Re: more comments on organic

[Christos Vasilikiotis <christos@uclink4.berkeley.edu>]

At 1:24 AM +0930 4/13/02, Rick Roush wrote:
>Organic Vegetables May Pose Hidden Dangers
>
>- Lance Gay, Scripps Howard News Service, March 3, 2002
>www.nandotimes.com/healthscience/story/280702p-2485738c.html
>
>Atlanta  - Those leafy vegetables and fresh carrots look so good and
>nutritious on the supermarket shelves. But appearances are deceptive
>- produce grown on manure could be harboring unseen pathogens that
>could make you very sick.
>
>Scientists attending an Institute of Food Technologists meeting here
>say the trends away from artificial fertilizers and back to organic
>farming and using manure to grow fruits and vegetables pose a danger.
>Pathogens such as E. coli, shigella and salmonella that grow in the
>stomachs of animals can be transferred to leafy greens, strawberries
>and root vegetables.

snip...
>
>One of the country's worst produce-related outbreaks of food
>poisoning was in New England in 1996, when 61 people were made sick -
>21 of them hospitalized - with a particularly lethal strain of E.
>coli. The problem was tracked to a California producer who grew salad
>greens in fields fed by water from an adjacent beef cattle farm.

It is quite amazing that organic farming is blamed for the problems
caused by industrial agriculture!

The only case  mentioned above to highlight the "dangers" of organic
food, has nothing to do with organic practices and everything to do
with industrial animal farming.

The produce was not contaminated by compost but from water that was
contaminated  by a beef cattle farm. I have not seen any case yet of
manure used in an organic farm contaminating produce and causing
illness to consumers. On the other hand we hear of people dying and
getting sick from contaminated beef all over the country.

Why is it that the Institute of Food Technologists do not condemn
industrial animal farming for causing so many outbreaks? All we hear
lately is the "potential" danger that manure will kill us. The funny
thing is that the reason E.coli 0157 is so dangerous, is because of
industrial ag, not organic farming. So lets clean up the source of
the deadly pathogens and stop blaming the victim (organic farmers).

Christos



--

********************************
   Christos Vasilikiotis, Ph.D.       		     
   University of California, Berkeley
   Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy & Management
   Division of Insect Biology
   christos@nature.berkeley.edu
   http://www.CNR.Berkeley.EDU/~christos/
_______________________________________

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
-Mahatma Gandi

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