Relatively harmless ingredients

What Is Organic? Powerful Players Want a Say By MELANIE WARNER

Many in the organic industry say they are willing to allow some use of synthetics in organic food. Since 2002, the National Organic Standards Board, a 15-member panel of advisers appointed by the Agriculture Department, has served as the gatekeeper for such substances. In that time, 38 have been approved, many of them relatively harmless ingredients like baking powder, pectin, ascorbic acid and carbon dioxide.

But isn't all non-organic food also made out of "relatively harmless ingredients"?