January 19, 2011 | 9:18 AM | By

Portlandia’s three degrees of organic chicken

FILED UNDER: Agriculture, Sustainability, Farm to fork, Foodie Friday, Organic food, Portlandia, Sustainable seafood

OK, it’s official. Everyone – even my good friend in Lincoln, Nebraska – is talking about Portlandia. Apparently there have been commercials on TV leading up to the show’s Friday premier on the Independent Film Channel, and the first episode (see above) is already up on the Web.

As you’ll see, the show pokes fun at Portlanders’ fixation on making sure their food is local, ethical and environmentally sustainable. It actually takes one of the show’s couples five years to consider – and then decide against – ordering chicken at Portland’s Gilt Club. And that’s after the server presents a dossier on the dead chicken, Colin, who was raised on an organic farm 30 miles south of Portland on sheep’s milk, soy and hazelnuts with 4 acres of range to roam. Is it USDA organic, Oregon organic, Portland organic? Who knew there were three degrees of organic?

So, now I have to admit I’ve grilled a few servers to that degree before ordering seafood. I stopped short of a visit to the actual fishing boat that caught the restaurant’s fish, but if I could’ve gone I probably would’ve.

I’ve learned so much about commercial fisheries as a reporter that now I can hardly stand not knowing where my fish came from. Atlantic farm-raised salmon? Forget it! Chinese tilapia? Yeah right. As Carrie Brownstein told David Miller on OPB’s Think Out Loud last week, the sketches in Portlandia start out in reality, move into the absurd and end in the surreal. I can vouch for the first part.

I interviewed Portland chef Vitaly Paley of Paley’s Place Bistro and Bar after Oregon’s first certified sustainable Dungeness crab dinner last month. I asked him how important sustainability is to his customers, expecting he would say it was important, yada-yada. But I was surprised by the level of detail he gave me in response. People want to know where their food comes from, how it was grown, who grew it, how it got to the restaurant, and how it was prepared: “It’s not just a hot topic,” he said, “it’s a heated subject.” So Paley does his homework on the food in his restaurant. Local, sustainable food? “I don’t know any other kind,” he said.

How much attention do you give to eating local, sustainable and ethically raised food? Do you pay more for food with certifications and traceability? I’ve heard debates over whether it’s better to eat locally grown food even if it’s not organic because of the energy expended in transporting organic foods longer distances. I’ve read stories about how it’s more energy efficient to eat frozen fish than fresh because fresh fish is often flown in while frozen can be trucked. When do you care, and when do you stop caring?

  • Ivan

    The first episode of Portlandia was hilarious, but for the record, the three degrees of organic was just satire. There’s only one organic standard: since the 1990′s the USDA (through an act of Congress) has set organic standards which apply nationally for produce and livestock. Now, organizations that used to operate at a more local level before there were uniform national standards, like Oregon Tilth, carry out the USDA certification.

    In the organic food world, the advent of the USDA national standards was seen as both good and bad. Good because there are now uniform rules everyone has to abide by, giving food labeled as organic a very specific meaning no matter where you are in the country. But bad because in some areas, the standards weren’t set as strongly as they could be, and the USDA rules preclude there being higher levels of organic certification at the local level. During the rulemaking, there were big debates over, for instance, whether applying municipal sewage sludge to fields should be considered organic (it is NOT organic under USDA standards), and issues like access to pasture for livestock. For produce and vegetables, pesticides, herbicides and petro-chemical fertilizers are prohibited, though some specific naturally derived pesticides can be used to control pests (for example, pyrethrin derived from chrysanthemum flowers). Multiple years of good record keeping on tillage practices, crop rotation, and organic fertilizer application to ensure prohibited substances aren’t used is required. When it comes to livestock, organic means the producer is required to feed animals certified organically grown feed and not use antibiotics or hormones. But the ‘access to pasture’ language is vague enough that it doesn’t necessarily mean cows are grazed on grass for a significant portions of their lives, or poultry gets to scratch in pastures (or woodlands, to quote the Portlandia skit) for worms and grubs. There have been some high profile cases of abuse with ‘organic’ milk in recent years in which cows were only being trotted out onto pasture when the organic certifiers came but otherwise led their lives in factory farm like conditions, but eating certified organic feed rather than conventional.

    As larger corporations have gotten into the profitable organic business, its created some problems. At the end of the day, because it’s possible to do ‘industrial scale’ organic, particularly with livestock, the certification has lost some of its luster and discerning consumers are right to ask questions and seek out smaller scale, more local producers, ideally those who are growing using organic practices. In Oregon, a number of small farmers who otherwise grow to or exceed USDA organic standards are forgoing the organic certification, which can work as consumers focus more on local food and can talk to the farmers directly or visit the farm to see for themselves how things are produced. Unlike the parody in Portlandia, there’s no need to be concerned, these folks aren’t going to turn out to be cult leaders : )

    Here’s a link to a good two pager from the USDA on what is and isn’t allowed under the organic standards – http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3004445.

  • Ivan

    The first episode of Portlandia was hilarious, but for the record, the three degrees of organic was just satire. There’s only one organic standard: since the 1990′s the USDA (through an act of Congress) has set organic standards which apply nationally for produce and livestock. Now, organizations that used to operate at a more local level before there were uniform national standards, like Oregon Tilth, carry out the USDA certification.

    In the organic food world, the advent of the USDA national standards was seen as both good and bad. Good because there are now uniform rules everyone has to abide by, giving food labeled as organic a very specific meaning no matter where you are in the country. But bad because in some areas, the standards weren’t set as strongly as they could be, and the USDA rules preclude there being higher levels of organic certification at the local level. During the rulemaking, there were big debates over, for instance, whether applying municipal sewage sludge to fields should be considered organic (it is NOT organic under USDA standards), and issues like access to pasture for livestock. For produce and vegetables, pesticides, herbicides and petro-chemical fertilizers are prohibited, though some specific naturally derived pesticides can be used to control pests (for example, pyrethrin derived from chrysanthemum flowers). Multiple years of good record keeping on tillage practices, crop rotation, and organic fertilizer application to ensure prohibited substances aren’t used is required. When it comes to livestock, organic means the producer is required to feed animals certified organically grown feed and not use antibiotics or hormones. But the ‘access to pasture’ language is vague enough that it doesn’t necessarily mean cows are grazed on grass for a significant portions of their lives, or poultry gets to scratch in pastures (or woodlands, to quote the Portlandia skit) for worms and grubs. There have been some high profile cases of abuse with ‘organic’ milk in recent years in which cows were only being trotted out onto pasture when the organic certifiers came but otherwise led their lives in factory farm like conditions, but eating certified organic feed rather than conventional.

    As larger corporations have gotten into the profitable organic business, its created some problems. At the end of the day, because it’s possible to do ‘industrial scale’ organic, particularly with livestock, the certification has lost some of its luster and discerning consumers are right to ask questions and seek out smaller scale, more local producers, ideally those who are growing using organic practices. In Oregon, a number of small farmers who otherwise grow to or exceed USDA organic standards are forgoing the organic certification, which can work as consumers focus more on local food and can talk to the farmers directly or visit the farm to see for themselves how things are produced. Unlike the parody in Portlandia, there’s no need to be concerned, these folks aren’t going to turn out to be cult leaders : )

    Here’s a link to a good two pager from the USDA on what is and isn’t allowed under the organic standards – http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3004445.