Gordon McLauchlan: Organic 'collection' a load of rubbish

I'm glad Rachel Carson wasn't with me in the supermarket the other day when I picked up a spray-on window cleaner that carried the label "guaranteed organic". Beside it stood a general household cleaner with the same tag. I looked at the container with disdain but another shopper a few minutes later looked at it and shoved it in the shopping cart.

What I didn't check was whether it was more expensive than your ordinary, hardworking cleaner, like many products labelled "organic". If it is, then surely serious questions need to be asked about misleading labelling.

Carson started the Green movement with her 1962 book, Silent Spring, about the damage being done to the environment and to people by chemically compounded pesticides, especially DDT.

DDT was considered the perfect insecticide 50 years ago, cheap and relatively non-toxic to mammals. It saved millions of human lives when sprayed on the breeding grounds of the malaria mosquito. But what Carson discovered was that it lived on in the soil, was washed down rivers and streams, and threatened fish and birds as its presence built up.

Her work started a revolt against the profligate use of pesticides and herbicides based on chemical compounds, loosely described as inorganic, whose effects on the environment were often not known, and particularly their effects on humans who ingested small amounts through produce.

Great stuff, but the sad fate of prophets or gurus such as Carson is all sorts of self-righteous humbugs climb on their bandwagon. So we now have within the Greens doolally fundamentalists who have transformed a perfectly useful word into a synonym for "nice" or "good", and confused the whole issue of organic versus chemical compounds.

Here are Oxford Concise Dictionary meanings of organic: "of or relating to a bodily organ or organs; produced or involving production without the use of chemical fertilisers or other artificial chemicals; denoting a harmonious relationship between the elements of a whole; characterised by natural development; derived from living matter; in chemistry relating to or denoting compounds containing carbon and chiefly or ultimately of biological origin".

This provides the reason fruits and vegetables may be organic - no fertilisers, pesticides or herbicides are used during their life cycle or the life cycle of the plants that bore them. We can eat them without fear of ingesting the residue of some possibly dangerous chemical compounds.

But what is the difference between organic and inorganic spray-on window cleaners and, if there is one, does that difference matter a toss? Can we drink or sniff the organic spray-on window cleaner and thus get a shine on the old oesophagus? Could I perhaps spray and polish my eyeballs without fear of harm?

I think I'll put Gordon McLauchlan, Organic Columnist, on my next business card. My body contains carbon and I'm relating to or derived from living matter, and am chiefly or ultimately of biological origin. I never spray myself for aphids with chemical compounds and only ever use organic after-shave and toothpaste. Maybe then I'll get paid more. (Editor: please note.)

All round, it's been a bad few weeks for the language. For example I received from a university some information accompanying an invitation to attend a forum. The forum venue "boasts an exciting synergistic interface", and is one "in which start-up companies can be developed in a supportive incubator environment". The rest of it isn't too bad, except for a literal and breathless adjective or two, about standard for sloppy business writing. But this is a university or, as the writer would have put it, an incubator that supports and develops the synergistic interface between teachers and students - and therefore we are entitled to expect better. It also uses that cliche crusted with age, "walk the talk".

* I want to thank Nicky Hager for the immense amount of research it must have taken to find that the New Zealand SAS was involved in target location and the killing of combatants in Afghanistan. I thought our boys were doing laundry duties, or chaperoning officers' wives, or preparing haute cuisine in canteens. So I'm grateful that he told me our soldiers were fighting. Perhaps he could do some research to let us know what bus drivers do at work.

On the subject of our SAS, the latest London Review of Books carries an article by an international law expert at Duke University, Michael Byers, which includes: "Civilians [in a war] can be protected only if a distinction is maintained between combatants and non-combatants. This is achieved by offering prisoner-of-war status to captured combatants who have carried their arms openly and worn a fixed distinctive emblem [usually a shoulder patch]".

"But this distinction is most severely threatened by the practice of US special forces, which constitute an increasingly important part of the US military and have, with the apparent support of the Secretary of Defence, taken to wearing civilian clothing. The practice has already been challenged: when the New Zealand Government sent a contingent of commandos to fight in Afghanistan, it refused to allow them to wear civilian clothes - a decision that created considerable friction with the US."

Remember how the Americans would not give prisoner-of-war status to their Guantanamo Bay prisoners because they weren't regular, uniformed combatants, and have since held them without trial?