Comments on: “Organic food no better”

By: Tass

Tass — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:53:28 +0000

I am not against organic food – about half of my food purchases are. But your arguments aren’t as rational as the Food Standards Agency.

i.e.

- “agro-biz food” – most organic farms are BIG agro-biz – smaller operators have a very hard time infiltrating the major purveyors.

- the plant strains used in organic farming are often those with the highest levels of naturally incurring pesticides – which can be as harmful to animal health as the synthetic

- “It stands to reason that the balance of my compost will reflect the balance of my diet.” – does not stand to reason at all. The “government’s Food Standards Agency, which compared 55 scientific studies comparing organic and non-organic produce” came to the opposite conclusion – yours is wishful thinking.

By: Rachelmaria

Rachelmaria — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:35:09 +0000

I admit though that German organic food is in most cases probably much safer and of higher quality than American or British products. There are lots of shops in Germany that sell only organic food and in other countries organic and conventional food are usually sold in one and the same shop and made by one company, as far as I understand it, so the danger of contamination is much higher.

By: Rachelmaria

Rachelmaria — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:30:32 +0000

Complete rubbish. Lobbyists. Check out recent German research. Or just check it out yourself. Organic food definitely is better. There are thousands of reasons. It grows slower so that it contains less water and the minerals and vitamins are therefore more concentrated. Anyway, the main reason you buy it should be because it is a donation to the environment, not because you ONLY egoistically want to live as free from pesticides as possible.

By: AmericanGypsie

AmericanGypsie — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:43:58 +0000

Bush cut funding to FDA (Food and Drug Admin).

All of the recent CA e.coli food outbreaks were tested by Primus Labs. Clean.

Right.

There has never been adequate testing. Before Bush, a farm might be visited once in ten years.

By: Bob Hayes

Bob Hayes — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:51:03 +0000

Isn’t there anybody doing the ‘watchdog’ role to
randomly test and insure the quality of our
organic foods? Didn’t California food
retailers have to face the bad news so often that
they became proactively involved in the food
testing too? What happened or who still is
doing the job on this?
I’m still suspicious of say, Chilean org apples
which show up in Phila. very cheap with their
org label stuck on. Don’t they have a lower
pesticide standard to meet too? Who tests?
The expenses should be born by the retailers
and quality control here sounds like the
proper role of gov’t too.

By: Pestilent Pesticides? | Origin Nutrition

Pestilent Pesticides? | Origin Nutrition — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:26:13 +0000

[...] definition, that the reviewers didn’t consider pesticide residue as worthy of examining. “We didn’t look at that. We looked at nutritional elements only. Pesticides are fine, because they are monitored and we [...]

By: Raat

Raat — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 11:22:37 +0000

Sorry, run that past me again?

“What about the pesticide residue?”
“We didn’t look at that,” replied the FSA. “We looked at nutritional elements only. Pesticides are fine, because they are monitored and we don’t believe they are dangerous to food.”

For those of you whose English might be a bit patchy, ‘monitored’, in this context, means that a pesticide is fine to eat until the FSA bans it for not being fine to eat.

Reasons for banning a pesticide include a sudden realisation on the part of the FSA that perhaps the initial tests that they conducted to determine the level of risk to human health may have been, I don’t know, somehow incomplete.

By: Diana

Diana — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:38:08 +0000

My conclusion from this and other facts/speculation on organic food is to buy as much as possible from small local growers at CSA’s, Farmer’s Markets and reputable farmstands. Being able to speak directly to the growers or at least their distributors helps maintain accountability. It seems we’ve reached the moment where even “organic” has hit a wall. We need to be seeking out the farmers who are working biodynamically and have no desire to exploit the “organics” market.

By: Daniel Leroy

Daniel Leroy — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:51:29 +0000

Good article. One thing left out:

A large percentage of “organic” food originates from China. This is particularly the case in Europe, but increasingly so in the US and Japan. With all the recent concerns over children’s toys and dog food, I have little confidence in China’s organic standards. Unfortunately in the US there are no FDA mandates requiring the country of origin to be made known to the consumer. In this respect organic food can be dangerous when a non-organic counterpart is clearly a domestic product.

By: James P McMahon

James P McMahon — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:51:06 +0000

I’m glad someone followed up on this study and asked the question about pesticides. Their conclusions made no sense to me.