Is it really organic food?

At my favorite market in Quezon City, I chanced upon a bunch of organically grown tomatoes and it raised my eyebrow.

From the look, smell, and feel of it, the bunch that I was inspecting didn't seem to be any different from another bunch of tomatoes just a few steps away.

So, I asked the seller of the supposedly organic tomatoes for proof.  She sliced one up and gave me a taste of her organically grown tomatoes.  After which, she asked me to taste another slice from a similar looking tomato which she swore was not organic.

Guess what? The tasted just about the same and I politely declined buying a kilo of the supposedly organic tomato.

You see, once organic food is placed on the market shelf, there is no way of really knowing whether it is really organically grown or not.

The best way to assure yourself that a tomato or what have you has been organically grown is perhaps to pick it yourself from a farm or a patch which you've personally watched from planting to harvest.  That is best way to know if the farmer used pesticides or fertilizer to grow the food.  Perhaps, if you know the grower better, you could even inspect the seeds that he used and find out if the seeds aren't genetically modified.

The next best thing you can do, perhaps, is to see if the purportedly organic food has some kind of certification on it -- granting that it is packaged in some way and that packaging has some kind of label which carries some sort of seal of assurance that IT IS in fact organically grown.

In the United States, they have what is called a US DA (Department of Agriculture) Organic seal.

In the Philippines, it might be difficult to find a similar certification or certifying authority.

What we do have is a Organic Farming Information Network (Phil-Organic).

The organic movement in the Philippines was initiated in the 1980s by a series of uncoordinated initiatives promoted by some NGOs. With no support by the government, for the rest of the 1980s a number of other projects emerged and introduced organic farming in the Philippines. Today there are many private companies and NGOs involved in the production of organic food. The Organic Producers and Traders Association (OPTA) was formed in 1995. The Organic Farming Information Network (Phil-Organic) is an information service that provides accessible data/information to various stakeholders in the organic farming industry. MASIPAG is a farmer-led network of people's organizations, non-government organizations and scientists working towards the sustainable use and management of biodiversity through farmers' control of genetic and biological resources, agricultural production and associated knowledge. The OCCP is an independent, private, membership-based, organic-standard setting and organic certification body. The PDAP is a national network of Philippine NGOs working on the promotion of rural enterprises for poverty reduction and as tool for peace building in conflict-affected areas and also active in the promotion of organic agriculture.

The next question is, who certifies the certifying authority?