The lawyers have gone organic

I WAS going to watch a video, but I can’t find one that’s organic.

Surprising, I thought. The entire commercial world has gone organic but no, there’s not one organic label on the video shelves.

If I’d wanted a lawn mower I could probably have found one. I hear they’re making one entirely out of recycled parts. I’m sure organic won’t be far behind.

I looked it up. Organic, says the dictionary, means derived from plants and animals, and if you take the next step in the lexicography, it means derived from carbon.

Great! Now I feel much better. Next time I take a walk down the supermarket aisles I can be comfortable and reassured about my food because it’s all made entirely from carbon.

Isn’t that carcinogenic? Don’t you die if you breathe in carbon monoxide?

And what about snake venom, for heaven’s sake, which is manufactured entirely by snakes and is about as good for you as a very large rock (and I believe that a few millions years ago the rocks were plants and animals, too).

I have a friend who smokes organic cigarettes. Organic tobacco? (And no, that’s not the same as marijuana). Do they give you lung cancer that’s good for you?

Do I sound cynical? Good.

I used to be a big fan of organic foods. That was when my understanding of an organic lettuce was one that had been pee-ed on by the dog, poo-ed on by birds, grown in chicken shit and washed in tank water, but was perfectly clean in every other respect.

Now organic has become a commercial buzzword. It’s doing for the food industry (but not yet the video industry) what ‘educational’ did for toys. And I suspect that, as with toys, the buying public is growing suspicious.

I mean… a hammer and a set of little wooden pegs is educational? What do they take me for!

I looked up organic on the web and surprise, surprise, it told me the “legal definition of organic is rather long”.

Aha!

I didn’t even bother to read it, but I’ll bet all the words have eight syllables and 90 per cent of them need a dictionary the size of a fridge.

Once the lawyers are involved, cynical is safest.

I mean… how can you grow an organic chicken? What happens when a bug flies in that has just been sprayed down the road by a toxic non-carbonic chemical. Does the chicken know? Does it have a reference book? What about the worms? What about the food scraps? Were they all organic, too, thus helping to create an organic chicken? We are what we eat, they say.

My guess is the chooks don’t actually get food scraps or worms or bugs, but carefully controlled and nutritionally balanced little pellets of something disgusting that I’d rather not know about.

And guess what: at least one Australian state defines organic food as: “not necessarily completely chemical free.”

Aha again. This would be the rat I smelled. A not-entirely-chemical-free rat.

The spin doctors have nobbled the endeavours of those few who genuinely were trying to provide us with something real to eat. They have redefined organic!

Now it means: not organic, but possibly more organic than stuff that’s not organic.

I’m probably better off with a video. Even if I eat it, I can be confident no one’s trying fool me.