“Right now, someone nearby is buying organic bean sprouts. It may be the last thing he ever does. Last week’s E. coli outbreak in Germany – potentially traced to an organic farm – was more deadly than the largest nuclear disaster of the last quarter-century.”
These are the claim in an article in the Washington Times. Are they true? Were the bean sprouts organic? The story continues…
“Indeed, in the past two years, two public safety stories have dominated global news headlines – an explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and a nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan. Yet in the recent German organic-food-disease outbreak, nearly twice as many people already have died as in the two other industrial disasters combined.
“In response to the oil spill, countries all over the world have stopped or curtailed deep-water oil drilling as new safety and environmental regulations are designed and implemented. And ground hasn’t been broken on any new nuclear power plant in Europe or the United States since news of the Japanese meltdown broke. Germany is developing plans to mothball its whole nuclear industry.
“Yet, 23 deaths and more than 1,000 hospitalizations caused by an industrial accident at an organic farm in northern Germany have caused no such newfound caution toward the expansion of that industry.”
The story continues here:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/8/dead-bodies-demand-organic-food-moratorium/
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
We’ve had an organic consultant in this valley, when a mate wanted to get his garden classified.
Well, most capitalist enterprises would be in awe of this consultant’s ability to mark up a load of lime, rock phosphate and a few trace elements. No sale, no organic classification. And the world’s most expensive bag of lime was only the start, of course. Our pony-tailed Green Better was just getting warmed up. Fortunately, people woke up to him and he hasn’t been back.
Who doesn’t want to keep their soil healthy and full of humus. Who wants to spend needlessly on chemicals? Synthetic chemicals have a role, as do natural substances.
Conservation should embrace modern chemicals as well as traditional and organic practices. Organics as an applied dogma is wasteful of money, land and resources. It can also be primitive and unsafe. I don’t refuse to purchase a product classified as organic if it seems good and I like the price. But let’s establish standards around quality, nomenclature and safety, rather than green fetishism.
There are enough middlemen in the marketing of food. Why add a green bureaucracy to the layers of scalpers and skimmers.
I absolutely positively refuse to eat food labeled ‘organic’. Why? Because it means, ‘We don’t use the safest modern methods available’.
Simple as that.
Remember that 111 years ago or 1900 the average life expectancy in the first world was about 47 years of age .
In 1900 nearly everyone ate food produced organically as they do today in a number of developing and third world countries.
Of course there are many reasons why life expectancy has increased to around 80 in the first world and about 65 in the developing world, but it’s true to say that eating food produced with artificial fertilizers and chemicals hasn’t seemed to have caused much harm to the human body.
If it has explain why we can live an extra 33 years and maintain a much higher population throughout the world as well than we did only a century ago.
What I find personally distasteful in the three examples cited is the different concentration on perceptions.
Anything the may be ‘seen’ as possibly detrimental to any green agenda is downplayed while anything that supports that green agenda is played up for all its worth.
The other day marked three months since the dreadful earthquake/tsunami combination impacted in Japan. Those people still listed as missing as a result of the tsunami have now been officially listed as being deceased. That adds a further more than 5000 people to that list of souls who were killed as a result of the tsunami, taking the toll to around 25,000. That story barely rated a mention anywhere,
However, all the talk is still of the radiation problem, and that has always made more news than the devastation and now clean up on a scale unimaginable. All the concentration is for any snippet of news from the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
The same applied with the Gulf of Mexico rig explosion where the concentration again was not on the 11 men who lost their lives, but on the ecological ramifications.
Now I understand the need for the media to make it as sensational as possible, because that’s what they perceive as being what the public wants to know, but in my eyes, this is a little incongruous.
Now, there’s not many media lines in a public health issue that may, and notice how the word allegedly is used when referring to the problem regarding organic food, almost as if, well, ‘surely not’ organic food related.
I understand the serious nature of all three problems, but only two of them are reported ‘ad infinitum’.
If there is a leaning towards a green agenda, then only stories that support that are played up.
It seems somewhat hypocritical in my eyes, a further form of ‘greenwashing’.
Tony.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g6NRcjMSGczScJJLVq903lBErTxA?docId=CNG.25b78f54a3b7e30abed76c9d803100d4.c1
“but it’s true to say that eating food produced with artificial fertilizers and chemicals hasn’t seemed to have caused much harm to the human body.”
Neville – the reason people prefer organic is because it’s better for the environment to produce food without pesticides, chemicals and artificial fertilisers.
John Sayers
Neville – the reason people prefer organic is because it’s better for the environment to produce food without pesticides, chemicals and artificial fertilisers.
Would you in your own words elucidate on this please?
Why do you think it’s so?
What is so good about insects eating or at least damaging half the crop?
Why is a naturally occurring pyrethrin better than a manufactured one?
I completely agree with you on one thing, that a well composted and cured batch of stable manure is good for the soil.
However where do you find sufficient quantities these days?
Interesting.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2011/06/12/ap-waffles-calling-source-european-e-coli-organic-farm
Tony.
Johnathan, I just stated why I believe people prefer organic. It’s not my personal opinion.
“I completely agree with you on one thing, that a well composted and cured batch of stable manure is good for the soil.
However where do you find sufficient quantities these days?”
ha – the irony is that most vegetarians are supporters of organic food yet it’s the excrement of the carnivores that supplies the fertiliser for their crops.
That’s what I love about rednecks. I only turn up for a look in every few months to see what the halfwits are up to and I’m reassured by the friendly fire as you shoot yourselves in the feet.
Comparing the E.Coli outbreak with Fukushima? Comedy GOLD!
What is the evidence that the E. coli outbreak is directly attributable to organic farming techniques?
Fuku “nothing to see here” shima – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster . When will the 60km exclusion zone be rolled back? Hundreds of thousands of Japanese would like to know. What would happen if Lucas Heights had a low level “incident” like Fukushima?
All good here. I’d just like to invite you rocket surgeons to plow every last cent you have into Australia’s nascent nuclear energy future. I’m sure you’ll reap what you deserve. Apparently Chernobyl has never looked backed since embracing the nuclear fuel cycle.
“the reason people prefer organic is because it’s better for the environment to produce food without pesticides, chemicals and artificial fertilisers.”
They’re willing to lay down their lives for ‘the environment’ (actually, for someone’s farm land)? I doubt it.
The great crisis of the times is Global Ingratitude. This entails receiving benefits impossible for previous generations, and not acknowledging or even seeing them. Any problems associated with the source of such benefits will be an occasion for shrieking, puritanical sermons…while one continues to enjoy the benefits.
Balancing this is a fierce dedication to the virtues of all that is trivial or inefficacious.
Thank God I’m a half-wit redneck. I don’t ever want to be clever.
“They’re willing to lay down their lives ” nothing of the sort – they receive a higher price for their produce!
Having been in a position to observe organic farming on 3 neighbouring farms, 2 of which have recently reverted to conventional practices because they couldn’t survive financially, I find it amazing that organic farming is promoted as good for the environment. If we were to produce the same ammount of produce with organic methods in the region where my family farms on the central Darling Downs you would need 10 times the area. Modern conventional farming methods are extremely productive which enables us to produce reliably and at a price consumers can afford. If agriculture is to go organic and maintain current production we will need to find many many more acres to put under the plough, or consumers will have to cope with rocketing food prices
Perhaps the Germans could use one of the Nuclear Power stations they are to close and instead irradiate the sprouts and thus kill the bacteria!
Perhaps someone this blog is expert but seems to me this is a bit complicated. We all have e-coli in our lower intestine and we come in contact with it all the time. The OZ Choice magazine does tests on fast food and often finds the counts are too high. It is literally everywhere so I am not surprised it is being played down. We would have to ban humans as carriers err… the Green movement already wants to do that. Seems this is a deadly strain that is resistant to antibiotics. I think cystitis is often e-coli.
The death toll in Germany from organic bean sprouts is 23. The death toll from the Fukushima Dai-ichi triple meltdown is 0. Yet Germany bans nuclear power. It’s just so weird.