Comment by darth_avocado
3 hours ago
Organic is just green washing, it doesn’t mean no chemicals. Plenty of organic products contain toxic chemicals and heavy metals. Organic oats have been found to contain glyphosate. Organic spices have been found to contain heavy metals.
Organic means that no non-organic pesticides have been used in production. There are still organic ones available, which are less dangerous. Especially to the farmers who are the first ones to get exposed to the poisons we spread on the fields.
care to cite any decent research proving you point?
there's an extensive body of research on synthetics having no effect on human health, from goverment funded, private and independent research... if you access your country's official institution you'll see there's plenty of synthetics allowed in organic agriculture just because they mimic perfectly "organic" substances
interesting point too, is the lack of any extensive meta-analysis/studies on organic pesticide impact on health and plus the fact organic farm is rather poor (produce less than 2% of the global food) and usually if not always lack good machinery to spread pesticides on the recommended quantities science points out (which organic agriculture also has less literature on that too)
Not all synthetics are dangerous, many are. Many are banned, with the list growing each year: https://www.npic.orst.edu/reg/restricted.html
Why were they allowed in the first place, if "research" was enough? Science is not definitive, and what we believe to be an approximation of the truth today way be discovered to be totally wrong tomorrow. You are confusing science and religion.
Would you defend, for instance, that DDT and other organochlorine poisons are safe? They were the darling of scientists and agrobiz companies for a long time, until we discovered well that they were dangerous.
Of course, if we find a strict equivalent to a biopesticide that happens to be synthetical, it would be a good substitute. But most synthetic pesticides are not like this, unfortunately.
And what you say about the lack of studies regarding organic farming is a plain lie, it takes 30 seconds on google scholar to find it:
- Farmers in organic farms are less exposed to health effects of synthetic pesticides: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03784...
- Organic farming improve soils and yields: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1658077X2...
- Review on organic food quality and health effects: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s12940-017-031...
> There are still organic ones available, which are less dangerous.
"Organic" as in certified 'Organic' or as in the class of molecules?
If the former then I'd love to see the classification requirements that make a qualifying chemical safer all the ones that aren't.
If the later, that's blatantly untrue
"Organic" as in "allowed in what is commonly called 'organic farming'". You can find the rather short list here: https://www.agdaily.com/technology/the-list-of-pesticides-ap...
Note that other countries may have different legislations. You are also free to eat DDT to prove that organic farming is not really safer.
Organic is a label which means something specific. Compliance with the definition is controlled by law, however imperfectly. It is not just greenwashing.
You are both correct. Organic means something specific. However what it means is not what most people think it means. People want healthy and good for the earth - that is not what organic gives you. Sometimes it does, but sometimes conventional ag (with all those scary chemicals) is better.
Yes, I get this argument. But everybody intuitively understands the basic proposition of organic. Namely: "We have not added anything to your food for which you don't have many thousands of years of evolutionary preparation." That is not pseudoscience, it's rational circumspection. Or, as the European Commission calls it, the "precautionary principle". Speaking for myself, I find it convincing.
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Within the EU, it does. There's a whole regulation for it: EU 2018/848.
At least in Germany we have “Bio” which is a organic label that is controlled at least somewhat.