Here, kitty

A Perspective piece in the Post guaranteed to rile the Back to the Earth First! crowd:

I don't like to buy organic food products, and avoid them at all cost. It is a principled decision reached through careful consideration of effects of organic production practices on animal welfare and the environment. I buy regular food, rather than organic, for the benefit of my family.

Me too, but then, as a child I ate lead paint, and still enjoy a bowl of chips in front of the TV now and then.

Writer Jackie Avner, besides living in Highlands Ranch as her bio-line says (and that's it), has a rather interesting job: she works for a company that's genetically engineering an allergy-free (for people) cat:

A biotechnology company intends to alter the genetic makeup of moggies [sorry, this is the BBC] to create the perfect pet for allergic cat lovers.

Transgenic Pets claims sufferers will soon be able to own a cat without fear of a runny nose or streaming eyes . . . .

"We're simply removing a non-essential protein from the cats and it shouldn't hurt the cats in any way," Jackie Avner of Transgenic Pets told the BBC. "The resulting cats will improve the medical health and the quality of life for millions of people."

For some reason the Post doesn't mention Avner's work. Mmmmmm, chips.

Update: Folks have worked themselves into dudgeons high and low in comments to the post. Worth reading, especially the veterinarian who works with food animals and notes that "organic-produced milk in general has more somatic cells (what some people have called pus) than non-organic-produced milk."

That's going to ruin my Lucky Charms Experience.

According to Avner, organic milk (now with more pus!) also costs 85 percent more than the regular low-pus variety.

Update II: Another commenter says Avner is employed by the free-marketeering Hudson Institute. This does not sound like something the Post would do. The Rocky, maybe, but not the Post.