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Organic Quotes

Browse 55 quotes about Organic.

Organic Quotes

“As long as one egg looks pretty much like another, all the chickens like chicken, and beef beef, the substitution of quantity for quality will go unnoticed by most consumers, but it is becoming increasingly apparent to anyone with an electron microscope or a mass spectrometer that, truly, this is not the same food.”

“Me and the folks who buy my food are like the Indians -- we just want to opt out. That's all the Indians ever wanted -- to keep their tepees, to give their kids herbs instead of patent medicines and leeches. They didn't care if there was a Washington, D.C., or a Custer or a USDA; just leave us alone. But the Western mind can't bear an opt-out option. We're going to have to refight the Battle of the Little Big Horn to preserve the right to opt out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, barcoded, adulterated fecal spam from the centralized processing conglomerate.”

“[...]imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a matter of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in a true accounting, it really cost. We could then talk about some other things at dinner. For we would no longer need any reminding that however we choose to feed ourselves, we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and what we're eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world.”

“On both sides, they've failed us...of course, we know about the industrialists. Their corn syrup and cheese product. Their factory farms ringed by rivers of blood and shit, blazing bonfires of disease barely contained by antibiotic blankets. These are among the most disgusting scenes in the history of this planet... But on the other side...the organic farms, the precious restaurants...these are toy supply chains. 'Farm to table,' they say. Well. When you go from farm to table, you leave a lot of people out...I think more poorly of these people than I do of the industrialists, because they know better. They know it's all broken, and what do they do? They plant vegetables in the backyard.”

“Yet the organic label itself—like every other such label in the supermarket—is really just an imperfect substitute for direct observation of how a food is produced, a concession to the reality that most people in an industrial society haven’t the time or the inclination to follow their food back to the farm, a farm which today is apt to be, on average, fifteen hundred miles away.”

“Organic” labels do nothing for a cow who is perpetually impregnated and milked, who loses her calf to the veal industry—or to protect her calf, who is sold at birth to the veal industry to be slaughtered. “Organic” products are designed to optimize human health and reduce environmental degradation. Those who invest in organic products are not making a choice that promotes the well-being of farmed animals.”

“Our family was an organic, free-range, humanely sourced kind of family. The kind of family who uses plant-based cleaners that aren’t strong enough to actually degrease anything so every pot and pan has a sort of waxy sheen on it forever. My parents were hippies and didn’t do anything according to the status quo. I’m pretty sure my father still wakes up every morning, checks in on what the entire world is doing, and then does the opposite.”

“Nothing I do is natural, realistic, organic or accidental. I'm never spontaneous, I'm completely premeditated.”

“For the sake of farmed animals, who suffer terribly in their artificially short lives, please do not reject red flesh in preference for poultry flesh. Please do not replace flesh with eggs or dairy products. Please do not buy animal products that try to disguise cruel exploitation behind meaningless feel-good labels such as “free range,” “cruelty free,” “organic,” and “natural.” For the sake of your own health, and for the sake of farmed animals, please eliminate (or at least reduce) your consumption of all animal products.”

“We must not only be concerned with what is happening to the soil; we must wonder to what extent insecticides are absorbed from contaminated soils and introduced into plant tissues. Much depends on the type of soil, the crop, and the nature and concentration of the insecticide. Soil high in organic matter releases smaller quantities of poisons than others. Carrots absorb more insecticide than any other crop studied; if the chemical used happens to be lindane, carrots actually accumulate higher concentrations than are present in the soil. In the future it may become necessary to analyze soils for insecticides before planting certain food crops. Otherwise even unsprayed crops may take up enough insecticide merely from the soil to render them unfit for market.”

“Lac Sainte-Claire is itself a creature of the wild, a world where the synthetic and the organic commingle. At this early hour, it looks like a sheet of quicksilver being shaken by invisible hands. Then, as morning brings heat and light, plastic objects, immersed steel structures, and an oily sheen become visible on its surface. Large ships advance in cavernous silence, waterfowl rise above the horizon.”

“But recently I'd been crafting some truly surprising and yummy combinations---elderflower limeade with clover blossoms, coconut water with rose syrup and candied rose petals, a strawberry-basil concoction sprinkled with marigold petals. I loved dreaming up unique combinations and then creating them. A few ingredients and a wooden stick. It was simple, local, and environmentally friendly. Not to mention delicious.”

“Like I said, New York is out of control when it comes to chocolate chip cookies. City Bakery, Levain, and Momofuku are my top three. (Maury, as much a hippie as a Francophile, opened several City Bakery offshoots called Birdbath, where all the fixtures are recycled and green, the ingredients are local and organic, and the cookies are still giant and delicious). Ruby et Violette is an Oprah-endorsed, closet-sized outpost in Hell's Kitchen with over one hundred crazy flavors (only about twenty are served at any one time) like root beer float, peach cobbler, or French vanilla.”

“Eugenians are proud of the regional bounty and were passionate about incorporating local, seasonal, and organic ingredients well before it was back in vogue. Anglers are kept busy in fresh waters, fishing for wild chinook salmon in the spring and steelhead in the summer, and sweet Dungeness crab is abundant in the estuaries year-round. Local farmers gather every Saturday downtown to sell homegrown organic produce and honey, foraged mushrooms, and wild berries. The general demographic is of hippies who protest Whole Foods in favor of local co-ops, wear Birkenstocks, weave hair wraps to sell at outdoor markets, and make their own nut butter. They are men with birth names like Herb and River and women called Forest and Aurora.”

“Most instincts are allied to specialized organs, it is true, but it is nonetheless true that perception and acquired behavior, including the higher types of operative intelligence, do, in a more supple way, manifest certain functional possibilities or "reaction norms" of the anatomical and physiological structure of the species. In a word, the general coordinations of action upon which the building up of most basic types of knowledge is conditional, presuppose not only nervous coordinations but coordinations of a much more deep-seated kind, those which are, in fact, interactions dominating the entire morphogenesis.”

“Free range,” “cage free,” and “certified humane” labels are just as meaningless for farmed animals as are “all natural” labels. Just like farmed animals enslaved by organic industries, farmed animals exploited by “free range,” “cage free,” and “certified humane” producers are routinely debeaked, disbudded, detoed, castrated, their tails are docked, and/or they are branded (depending on the species). Neither do “free range” and “certified humane” labels protect cows from perpetual impregnation, pregnancy, birth, calfsnatching, transport, or dismemberment (slaughter) at a very young age. Finally, “free range,” “cage free,” and “certified humane” labels fail to help “spent” hens, who are sent to slaughter at the same youthful age.”