good points, all.

my own food-getting decision flow-chart goes:

1. grow/gather your own or with/from family/friends.

2. local/regional, small farms--if they aren't "organic" you can usually still get some info on them--and sooner or later, they're going to end up *being* organic by default when no one can afford chemicle fertilizers anyway!

3. organic from outfits i know something about--like Organic Valley dairy, which is a co-op and has much stricter rules than Horizen does.

4. random organic on sale.

5. "Amish" i am lucky to live half way in between Lancaster PA and the Amish regions of Ohio, so it's easy to get their cheeses & butters even at the big chain groceries here, produce on market day downtown, and so on.

exception: milk--NO hormones (RBGH etc) trumps all for me. luckily, i have a local guy who does grass-fed raw non-homogenized milk in returnable glass bottles. yum! he hasn't raised his prices like all the other ones yet, either.

you can get a wallet-size guide for what veggies are most poisonous if not "organic" here: www.foodnews.org

i also highly recommend checking out your local access to the CSA program:

http://www.localharvest.org/csa/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community-supported_agriculture

these are almost always going to be as local as possible to you, and small or family farms. they may not be strictly "organic" but for me, i am more concerned with eating local/seasonal and MOST of all with supporting the little guys around my area. i want to keep them going so they'll be there for me when we need them!

the CSA programs help those farmers to plan their year by assuring them a certain customer base each season, no matter how the weather goes. you'll get your X dollars' worth of whatever they've got. mine is $13/week for a box that i can almost exclusively live on and still have extra.

i just got my second weekly box of the season on Friday. this year so far they've been giving me blueberries along with some squashes and leeks and the usual stuff, i assume because we had so much rain here that a lot of folks were late getting their first crops in. i'm expecting to get snowed under in tomatoes, potatos, corn, onions, late squash etc. come September/October though. right now i'm getting a LOT of lettuce and herbs and less of the other.

doing the CSA is a fun challenge since you don't know what you'll get, and then sometimes you have to look up different ways to use stuff. i end up having extra anyway, but then i can give that to friends of mine who don't have the cash to buy good food all the time.

re: the fed label--i've found with lots of older folks, like my mom, they get confused between "organic" and bullshit sales terms like "all natural" and can get ripped off easily. i just finally got her trained to look for that damn government seal, and now i've had to start pushing her more toward farmers markets and stuff. it never ends. you have to stay educated because the Sales Mercenaries will always be looking for ways to take advantage by sowing misinformation and taking advantage.

a bit off topic here--i generally do not buy *any* meat from anyone. my dad hunts, and some of his hunting buddies don't want to eat their kills (which is terrible!) but he takes their deer, turkey, rabbits, etc. and either butchers them himself or gets his friend with the farm to help him, and he & my mum have a big basement freezer, so pretty much that's where i get all of my meat. i don't trust fish anymore at all, even when you catch them yourself--the waters around here are just too polluted.

not to gross out the vegetarians/vegans here (i've been one or the other myself for half my life) but wild game goes a long way if you are okay with eating it. trouble is learning how to hunt, the expense of the lisence, travel & time to hunt, weapons...and that's the EASY part! the HARD part is learning how, and then doing the physically hard work of respectfully and *safely* taking responsibility for that creature's body which has been sacrificed for you and preparing cuts of meat and knowing how to properly store it & cook it! i love all animals, always have, but having grown up helping (well, mostly watching!) my dad, i've now come back around to feeling ethically okay with eating them, too--but only if i feel personally involved and know they were taken with the right kind of respect.

i'm still not cool with farmed meat--something about humans taking those animals under their care with the express purpose of eating them once they grow up doesn't sit well with me. hunting feels more natural, and the animals were wild and free and mostly lived the kind of lives they were meant to live, and if i did not eat them, a bear or wolf or coyote would, and i am fine being in the company of bears and wolves and coyotes...we all have claws and sharp teeth and predator's eyes and noses. i grew up in the kind of neighborhood where in the winter there would be deer bodies hanging from the kids' swing-sets in the yards, and everyone had a set of sinks in the basement for cleaning rabbits and other small game. i used to save the rabbits' tails and turkeys' feet and pheasants' feathers, and would spend hours sitting outside petting the noses of the dead deer...to many Americans today that probably sounds horrible, but it never FELT horrible to me somehow...it was my way of thanking them for giving me their life, i guess? even if i didn't know how to express it like that when i was a child. deer have the most beautiful, personality-filled faces, if you ever get to see them up close, even in death--big soft brown eyes, huge furry ears. sometimes i would cry for them, too, but not in a "bad" way?

okay--that's probably WAY more information than anyone would want! i apologize if i have offended any veggers! it is a personal decision, and i absolutely respect it!