Organic Gardening | What Is USDA Organic?

We’ve all seen those little labels, all those letters squeezed in to a quarter of an inch oval. If you’re like most people you have a vague idea of the union of the abbreviation and the word organic vague being the operative word here.

Asking for additional information crosses our minds at times but then we retreat suspicious of the response we may solicit. Without further consideration let’s just break it down into a description that offers at minimum clarity to the word organic itself.

Presumably most of us are aware of the acronym USDA, well at least the US portion of it. USDA is the United States Department of Agriculture. The department founded by Good Ole Abe (Abraham Lincoln) in effort to establish food safety standards, support agricultural technology and encourage research and development.

What many are not aware of is the fact that the United Stated Department of Agriculture also serves to reduce hunger in the United States as well as internationally. How about that?

Webster defines organic as: relating to or derived form living organisms; a substance of animal or vegetable origin or something raised without the use of drugs, hormones or synthetic chemicals. Additionally organic often denotes simplistic, beautiful and close to nature; the essence of organics breaks down to a derivative of life only.

As with all things, to gain a deeper understanding of the collective arrangement one must first comprehend each individual element of the collective. Now that the individual aspects of the collective have been examined and explained the collective arrangement of words can be restored and defined more clearly.

USDA Organic is a simple label format introduced by the United States Department of Agriculture that indicates to the consumer that the product has been inspected by the governing body and has passed all criteria all criteria required to carry the label organic.

Does that not shine a bright light on that tiny oval label? In future as you meander through the isles of the your favorite health food store or grocery store isles you can rest easy with full clarity when out of the corner of your eye you catch a glimpse of that tiny little oval label.

You’ll be fully aware that the product in sight has passed the inspection of the United States Department of Agriculture. The label indicates that all required testing has been conducted and the conclusion is that Lincoln himself would have consumed this product had he been in search of something deliciously organic.

Products sporting this label must pass a national standard of production mandated by the Organic Foods Production Act implemented in 1990. National standards established a viable model to offer consumers a method of distinguishing foods that could not be otherwise separated providing a verifiable label claim upon completing inspection. That little oval label that contains only 11 letters certainly is fully loaded.

What Is USDA Organic?

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