Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Organic Food Fight, 02/08/06
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june06/organic_2-08.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is organic food?

2. Why might large food companies want to label their food "organic"?

3. Who decides what food is or is not organic?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. Why are big food manufacturers eager to get into the organic food business?

In an industry where typical growth is around 1-2 percent, organics have recently seen growth in the 20 percent range.

Some small organic companies have been bought by big "agribusiness" companies, and supermarkets like Giant have begun to market organic foods under their own store brands.

The most popular organic supermarket, Whole Foods, has grown into a megastore with $4.7 billion in sales last year.

2. What is the definition of organic?

In 2002, the U.S. Department of Agriculture first defined national standards for foods labeled as "USDA Organic." They could contain only organic ingredients, meaning grown without any synthetic chemicals, including pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers.

Organic foods also could not contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs), crops whose genes had been manipulated in laboratories to produce desired traits.

3. Why do some people argue that organic standards should be less strict?

Food industry lobbying groups, such as the Organic Trade Association, say that if standards are so strict, organics will remain an expensive niche item, available only to those who can afford them. Relaxing the rules would allow for more widespread adoption of organic methods, which in the long run will mean more organic production overall, they argue.

4. Why are some people against broadening the definition of organic?

But purists like the Organic Consumers Association maintain that the organic label should indicate 100 percent organic, and that opening the door to even a little standards adjustment would invite corporations to write their own rules.

"Consumer spending on organic has grown so much that we've attracted big players who want to bend the rules so that they can brand their products as organic without incurring the expenses involved in truly living up to organic standards," said Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association.

5. What did the National Organic Standards Boardrule do in 2002?

In 2002, the National Organic Standards Board allowed certain synthetic substances to be included in foods labeled organic.

Those substances included harmless non-organic ingredients such as baking soda, a naturally occurring mineral that is processed into a white powder for baking, or pectin, a natural gelling agent found in some fruits.

6. List the three organic labels and what they mean.

Currently, there are three different labels associated with organic foods.

The "100 Percent Organic" label allows only organic ingredients and organic processing aids.

The "Organic" label allows only foods containing 95 percent or more organic ingredients and only a limited number of strictly regulated non-organic ingredients.

Finally, food labeled "Made with Organic" must contain 70 percent or more organic ingredients.

7. What is the best way to ensure you are eating 100 percent organic food?

Organic farmer Steve Sprinkel says the issue of organic purity applies mostly to processed organic "convenience foods."

"Consumers can send a message by buying 100 percent organic, as labeled," he said on the radio program, "Beyond Organic." "And they can also make an effort to buy more fresh products … and not depend on all these [processed] products."

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Why do you think more Americans are buying foods labeled "organic"?

2. Why are processed foods such a large part of what Americans eat? Is the same true for other parts of the world? What are some differences?

3. The Organic Trade Association argues that more Americans would eat healthy organic foods if they were cheaper and more readily available - in other words, if the strict standards that make them expensive were loosened. Do you agree?

4. Visit an organic food store in your community. Who shops there? Why?

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.