Ken Fox wrote:If one believes in the benefits of buying products labeled as being "organic," for example, it is one thing to buy tomatoes from California so labeled, and quite another to buy coffee beans produced in some third world country bearing that label.

Although I'm skeptical on the benefits of any of this stuff (and for coffee it becomes even harder to justify since just about any substance used in growing the coffee will burn off at roasting temps), one can have a pretty high level of confidence about the California tomatoes, but little about the coffee.

Some of the motivation for buying organic food is removing a source of toxins from the people who pick and process the raw beans.

Ken Fox wrote:How one could really go through all the steps in the production and shipping of the coffee from a 3rd world country and actually believe that the various rules were followed (or prove it) is beyond me.

But there is a market for this stuff, and attempts to point out the obvious to the true believers (in my experience) has been a waste of time.

A periodic sampling of representative farms from each coop is used. Some cheating was discovered in the past year in a couple of locations (not coffee), which led to a huge debate at the USDA on requiring inspections at every farm, which would be prohibitively expensive. The issue is still not entirely resolved.

Ken Fox wrote:Although I'm skeptical on the benefits of any of this stuff . . . <<<snip>>> How one could really go through all the steps in the production and shipping of the coffee from a 3rd world country and actually believe that the various rules were followed (or prove it) is beyond me.
ken

Much depends on what we are trying to demonstrate and the standards of evidence we require.

Example: I cannot prove that one particular batch of organic greens that I buy contributes to the values I hold for labor, social justice, environment, health, and so forth. I can't be certain that the beans are not doused with nasty chemicals.

On the other hand, on average it is more likely that my purchase of "organic" will more closely match those values than if I paid no attention to the label. Depends on how you roast and blend your empiricism, reductionism, politics, and ideology. There's no accounting for taste.