Corruption of Food Production Thread

[Perelandra]

Thank you, gentlemen.

One more day for the fundraiser.
http://www.organicconsumersfund.org/donate/moneybomb.cfm

[seemslikeadream]

WHYBIOTECH

[ninakat]

From the Ministry of Truth no doubt:

Organic food hardly healthier, study suggests
September 4, 2012

© 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

What's the policy here regarding these kinds of copyrights? I'll post the entire article, or someone else can, if the mods give the aok.

[Pele'sDaughter]

If their study is correct and there is very little difference, then the standards aren't being applied properly and the oversight is negligent.

[slimmouse]

Today, as part of an ongoing project, I was researching the Codex Alimentarius Commission.

Its truly mindblowing. But perhaps, riggies can help me with this.

When I visited their website, other than email adresses, I couldnt actually find a single person in any position of authority, who I can find out more about.

I strongly suspect that most people here have a reasonable understanding of the reasons for such obscurity, but I will await confirmation until I can actually put a single frickin name to this organisation.

http://www.codexalimentarius.org/codex-home/en/

Beautifully fluffy homepage for sure. How about those names ?

There now follows a brief visual of this task;



When perusing the email adresses for contacting delegates of the commission, about the only name that stood out to me was someone by the incredibly synchronistic name of gutfried@someaddressorother. The irony of this shouldnt be lost on anyone who knows anything about the recent findings of research into GMO food, and its effect on both humans and animals.

GMO manufacturers along with Big Pharma are those entities which this nameless, faceless organisation is clearly fronting for, as evidenced by their legislation in favour of such bodies.

Any help/ suggestions ?

[ninakat]

If their study is correct and there is very little difference, then the standards aren't being applied properly and the oversight is negligent.

Here's a variety of reaction from people who are a heck of a lot more trustworthy than those who put out the study.

But first, here's a NY Times op-ed "The Organic Fable" in which the author, Roger Cohen, gushes with glee at the Stanford study and states: "Organic has long since become an ideology, the romantic back-to-nature obsession of an upper middle class able to afford it and oblivious, in their affluent narcissism, to the challenge of feeding a planet whose population will surge to 9 billion before the middle of the century and whose poor will get a lot more nutrients from the two regular carrots they can buy for the price of one organic carrot." Let them eat GMOs and petrochemicals, I guess -- and the environment be damned. He really needs to learn about how Cuba turned to organic solutions, as a result of a 50% decrease in oil imports. It now costs less to buy organic in Cuba than conventional. But I guess an oil shock can't happen here.

+ + +

Published on Thursday, September 6, 2012 by Common Dreams
Stanford Scientists Shockingly Reckless on Health Risk And Organics
by Frances Moore Lappé

. . . Bottom line for me? What we do know is that the rates of critical illnesses, many food-related --from allergies to Crohn's Disease -- are spiking and no one knows why. What we do know is that pesticide poisoning is real and lethal -- and not just for humans. In such a world is it not the height of irresponsibility to downplay the risks of exposure to known toxins?

Rachel Carson would be crying. Or, I hope, shouting until -- finally -- we all listen. "Simple precaution! Is that not commonsense?"

+ + +

Published Sep 6 2012 by Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources
The Devil in the Details
by Chuck Benbrook

. . . This Stanford study raises more technical questions about analytical methods and metrics than it answers, and several of its “answers” are highly suspect. Hopefully in the years ahead, improved methods under development in CSANR to compare food nutritional quality and safety will shed clearer light where now the shadows seem to be constantly shifting.

+ + +

Busted! Co-author of Stanford study that bashed organics found to have deep ties to Big Tobacco's anti-science propaganda
Friday, September 07, 2012
by Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) (This article is jointly authored by Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com and Anthony Gucciardi of NaturalSociety.com) Over the last several days, the mainstream media has fallen for an elaborate scientific hoax that sought to destroy the credibility of organic foods by claiming they are "no healthier" than conventional foods (grown with pesticides and GMOs). NaturalNews has learned one of the key co-authors of the study, Dr. Ingram Olkin, has a deep history as an "anti-science" propagandist working for Big Tobacco. Stanford University has also been found to have deep financial ties to Cargill, a powerful proponent of genetically engineered foods and an enemy of GMO labeling Proposition 37. . . .

+ + +

Nutritional Value of Organic Food Really Isn’t the Point
Posted by Sharon Astyk on September 6, 2012

. . . The reality is that organics started because of concern about the larger environment, not to make your food extra nutritious. Yes, reducing our personal individual exposure to whatever and getting maximum nutrition out of our food is a good thing, but I tend to be troubled by the idea that our primary focus should be on protecting ourselves and our immediate families, rather than everyone – we ultimately all need to be invested in our collective health. So the farmworkers and their children are as critical beneficiaries as our own kids.

There’s another side to this, however. To move beyond the middle class, what we really need is an agriculture that isn’t saturated in fossil fuels. As I’ve written about many times, the oil-food connection has gotten tighter and tighter (for example, while other areas have gotten less fossil fuel intensive, the fossil fuel intensity of agriculture has doubled in the last 20 years) between biofuels and globalized food production – meaning that everyone’s access to food is tied to global energy prices. For the two billion poorest people in the world, that’s a disaster. For the rest of us it means we never know how much of our budget to allot to dinner – and that’s why so many people in the US can’t put dinner on the table reliably without the help of food subsidies.

Not all organic is less energy intensive – industrial organic often actually uses more fossil fuels. In the end, small scale, sustainable, mostly organic may be the only way we can avoid starving the world as the oil-food connection draws tighter and tighter and chokes us.

[ninakat]

Organic food is cheaper than conventional food.
February 03, 2010, CURRENT

"The paradox is there's this view that organic is elitist, it's expensive, it's a lifestyle choice for people who can afford it. As far as I'm concerned it's not elitist to believe, everyone should have the right to high-quality, nutritious food from sustainable farming systems. What's elitist is that a handful of corporations have got a vice-like grip on the farming systems and food."

Agro-chemical agriculture is heavily subsidised by the taxpayer through the government, organic farming isn't.

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture distributes between $10 billion and $30 billion in cash subsidies to farmers and owners of farmland each year. The particular amount depends on market prices for crops, the level of disaster payments, and other factors. More than 90 percent of agriculture subsidies go to farmers of five crops—wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton.2 More than 800,000 farmers and landowners receive subsidies, but the payments are heavily tilted toward the largest producers."

"In the US, most organic farmers and those transitioning to organic farming get no subsidies at all, or very few, while huge chemical-intensive corporate farms (10 percent of US farms) get the lion’s share (80 percent) of the nation’s $20 billion in crop subsidies every year. In France, an organic farmer receives, on average, 20 to 40 percent fewer subsidies than a conventional farmer. In 2003, the EU support for Organic Agriculture was 635 million euros, whereas the total Common Agricultural Policy budget amounted to 50 billion. This means that Organic Agriculture received 1.3 percent of the agricultural support, yet, at the time it represented 3.9 percent of the total EU agricultural area."

No doubt that Organic food is expensive, a few more points:

"Myth: Consumers are paying too much for organic food.

Reality Not so:

Crop rotations, organic animal feed and welfare standards, the use of good husbandry instead of agri-chemicals, and the preservation of natural habitats all result in organic food costing more to produce. Non-organic food appears to be cheaper but in fact consumers pay for it three times over – first over the counter, second via taxation (to fund agricultural subsidies) and third to remedy the environmental pollution (or disasters like BSE) caused by intensive farming practices."

So here is the actual conclusion: Organic food is cheaper than conventional. Reality doesn't make it look like that, it's just a good elaborated illusion. We buy our food that is genetically engineered; It is stuffed with pesticides, herbicides, chemical additives, hormones and we pay for it with our taxes, that's one reason why it's so cheap.

Other hidden costs in conventional food not included in the price are the negative environmental impacts, the clean up costs for polluting our water and soil, more and more billions from our tax money are taken away and the corporations are "obviously" not accountable.

We are spending the same amount of money if not more for this franken-food, we are destroying our Nature and health.

. . .

[ninakat]

Michael Pollan Responds to Study Finding 'No Significant Health Benefit' to Organic Food
September 4, 2012, 2:41 pm • Posted by Jon Brooks

You may have heard the NPR story this morning about the meta-study from Stanford University, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which found "no significant health benefit" to organic food. As physician R Dena Bravata, the study's co-author, told KQED Science's Amy Standen today, when it comes to healthfulness, "there is, in general, not a robust evidence base for the difference between organic and conventional foods."

Huh.

A 2010 Nielsen study found 76 percent of respondents bought organic because they thought it was healthier. So this seemed to merit a call to the person who convinced me in the first place that it was okay to pay $4.00 for a head of cauliflower: local journalist, professor, and food advocate Michael Pollan, whose book The Omnivore's Dilemma was a major influence in popularizing organic and locally produced food.

Edited transcript...

JON BROOKS: So is this meta-study a big deal?

MICHAEL POLLAN: I'm not sure it's a big deal. The media's playing it as if there were something new here, but this is not new research, it's a meta-study [a review of previously conducted research], and I've seen the exact same data analyzed in a very different direction. A lot of it depends on how you manage your assumptions and statistical method.

I think we're kind of erecting a straw man and then knocking it down, the straw man being that the whole point of organic food is that it's more nutritious. The whole point of organic food is that it's more environmentally sustainable. That's the stronger and easier case to make.

It's true the body of research around nutrition is really equivocal, and we need to do more studies on that. But the success of organic doesn't stand or fall on that question. This study disputes how significant the differences in antioxidant and nutrient levels are between organic and conventional food. But that's not central to the discussion of why organic is important, which has a lot more to do with how the soil is managed and the exposure to pesticides, not just in the eater's diet but to the farmworker.

JON BROOKS: The meta study did find that 38 percent of conventional produce tested contained pesticide residues, compared to just 7 percent for organic produce. How important is that in and of itself?

MICHAEL POLLAN: It's very important. If you're concerned about pesticide residues in your food, you're much better off buying organic. The study said all these pesticide residues in conventional produce are permissible under EPA rules. They may be, but there's a question of how adequate those rules are. Because there are questions about whether those levels are okay for children and for pregnant women.

There was a very important study, which was mentioned in the meta study, about organophosphates and the link to various cognitive difficulties in children. This is epidemiological, and it's very hard to prove cause and effect, but caution would argue for keeping those chemicals out of your body, and organic produce is one way to do this.

JON BROOKS: Do you think the food industry will consider this meta study a club to hit organic over the head with, or are they participating in organic now to the point where that wouldn't be productive?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Most of the big food companies are now in both businesses, and I don't know that they want to talk too much about pesticides and remind people that this is an active debate, and that there is a lot of pesticide residue in conventional foods. There are various critics of the food movement that will seize on this, and some of those people are backed by agri-business in various ways.

It's great media fodder and it's terrific that people are looking at the issue and debating it. But people should take a hard look. So much of the story depends on what do you mean by "significant health benefit?" The meta study found less pesticide residue, higher levels of anti-oxidants – plant phytochemicals thought to be important to human health; and less antibiotic-resistant microbes in organic meat. But then they say it might not be significant. I don't think they defined signficant.

JON BROOKS: Let's say you're a consumer standing there at your grocery store and you have a choice between an organically grown piece of produce grown far away and a conventionally grown piece grown locally. All things considered, which is the best choice?

MICHAEL POLLAN: It depends on your values. If you're concerned about nutritional value and taste, you might find that the local food, which is more likely to have been picked when it was ripe, is better. Because any food that's traveled a few days to get to you or been refrigerated for a long time is going to have diminished nutritional value. That argues for fresh being more important than organic.

But if you're concerned about pesticides – let's say you're pregnant or have young kids you're feeding – then you might choose organic, because it will have on balance fewer pesticide residues. You may also be concerned with the welfare of the people picking and the farmers growing your produce, or you may be concerned about soil health -- that would argue for organic too.

I tend to favor local food, whether it's certified organic or not. Most of the local food available to us in the Bay Area, though, tends to be grown organically, even if it's not certified. So it is possible to have it both ways. If you're shopping at your farmers' market, you're getting food that's very fresh, probably very nutritious, and probably grown without synthethic pesticides.

JON BROOKS: Anything else?

MICHAEL POLLAN: I would just encourage people to educate themselves and not take headlines at face value. It's a complicated question, and we need to a do a lot more science. The absence of proof means that we either haven't studied it or we haven't found it yet, it doesn't mean we won't. In the meantime, there's a precautionary principle: even though the case isn't closed on low levels of pesticides in our diet, there are very good reasons to minimize them.

[ninakat]

Nearly all conventional food crops grown with fluoride-laced water, then sprayed with more fluoride
Monday, September 10, 2012 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) The average American today is exposed to a whole lot more fluoride than he or she is probably aware. Conventional produce, it turns out, is one of the most prevalent sources of fluoride exposure besides fluoridated water, as conventional crops are not only irrigated with fluoride-laced water in many cases, but also sprayed with pesticide and herbicide chemicals that have been blended with fluoride, and later processed once again with fluoridated water.

This fact may come as a surprise to many who have bought into the idea that eating more fresh produce is automatically beneficial for health, regardless of how that produce was grown. Thinking that they are doing their bodies a favor, millions of Americans have incorporated conventional fruits and vegetables into their everyday diets, not realizing that the resulting cumulative effect of fluoride exposure from these foods could be harming their health.

(continues)

[crikkett]

^^^ let's not forget what kind of water goes into the canned soups and bottled beers we drink ^^^

[dqueue]

Via Michael Pollan (on twitter), a link to George Monbiot, hypothesizing "Could Alzheimer's be Type-3 Diabetes?".

Via Monbiot's blog

The Mind Thieves

The evidence linking Alzheimer’s disease to the food industry is strong and growing.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian, 11th September 2012

When you raise the subject of over-eating and obesity, you often see people at their worst. The comment threads discussing these issues reveal a legion of bullies, who appear to delight in other people’s problems.

When alcoholism and drug addiction are discussed, the tone tends to be sympathetic. When obesity is discussed, the conversation is dominated by mockery and blame, though the evidence suggests that it can be driven by similar forms of addiction(1,2,3,4). I suspect that much of this mockery is a coded form of snobbery: the strong association between poor diets and poverty allows people to use this issue as a cipher for something else they want to say, which is less socially acceptable.

But this problem belongs to all of us. Even if you can detach yourself from the suffering caused by diseases arising from bad diets, you will carry the cost, as a growing proportion of the health budget will be used to address them. The cost – measured in both human suffering and money – could be far greater than we imagined. A large body of evidence now suggests that Alzheimer’s is primarily a metabolic disease. Some scientists have gone so far as to rename it. They call it diabetes type 3.
...

[Iamwhomiam]

Thanks so much to all contributors to this important thread and to slomo for initiating it.

slad, thank you for bringing to my attention the kiddie porn. I will be making an issue of this publication, it's that important.

and thanks to Allegro for posting this, which so well demonstrates our need for labeling standards:

[ninakat]

GMO alert: Eating GM wheat may destroy your liver, warn scientists
Thursday, September 13, 2012
by Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) Genetically engineered wheat contains an enzyme suppressor that, when consumed by humans, could cause permanent liver failure (and death). That's the warning issued today by molecular biologist Jack Heinemann of the University of Canterbury in Australia.

Heinemann has published an eye-opening report that details this warning and calls for rigorous scientific testing on animals before this crop is ever consumed by humans. The enzyme suppressor in the wheat, he says, might also attack a human enzyme that produces glycogen. Consumers who eat genetically modified wheat would end up contaminating their bodies with this enzyme-destroying wheat, causing their own livers to be unable to produce glycogen, a hormone molecule that helps the body regulate blood sugar metabolism. This, in turn, would lead to liver failure.

(continues)

[crikkett]

GMO alert: Eating GM wheat may destroy your liver, warn scientists

Could eating meat raised on GM wheat destroy your liver, too, I wonder?

[ninakat]

GMO alert: Eating GM wheat may destroy your liver, warn scientists

Could eating meat raised on GM wheat destroy your liver, too, I wonder?

But I don't want to be their guinea pig, ya know?