有機農業是一種’作為任何合格的設計，結合文化，生物和機械做法，促進資源的循環，推動生態平衡和保護生物多樣性以應對現場的具體條件。”NOP網站有相關細節，包括一個允許和禁止的物質列表，將有機法規歸檔，指導，經認可的認證代理。即使對於非正式的雜貨購物，在檢查食品標籤時記取這四個技巧：
•Products labeled "100 percent organic" must contain only organically produced ingredients and processing aids (aside from water and salt).
•Products labeled "organic" must contain at least 95 percent organically produced ingredients (again, not including water and salt).
•Products labeled "made with organic ingredients" must contain at least 70 percent organic ingredients, and may list up to three on the main label.
•Nothing with less than 70 percent organic ingredients can say "organic" on its main label, but it can identify organic ingredients on its info panel.
•產品標示“100％有機”必須只能包含有機生產原料和加工助劑（除了水和鹽）。
•產品標示“有機”必須包含至少95％的有機生產成分（同樣，不包括水和鹽）。
•產品標有“有機成分製成”必須包含至少70％的有機成分，最多可以列出三個主要標籤。
•任何低於70％的有機成分不可以在其主要的標籤稱為“有機”，但它可以在信息面板上識別有機成分。
When the USDA catches someone pitching unqualified products as organic, it can issue a fine — the agency may levy a civil penalty up to $11,000 against anyone who knowingly sells or labels an "organic" product that doesn't meet NOP rules. But many similar marketing phrases like "free range," "sustainably harvested," or "no drugs or growth hormones used" are often defined less specifically. For example, to call chickens "free range," a company "must demonstrate to the Agency that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside," according to USDA regulations.
當美國農業部捕捉到不合格的有機產品，它可處以罰款 - 該機構可能對任何明知不符合NOP規則而出售或標籤 “有機”的產品徵收高達11000美元的民事罰款。但許多類似的營銷短語，如“自由放養”，“可持續獲捕”，或“沒有使用藥物或生長激素荷爾蒙”通常被定義不太明確。例如，聲稱所飼養的雞是“自由放牧”，根據美國農業部的規定公司“必須向代理機構證明，家禽已被允許到外面的通路”。
to be continued
參考資訊 : 有機農業全球資訊網
source: mother nature network By Russell McLendonFri, Oct 08 2010 at 11:09 AM EST
U.S. organic farming has grown wildly for the last two decades, but with food demand rising and cash-strapped shoppers pinching pennies, are greener still the place to be?
美國有機農場近二十年來如雨後春筍般冒出 但隨著食物需求上升以及現金拮据的購物者縮緊褲帶 錙銖必較 環保有機農場仍舊是值得前進的地方嗎?
organic growth有機生長
Certified organic farmland has spread rapidly across the U.S in the past decade,with more consumers now paying extra to avoid potential dangers like pesticide residues on their food.
經過認證的有機農田在過去十年迅速蔓延整個美國，現在更多的消費者支付額外以避免潛在的危險如農藥殘留的食物。
The phrase "organic farming" was coined in 1940 by Lord Northbourne, a British author and Olympic athlete who helped launch the organic movement. Joined by fellow organic pioneers like J.I. Rodale, Lady Eve Balfour and Albert Howard, he championed farms as natural ecosystems, and railed against chemical fertilizers and pesticides. "The farm itself must have a biological completeness," he wrote. "It must be a living entity ... which has within itself a balanced organic life."
“有機農業”這個詞彙是在1940年由Northbourne勳爵創造，這位英國作家暨奧運會運動員幫助發起了有機運動。這些有機農業先驅者如JJ.羅達爾，夏娃貝爾福夫人和阿爾伯特霍華德，他倡導農場應有其自然生態系統並對化肥和農藥抱怨。他說：“農業生物本身必須具有生物完整性，”他寫道。 “它必須是一個有生命的實體 ... ...它本身就是一個平衡的有機生活。”
While those words still resonate with many farmers and shoppers today, however, they were drowned out for decades by famine. Earth's human population grew 293 percent in the 20th century — compared with an average of 22 percent each of the previous nine centuries — and farmers couldn't keep up. As hunger spread, an Iowa agronomist named Norman Borlaug came to the rescue in the early '40s, using manmade pesticides, fertilizers and crossbred crops to start the Green Revolution, which saved countless lives and won him the 1970 Nobel Prize.
在今天這些話，對許多農民和消費者依然鏗鏘有力，但是，他們已經被幾十年的飢荒給淹沒了。地球上的人口-相較於每前九個世紀平均22％的增長相比-已在20世紀增長了293％ - 農民根本無法跟上。由於飢餓的蔓延，在40年代早期，愛荷華州一名為諾曼博洛格農學家趕來營救，使用人工殺蟲劑，化肥和雜交作物開始的綠色革命，挽救了無數生命，他贏得了1970年諾貝爾獎。
It also highlighted a common critique of organic farming: It's already hard to feed billions of people, even without rules against spraying chemicals or swapping genes. Borlaug's methods often raised yields while reducing acreage, and it seemed for years he'd proven the organic movement wrong.
它也強調了一個常見的對有機農業批判：那就是: 即使對噴灑化學品或基因交換沒有規範，它已經很難養活數十億人。博洛格的方法經常提高產量，同時減少種植面積，多年來他似乎已證明了有機運動的錯誤。
But "chemical farming," as Lord Northbourne called it, lost some luster when synthetic pesticides and fertilizers were linked to environmental ills like cancer, blue baby syndrome, dying eagles and dead zones. Ecologists warned of gene pollution from genetically modified organisms, and overuse of livestock antibiotics was widely blamed for drug-resistant "superbugs." This created an opening for organic farming in the late 20th century, and today there are an estimated 1.4 million organic farms worldwide, including some 13,000 certified in the U.S. Yet despite these gains, organic farms still struggle to match the output of conventional ones — no small detail since there are now about 6.9 billion people on Earth, three times the 1940 population. And with that number forecast to hit 9 billion by 2050, the future of organic farming remains unclear.
但“化學農業”就如Northbourne宣稱，當合成農藥和化肥對環境有聯繫的弊病，如癌症，藍嬰症候群，瀕死的禿鷹和死亡區域 (The giant, lifeless expanse appears every summer, but historic flooding along the Mississippi River could make 2011 a record-breaking year).使其光澤銳減。生態學家警告說，轉基因生物的基因污染，以及過度使用抗生素的家畜被廣泛指責為抗藥性“超級細菌”。這使有機農業在20世紀末開放，今天估計世界各地有140萬個有機農場，包括在美國已獲認證的 13,000個。儘管有這些收益，有機農場仍然抗爭，以配合常規的輸出 – 粗估因為現在在地球上有69億人，此是1940年人口的三倍。而隨著這一數字預計到2050年將達到90億，未來有機農業仍動向未明。
It often seems especially murky during economic dips like the recent recession, when higher-priced products of all kinds tend to suffer. But does organic food's premium price translate into any real health or environmental benefits? Critics like Alex Avery don't think so — the conservative author and researcher has compared "organic-food fanatics" to the terrorist group Hezbollah, and wrote a book in 2006 called "The Truth About Organic Foods" that, according to his website, "strips bare organic myths." While supporters say organic farming merely reveals the true cost of food, Avery and other critics say it makes food unaffordable. Aside from supporting synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, they've focused their ire lately on critics of genetically modified organisms. "For nearly a decade these agri-extremists have attempted to totally block agricultural biotechnology," Avery wrote in 2003, calling GMOs "the most important and critically needed agricultural advance in human history."
如最近的衰退時期經濟特別顯得低迷，價格較高的產品傾向受到影響。但有機食品的溢價真能轉化為實際的健康或對環境助益嗎？批評者像亞歷艾利不這麼認為 - 保守的作者和研究人員比擬了“有機食品的狂熱分子”如恐怖組織真主黨，並在2006年寫了一本書名為“關於有機食品的真相”，根據他的網站， “裸露的有機神話。”雖然有機農業的支持者說有機食品只是揭示了食品的真實成本，艾利和其他批評者認為它使食物無法承受。除了支持化學合成的農藥和化肥，他們已經關注他們最近對轉基因生物體不滿的批評。 “近十年這些農業極端分子企圖完全阻止農業生物技術，”艾弗里在2003年寫到，稱轉基因生物“是人類歷史前進的最重要和最急需的農業。”
For more on the backstory, upsides and downsides of organic farming, below is a look at how the field has evolved over the last 70 years, and what might happen next.
欲了解有關背景故事，對等和有機耕作的缺點，下面是過去70年此領域怎麼發展，未來將會發生什麼。
A brief history of organic farming
有機農業簡史
Early farmers had no choice but organic farming, and they still achieved some major milestones over the years, like taming the first grains in Mesopotamia or turning a thin grass called teosinte into plump, protein-packed corn.
早期的農民只能發展有機農業，多年來他們仍然取得了一些重大的里程碑，如在美索不達米亞改良的第一批作物，或把將瘦小的墨西哥類蜀黍變成豐滿，蛋白質含量豐富的玉米。
Agriculture has stayed largely organic for most of its 10,000-year history, from the first Fertile Crescent plots to the plantations of colonial America. Some plants would control pests and soil quality naturally, and humans helped by rotating their crops; if extra fertilizer was needed, manure usually filled in. But some farmers used toxic additives as early as 4,500 years ago, when Sumerians dusted crops with sulphur to kill insects. Within a few centuries, the Chinese were killing lice with heavy metals like arsenic and mercury, a strategy later applied to crop pests.
農業維持在有機耕作已近10000年的歷史，從最先的肥沃月彎土地到美國殖民墾地。有些植物可自然的控制蟲害和土壤品質，人類幫助輪種作物；如果需要額外的肥料，通常加入糞便。但有些農民早在4500年前使用的有毒添加劑，即當蘇美爾人用硫磺噴撒作物以殺死昆蟲。在幾個世紀以來，中國人使用重金屬如砷，汞等殺蝨子，此種策略在以後應用到農作物病蟲害。
Arsenic remained king of bug killers from medieval times up to the mid-1900s, when science found something more effective. DDT had been created in 1874, but it was overlooked as an insecticide until 1939, when Swiss chemist Paul Müller made a world-changing discovery that won him a Nobel Prize. German chemists had already invented a process by then for synthesizing ammonia to make nitrogen fertilizers, for which they also won Nobel Prizes. Borlaug then mixed these and other modern tactics to fight famines in Mexico, India and the Philippines, securing his own place in history.
從中世紀到20世紀中期當科學發現更有效的東西以前，砷仍是蟲類的殺手王。 DDT在1874年已被發明，但它被忽視了直到1939年才作為殺蟲劑。當瑞士化學家保羅繆勒提出了這改變世界的發明，使他贏得了諾貝爾獎。德國化學家已經發明了一種過程，然後合成氨，以製造氮肥，為此，他們也贏得了諾貝爾獎。博洛格混合這些和其他先進的策略對抗在墨西哥，印度和菲律賓的飢荒，在歷史上保衛自己的領域。
Meanwhile, a rival revolution still simmered below the surface, advocating ancient tools like compost and cover crops. It was led in the U.S. by magazine magnate and Rodale Institute founder J.I. Rodale, who popularized organic farming in the 1960s and '70s as environmental attitudes were already in flux. When Congress officially defined "organic" in 1990 and set up national certification rules, it quickly triggered an organic bonanza. USDA-certified acreage grew by an average 16 percent a year from 2000 to 2008, and still grew 5 percent in 2009 even amid the recession, points out U.S. National Organic Program spokeswoman Soo Kim. "I'm no forecaster," she says, "but I'd have to say there's a strong demand for it, and I would expect that to continue."
同時，競爭對手仍在檯面下醞釀革命，擁護先人使用的工具如堆肥，作物覆蓋等等。它是由美國雜誌巨頭和羅代爾研究所姬羅達爾-這位在60年代推廣有機農業耕作創始人-所領導的且70年代的環境態度已經不斷變遷。當國會在1990年正式定義“有機”並建立了國家認證規則，它很快引發一個有機的富礦。從2000年至2008年美國農業部認證的種植面積增長了16％，即使在2009年的經濟衰退中，仍然增長了5％，指出美國國家有機計劃的發言人蘇金。 “我不是預報員”她說，“但我不得不請訴一個強烈的需求，即我期望有機事業能繼續下去。”
What does 'organic' mean?
“有機”代表什麼意思？
"Organic farming" suffered an identity crisis until the late 20th century, but today the term is regulated by governments and independent certifiers around the world. The National Organic Program handles organic issues in the U.S., a duty it was given by the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990. It defines organic farming as any qualified system that's designed "to respond to site-specific conditions by integrating cultural, biological and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance and conserve biodiversity." The NOP website has details, including a list of allowed and prohibited substances, an archive of organic regulations, and a guide to accredited certifying agents. For casual grocery shopping, though, keep these four tips in mind when checking food labels:
一直到20世紀後期“有機農業”都遭遇身份危機，但今天這個術語是受政府和世界各地的獨立認證機構規範。在美國，國家有機農業計劃處理有機問題，職責由1990年有機食品生產法所賦予的。它定義有機農業是一種’作為任何合格的設計，結合文化，生物和機械做法，促進資源的循環，推動生態平衡和保護生物多樣性以應對現場的具體條件。”NOP網站有相關細節，包括一個允許和禁止的物質列表，將有機法規歸檔，指導，經認可的認證代理。即使對於非正式的雜貨購物，在檢查食品標籤時記取這四個技巧：
•Products labeled "100 percent organic" must contain only organically produced ingredients and processing aids (aside from water and salt).
•Products labeled "organic" must contain at least 95 percent organically produced ingredients (again, not including water and salt).
•Products labeled "made with organic ingredients" must contain at least 70 percent organic ingredients, and may list up to three on the main label.
•Nothing with less than 70 percent organic ingredients can say "organic" on its main label, but it can identify organic ingredients on its info panel.
•產品標示“100％有機”必須只能包含有機生產原料和加工助劑（除了水和鹽）。
•產品標示“有機”必須包含至少95％的有機生產成分（同樣，不包括水和鹽）。
•產品標有“有機成分製成”必須包含至少70％的有機成分，最多可以列出三個主要標籤。
•任何低於70％的有機成分不可以在其主要的標籤稱為“有機”，但它可以在信息面板上識別有機成分。
When the USDA catches someone pitching unqualified products as organic, it can issue a fine — the agency may levy a civil penalty up to $11,000 against anyone who knowingly sells or labels an "organic" product that doesn't meet NOP rules. But many similar marketing phrases like "free range," "sustainably harvested," or "no drugs or growth hormones used" are often defined less specifically. For example, to call chickens "free range," a company "must demonstrate to the Agency that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside," according to USDA regulations.
當美國農業部捕捉到不合格的有機產品，它可處以罰款 - 該機構可能對任何明知不符合NOP規則而出售或標籤 “有機”的產品徵收高達11000美元的民事罰款。但許多類似的營銷短語，如“自由放養”，“可持續獲捕”，或“沒有使用藥物或生長激素荷爾蒙”通常被定義不太明確。例如，聲稱所飼養的雞是“自由放牧”，根據美國農業部的規定公司“必須向代理機構證明，家禽已被允許到外面的通路”。
to be continued
參考資訊 : 有機農業全球資訊網
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