Nice video! At one time I worked in the food industry, and have seen how some foods are processed in China. Basically, as this video is mentioning, the Han country is a troubling place to purchase foods from. I'm surprised that Whole Foods would be buying organic from there. Chinese friends have told me in the past of the problems with food quality in their country and I've seen it a little myself.

Not all factories are the same there - some operations are just as good as found in the west, I believe. But all to often the small and medium sized Chinese factories were filthy places with few concerns over quality control.

As an example, I recall one place in particular. Our firm was looking to purchase evening primrose oil from a Chinese factory. At the time, EPO was only grown and processed in China - which is probably still the case today. We sent our Chinese based inspector, Lin, to talk to the factory boss and take pictures for our Q/C depart to look over. I still couldn't believe the pictures sent back. They were of a bunch of sweaty, shirtless guys along with some horses standing around a processing machine. A dirty shovel was being used by a guy to load the EPO seeds into the crusher. And from the looks of the shovel, I'd guess it doubled as the horse manure picker-uper. I guess manure is used in organic growing, but I was not looking for a direct mixing of horse crap with primrose seeds at the seed crusher unit!

I never worked with certified organic agencies. I was familiar with them, different certifiers would send me information if I ever wanted to use their services. My guess is some agencies are good, and others might cut corners. We worked a little with different Kosher groups and just from chatter I heard, it seemed to be the way it worked with them. As an example, hard to believe but pork gelatin is Kosher. A group out of PA was paid enough to certify it. I used to work with the gelatin manufactures and the sales guys would joke about how it came to be.

I still prefer to buy my meat straight from the farm. There are many organic farms that raise their animals properly (grass fed beef, free range poultry). I'll stick with that, thank you...

Karen has it right: unless you can see and inspect the operation in question, you have to rely on someone else to be honest.

Some of them are honest. Others? not so much.

And "California brand"? isn't that a tad misleading?

Karen, that's what we do too. It's expensive but I just eat less meat, which is fine with me. I try and buy vegetables and fruits directly from the farm too. A lot of the Whole Foods organic brand products are things in packages too, right? Like cookies and chips? I've never understood why it mattered when things that are already not that good for you are organic. Organic Oreos! Now they're a nutritious snack!

I think that most of the people who buy "organic" everything are just looking for an excuse to be higher-handed.

Anyone ever see Mike Judge's PC show "The Goode Family"?

Wasnt as funny as KOTH or B&B but it really ripped into the concept of being PC of apperances sake

AHHA - Organic Oreos!! Good point Sam! One thing I try and look for are ingredients that I can read and understand. For example - I buy organic Instant Oatmeal. When I look at the ingredients it says "oats, sea salt". Well - that's good enough for me!!

Grass fed beef is indeed much more expensive than grocery store beef but like Sam, I just eat less meat. We don't need 3 meat meals, 7 days a week anyways!!! Bison is also a yummy alternative to beef!

You can have cheap or you can have good but you can't have both. So you want cheap organic it will likely either come from another country or will be old. The demand is so high for organic they had to find from more sources.

For that matter Amy, E. Coli and Salmonella are also entirely organic as well.

I usually buy the store brand frozen raspberries unless something else is on sale. Noticed a new kind a few weeks back. Fancier designed packaging and across the front was the brand name:

"Wyman's of Maine". Cost a little more, but I figured they would be a bit higher quality than the store brand stuff that comes from out of the country.

A few days later, I pull a package out of my freezer and what catches my eye, in small print on the back: "Product of Chile".

Nice... I've been had. Guess what I think of that brand now. I've told the story often in the past few weeks. Not only will I not buy their products again, but I'm passing along some negative word of mouth advertising.

If they were just "Wyman's Raspberries", I wouldn't be telling you this and wouldn't feel irked. But they intentionally mislead the consumer with their brand "Wyman's of Maine" and that pisses me off. I trusted them, and now I found out they deceived me. Back to the store brand for me!