Researcher: Organic food now 'yuppie chow'

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, May 30 (UPI) -- Organic food, taken over by big business, has become an assembly-line product marketed as "yuppie chow" for the privileged, a Canadian researcher says.

Multinational food-processing giants such as ConAgra Foods, Cargill, Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo now own most organic brands, Irena Knezevic of Toronto's York University said in advance of a presentation she will make to social science scholars Friday.

While the food may meet organic standards, it is prepared, packaged, shipped and marketed in ways that are anathema to organic agriculture's essence, which includes "environmentalism, resistance to corporate globalization and the 'back-to-the-land' movement, Knezevic said.

The food giants have simply applied conventional-food mass-production techniques to organic foods, producing "environmental consequences comparable to those of conventional-food production," Knezevic said.

She said organic food labeling says little about who produced it or the farmers' environmental and sustainable stewardship of the land, whether the food was locally produced or what economic return farmers got for their labor, The Globe and Mail in Toronto reported.

"We expect any day now that our consumers will ask for organic Twinkies -- individually wrapped, of course," she added.