Organic maybe not so good? by fredgiblet

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Organic maybe not so good?

POSTED BY: FREDGIBLET
UPDATED: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 05:32
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Friday, September 14, 2007 10:17 AM

FREDGIBLET

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1567

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Friday, September 14, 2007 11:18 AM

LEADB

Very interesting article; I'll have to run it by my wife... she'll be annoyed with you (or me ;-) ).

My wife pushed us to a... perhaps not completely organic, but significantly organic food consumption. I've never been a huge 'fan' of organic; but I notice the article avoids what I consider to be the heavy hitters:

1) If you have kids, buy them milk free of growth hormones. Organic milk will qualify for that, and will typically be higher in omega threes (assuming the cows are grass fed...which they aren't always... sigh). However, I consider for kids being free of the growth hormones very significant.

2) There's still a heavy overuse of antibiotics in mass animal meat production; this will yield a world richer in antibiotic resistant microbes; a bad thing. On the other hand, I talked with a fellow who raises organic beef, and he's not even permitted to use antibiotics when castrating bulls... which is pretty problematic. Personally, I think there ought to be a category of meat 'responsibly grown' which permits use of antibiotics at least under appropriate need.

Organic is -not- the be all end all; however, it's really hard to be sure the particular food you are buying is responsibly produced without that label.

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Tuesday, September 18, 2007 5:32 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Some articles were published too long ago to be linked. They stated that 'integrated pest management' and fertilizing caused plants to have the highest levels of 'good' phytochemicals over agribusiness techniques and over organic farming. But pesticides don't get a pass. Many persistent pesticides and weed killers are known endocrine disruptors. For information on what some disruptors can do in real life, see below:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1002-03.htm

Polar bears, Arctic foxes and Inuit peoples are under threat from man-made toxins such as polychlorinated byphenyls (PCBs) that build up in the food chain, new research reveals.

Environmental and animal groups are calling for a global ban on the production of the chemicals to safeguard the future health of those groups. Some scientists believe the PCBs are leading to "gender-bender" polar bears in Norway and Greenland, after the discovery of a number of female bears which had both male and female sexual organs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2166996,00.html

Twice as many girls as boys are being born in some Arctic villages because of high levels of man-made chemicals in the blood of pregnant women, according to scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (Amap).

The Arctic scientists have discovered that many of the babies born in Russia are premature and the boys are far smaller than girls. Possible links between the pollutants and high infant mortality in the first year of life is also being investigated.

And something I just got in my email today:

http://www.separationsnow.com/coi/cda/detail.cda?id=17010&type=Feature
&chId=3&page=1

The veterinary world has seen a large increase in cases of feline hyperthyroidism, a disease of the thyroid which affects middle-aged and older cats. It has been reported that almost one-third of cats undergoing post-mortems in the US had thyroid adenomas but there is still no accepted cause of this disease.

... scientists in the US ... noted that the rise in feline hyperthyroidism parallels the introduction and continued use of flame retardants, the polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), around the world. These were brought into use in the 1970s and are deployed in many products for the home, such as carpets, furniture and plastic components in electronic goods. And the primary reason for making this connection is that PBDEs are known to impair thyroid function, so the link may not be as tenuous as some might think.

The overall PBDE burdens for diseased cats (12.7 ng/mL serum) were greater than those of the older, disease-free cats (10.5) and much greater than those of the young cats (4.3).

The indoor connection prompted Dye and her colleagues to compare the PBDE levels of cats with those of humans. The cat serum levels were 20-100-fold higher than those reported for adult Americans ... However, they were at the same level as those found in toddlers, for whom dust ingestion is thought to be the biggest contributor.

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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

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