Neoganic: Redefing organic the GOP way

There they go again. Those crazy GOP wingnuts in Washington delight touting their wonderful environmental record while simultanesouly plundering it behind the scenes. Its the kind of "loud bark, small bite" trick they pull all the time, and its often accompanied by a redefinition of the thing they are supposedly do good for. A good economic record is easy to sell when your definition of good is "better than the worst its been in years", and a good enivronmental record is easy to achieve when its defined as "promoting managed forests" or "not destroying all the things we could have destroyed".

Now they are at it with promoting "organic food" by redefining to include many practices common in the non-organic side of the food processing industry. The USDA has been issuing guidances to allow treatment of organic farm animals with antibiotics, feeding herbivores with non-organic animal based feedstuffs, and use of synthetic pesticides on organic farms.

The cynics might say this has something to do with the fact that Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman served on the board of directors of a biotech company, and both her chief of staff and her director of communications were hired from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

The non-cynics would say its just good policy and helping consumers by clarify the meaning of organic to include food produced using safe and economic farming practices.

I would say if you want to redefine the meaning of a word contrary to commonly accepted definitions you should instead find a new word to encompass your new meaning. I would suggest that instead of "organic" the USDA should label food produced by its new rules as "Neoganic" in honour of the NeoCons in Washington who are driving this revisionist redefintion of everything to serve their own power and profit centered viewpoint.

Alternatives to neoganic exist such as psuedoganic, bushganic, geopanic (ie. GOP-anic), repoganic, and industrioganic. I'll let you take your pick, but either way, its important we fight these efforts to redefine every word we commonly knew the meaning of to fit someone elses profit centered definition.