What are the differences between agricultural and industrial products?

Grocery Shopping: What are the differences between "organic," "made with organic products," "natural," etc. on product labels at the store?

• I want to be able to know what I am looking at when I go to the grocery store.

• Answer:

  Organic labeling in the US is regulated by the Department of Agriculture, which offers a ton of materials explaining what the labels mean. A good start is this blog post: http://blogs.usda.gov/2012/03/22/organic-101-what-the-usda-organic-label-means/. The main points explaining what Organic and Made with Organic Products are: Produce can be called organic if it’s certified to have grown on soil that had no prohibited substances applied for three years prior to harvest. Prohibited substances include most synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. In instances when a grower has to use a synthetic substance to achieve a specific purpose, the substance must first be approved according to criteria that examine its effects on human health and the environment (see other considerations in “http://blogs.usda.gov/2012/01/25/organic-101-allowed-and-prohibited-substances/”). As for organic meat, regulations require that animals are raised in living conditions accommodating their natural behaviors (like the ability to graze on pasture), fed 100% organic feed and forage, and not administered antibiotics or hormones. When it comes to processed, multi-ingredient foods, the USDA http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?template=TemplateC&navID=NationalOrganicProgram&leftNav=NationalOrganicProgram&page=NOPConsumers&description=Consumers&acct=nopgeninfo specify additional considerations. Regulations prohibit organically processed foods from containing artificial preservatives, colors, or flavors and require that their ingredients are organic, with some minor exceptions. For example, processed organic foods may contain some approved non-agricultural ingredients, like enzymes in yogurt, pectin in fruit jams, or baking soda in baked goods. When packaged products indicate they are “made with organic [specific ingredient or food group],” this means they contain at least 70% organically produced ingredients. The remaining non-organic ingredients are produced without using prohibited practices (genetic engineering, for example) but can include substances that would not otherwise be allowed in 100% organic products. “Made with organic” products will not bear the USDA organic seal, but, as with all other organic products, must still identify the USDA-accredited certifier. You can look for the identity of the certifier on a packaged product for verification that the organic product meets USDA’s organic standards. As with all organic foods, none of it is grown or handled using genetically modified organisms, which the organic standards expressly prohibit (see “http://blogs.usda.gov/2011/12/16/organic-101-what-organic-farming-and-processing-doesn%E2%80%99t-allow/#more-37348”). Natural however has no legal definition in the US, so you can't assume anything when you see it used. From Wikipedia: In the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States, neither the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Drug_Administration (FDA) nor the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Department_of_Agriculture (USDA) have rules for “natural." The FDA explicitly discourages the food industry from using the term.