Although I understand that all firms want to sway every potential consumer to go buy their product or use their service, however, that does not mean that they should be allowed to make misleading advertisements, depicting things that are only half the truth.
A question that I would like to raise is if organic-labeled produce in the supermarket, are actually as organic as you think it is. To answer this question, ABC15 investigators conducted a test to see if these organic products are truly organic. The test contained of 33 different organic produce from 11 different countries.
Firstly, according to Will Sumner, a chemist who conducted the test stated that “by definition, organic does not mean chemical-free. It just means it is grown without the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, it doesn’t mean that they are not toxic”. Isn’t that shocking? Well that’s not all. After the results of the test came out, Sumner found that many organically grown produce has been cross-contaminated with other chemicals and pesticides, and that 12 percent of the produce had pesticide residues, and another 10 percent had trace amounts.
Here is a video of ABC’s investigation:
Not only are the pesticides worrisome, but “studies that have been done to see if organic produce is safer, healthier or more nutritious. They have not proven that to be the case”. After reading about their results of their tests, I feel that the way firm’s portray their products can be very deceiving. They purposely throw in words like “organic”, a word that is perceived to be healthy by many people, when marketing, to attract the more health-conscious consumers. I feel like this kind of marketing is unethical, and that firm’s have the responsibility to tell consumers that their produce might not be 100 percent organic.