When you cough up the cash for organic produce, you expect that it’s all natural. In reality, certain organic fruit farmers use antibiotics just like their conventional counterparts—but not for long: The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) recently voted to end an exemption that allows organic apple and pear farmers to use the antibiotic oxytetracycline on their orchards.
The USDA organic seal is typically reserved for food that’s raised or grown without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, says Sam Jones-Ellard, a spokesperson for the USDA. But currently, apple and pear growers are permitted to use oxytetracycline as a last line of defense in fighting fire blight, a bacterial plant infection that eats away at trees and can easily wipe out a whole orchard. Because it can take years to grow an apple or pear tree that produces fruit, untreated fire blight can put an organic farm out of business.
The USDA expected growers to come up with a natural way to curb fire blight by 2014, when the exemption implemented in 2002 is scheduled to expire. Unfortunately, experts haven’t found a fire blight cure yet. So while the upcoming ban is good news for organic fruit eaters who want to get what they pay for (naturally-grown fruit), NOSB’s decision puts pressure on growers to find a truly organic solution, fast.
In the meantime, there’s no need to panic about eating the teensy amount of oxytetracycline found in some organically grown apples and pears, says Jones-Ellard, since these fruits contain at least 50,000 times less oxytetracycline than what you’d get if you were on a typical antibiotic prescription. So go ahead and crunch away on your organic apples and pears—with the knowledge that antibiotic-free fruit is coming your way soon.
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