WHY DON’T YOU USE ORGANIC INGREDIENTS?
As a principal driver of our mission at Bonza is for our food to have the lightest impact on the environment, we have chosen not to use organic ingredients because the yields are more often lower than the same non-organically grown ingredients.
Many studies, including the largest ever done on food production and the impacts on the environment by Poore and Nemecek in 2018 concluded the idea that converting from conventional crop to organic agriculture would not systematically decrease environmental impacts.
This is an excerpt from their extensive research study:
This leads us to three key conclusions in the organic-conventional farming debate:
- The common perception that organic food is by default better or is an ideal way to reduce environmental impact is a clear misconception. Across several metrics, organic agriculture actually proves to be more harmful for the world's environment than conventional agriculture.
- The debate between organic and intensive agriculture advocates is often needlessly polarized. There are scenarios where one system proves better than the other, and vice versa. If I were to advise on where and when to choose one or the other, I’d advise sticking with non-organic for all other food products (cereals, vegetables, dairy and eggs, and meat).
- The organic-conventional debate often detracts from other aspects of dietary choices which have greater impact. If looking to reduce the environmental impact of your diet, what you eat can be much more influential than how it is produced. The relative difference in land use and greenhouse gas impacts between organic and conventional systems is typically less than a multiple of two. Compare this to the relative differences in impacts between food types where, as shown in the charts below, the difference in land use and greenhouse gas emissions per unit protein between high-impact meats and low-impact crop types can be more than 100-fold. If your primary concern is whether the potato accompanying your steak is conventionally or organically produced, then your focus is arguably misplaced from the decisions which could have the greatest impact.
Where it makes sense scientifically to use an organic ingredient from both dog health and environmental impact perspectives we would choose the organic ingredient.