All food contains carbon, since we are carbon-based life forms and require carbon-based food sources. However, when we talk about food being organic, we are referring to food that was grown without any added man-made chemicals.
For produce and other plant-sourced foods, this means that no man-made chemical fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides were used on the crop, or on the ground in which the crop was grown.
For animal food sources, like meat, milk and dairy products, or eggs, this means that the animal's feed is organically-grown, and no man-made chemicals were added to it or administered to the animal through other means, unless deemed medically necessary.
Often, in developed nations, antibiotics may be added to animal feeds to prevent infection due to overcrowding and movement limitation, or growth hormone may be used to enhance meat or milk production, or the meat may even be dipped in or sprayed with antibiotics to prevent contamination during the handling and packaging process.
Organically grown meat and dairy animals can be administered antibiotics if deemed a necessary medical treatment. Egg and dairy animals must be removed from production for a period of time to allow the antibiotics to process through their systems before they are returned to production duties. Meat animals must be allowed time for the antibiotic or other chemical to process from their system before being slaughtered for meat that is marketed as organically grown.
No, because the feed is not necessarily organically-grown for the animals whose meat that is marketed that way. True organically-grown meat and dairy products come from animals fed an organically-grown diet.
"Free–range" meat comes from animals which were not penned or corralled into close quarters all the time, but instead were allowed a large protected area in which they could move freely.
Most of us have heard how modern veal production imprisons calves in veal–fattening pens that do not allow them to move at all, even a step forward or back, in order to produce a pale, super–tender meat by preventing them from using their muscles, or improving their circulation and blood flow. Or else we may have seen images of production chicken farms, where the hens are caged literally one on top of the other, in tiny wire boxes, for most of their lives.
What we may not have learned is that this practise produces the same tendency to weakness and illness that we ourselves are subject to when kept in close others with a large number of other persons, fed an inadequate diet, restricted in our movements, and denied adequate exercise to maintain our immune systems. There is a reason that the ever–smaller cubicles of the modern computer user's workplace are known as "veal fattening pens". Free-range animals are able to exercise, and maintain seperation from any animal who may become ill, thereby remaining much healthier and requiring much less medical treatment.
As consumers, then, we are eating much healthier meat and less chemical when we buy and eat free-range options when available, as well as creating more humane conditions on our farms for the animals in our care. We are each directly responsible for the form of food production that we support as we choose the foods that feed our families and ourselves.
Many people, industry groups, and regulatory organizations define organic food as having been grown in ground that has been free from contamination with man–made chemicals for 3 full years. Crops that are grown without any man–made chemical contamination during that growing season, in ground that has not been known to be chemical–free for 3 full years, are considered to be transitional organic.
Transitional organic produce is substantially cleaner, in terms of chemical contamination, than produce which is not grown organically, but it can still pick up some residual chemical contamination from the soil. True organically–grown produce should be free from contamination with any man–made chemicals or compounds.
Biodynamic products come from a farm where every element necessary for the production of the meat, dairy, honey, or produce that comes from that farm is produced on that farm, using sustainable organic agriculture techniques. The farmer is rebuilding the soil at least as fast as it is depleted, often as part of a "permaculture" ecosystem.
Permaculture is the deliberate creation of a self–sustaining ecosystem, on a piece of land such that it is producing at least a subsistence level living for every person, plant, and animal on that farm, in a carefully designed self–sustaining cycle that can be maintained indefinitely, far past the life–span of a single generation. Permaculture is the antithesis of the chemically–driven cycle of pesticides and fertilizers that turned "America's Breadbasket" into the "Dustbowl"; instead of depleting the soil, each crop nourishes and improves the soil, putting essential nutrients and organic matter back into the soil.
When food is grown organically, the soil on the farm is improved, and there are no chemical contaminants in the groundwater, or sprayed on the neighboring properties. Organic farming relies on healthy soil and a healthy environment to produce healthy plants, resistant to disease and pest infestation. Organic farmers respect the health of the ecosystem, and encourage or create fence rows, wetlands, and other surrounding natural areas, to the benefit of local wildlife.
Organic farming techniques are best suited to practise on the smaller family farm than on the oversized factory production mega farms that have replaced them across much of North America already.
Many health hazards have been documented in association with exposure to agricultural chemicals, including pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Even when they are not detectable in trace residual levels left on the produce, these chemicals leach into our soil, and run off into our groundwater.
Children at all developmental stages are at greater risk from any interference in their natural biochemistry from outside substances. This puts them at greater risk from pesticide or fertilizer contamination than are adults; at the same time, they consume a proportionally greater amount of fresh produce or cereal products, thereby raising their exposure to any residual agricultural chemicals in their food.
"By age 1, the average child has been exposed to more risk of cancer from pesticides than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says she should get over her entire life."
