Just when consumers thought we had kept them at bay for another round, the sneak attack goes through without debate or discussion. While everyone was distracted by the White House indictments, Congress gave the processed food industry everything they wanted. The word "organic" will now mean virtually nothing. Expect it to start showing up on labels of big name brands on the shelves of Wal Mart, while the substance of their products remains essentially the same old crap. (Though they may use the opportunity to mark up prices, creating an new artificial differentiator for consumer demographics with more disposable income.)

(On a semi-related note, I've already started seeing a bunch of chips at the gas station advertising "0 Trans Fats", even when a brief look at the ingredients reveals this is a lie for some of them (i.e. partially hydrogenated oils in the ingredients). The reason? While the FDA will now require food manufactures to list trans fats in the nutritional information, they are allowed to round down to "0 grams" if there is less than 0.5 grams PER SERVING. This effectively means that a bag of chips containing 10 grams of trans fats could say "0 trans fats" if there are 21 servings per container. Don't we love our bought-and-paid-for government?)

So what is the hapless consumer to do? Ran had some good ideas. Buy from small local producers you can trust. Ditch the word "organic" when evaluating what to get. Instead, ask questions about where it came from, how it was grown, or if it's an animal product, the conditions under which it was raised. This also means figuring out what's important to YOU. Maybe with time, some new "keywords" will come into being, but I'm not holding my breath. And for those just joining us, welcome to the Brave New World of Empire. All Your Organic Are Belong To Us.