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EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices

foodwatch.org

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Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices

#71

Post by bluGill »

bluebarbet wrote: post #54
bluGill wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Problem is we have modern science which in same cases has proven that the modern chemicals are less harmful. Remember lead was considered normal for many thousands of years

Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices

#72

Post by bluebarbet »

bluGill wrote: post #71
bluebarbet wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Problem is we have modern science which in same cases has proven that the modern chemicals are less harmful. Remember lead was considered normal for many thousands of years

Modern science can only "prove" that something is not harmful on a timescale of a year or perhaps a decade, not a generation or more. If the precautionary principle had been applied in Roman times, lead would not have been considered safe. Nor asbestos, nor thalidomide, nor microplastics, nor a bunch of synthetic molecules - "proven safe" - that are routinely added to non-organic food in order to improve its yield or its cosmetic aspect or whatever. That was my point.

Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices

#73

Post by kube-system »

bluGill wrote: post #71
bluebarbet wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Problem is we have modern science which in same cases has proven that the modern chemicals are less harmful. Remember lead was considered normal for many thousands of years

Yes, but we understand modern science as it pertains to both... which is why lead is controlled for both organic and non-organic farming.

Honestly curious, which of these is more harmful than the non-organic alternatives?

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-I/su...

Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices

#74

Post by dylan604 »

culi wrote: post #70
7moritz7 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be more scared of publicly criticizing Chiquita than the CIA at this point

All but 2 countries in South America have had the experience of democratically electing a leader only to have them overthrown in a US-backed coup. The US/CIA started with this obsession with the 1954 Guatemalan Coup specifically to maintain Guatemala as a banana republic. Chiquita owned most land in Guatemala and left is uncultivated to stifle competition. Jacobo Árbenz wanted to (slightly) tax this land to reduce po…

You can't spell Chiquita without CIA

Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices

#75

Post by dylan604 »

Etheryte wrote: post #56
kryptoncalm wrote: post #21

More relevant is that 14 out of 64 samples had levels above the legally allowed limit (MRL), of which 12 pesticides that are not approved in the EU (page 12 of report). This is more severe than products 'containing' pesticides, which could as well be advancements in measurement. Problematic products are: Peppers, dried (6x), Cumin (3x), Rice grain (2x), Tea leaves and stalks (1x), Non-fermented tea leaves (1x), Mix o…

Cumin always shows up on these lists, whether it's with heavy metals or something else. It's to the point where I've more or less just stopped cooking with it because I don't trust it to be safe.

Get yourself a dehydrator and try making it yourself. I've started doing this with my herb garden and the catnip I grow for my cats. They much prefer the stuff I make than the stuff from the store as much as I enjoy my fresh dried (oxymoronic??) herbs. I haven't tried cumin yet. We'll see how the peppers in this years attempt at gardening goes.

Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices

#76

Post by tashoecraft »

darth_avocado wrote: post #30
ofrzeta wrote: post #6

For spices and tea it really makes sense to buy organic (not that there are no fraudsters but still).

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.

People are downvoting you, but you’re right: https://news.immunologic.org/p/organic-foods-are-not-healthi...

Organic is marketing. Organic produce is more profitable.

Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices

#77

Post by dylan604 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #31
llbbdd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attribute a lot of it to the principle of "punching up".

Agreed. Nobody really talks about most other countries, while the US is pretty much top of the list of nearly every topic. So we're constantly a target.

> while the US is pretty much top of the list of nearly every topic

s/is/was

The US is trying really hard to lower its position on these lists. The US has not been near the top of reading/writing/arithmetic in a long time. The US is undoing a lot of federal regulations by eliminating/reducing agencies meant to regulate things like EPA, FDA, Dept of Education.

Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices

#78

Post by SchemaLoad »

brikym wrote: post #51
ofrzeta wrote: post #6

For spices and tea it really makes sense to buy organic (not that there are no fraudsters but still).

People still use tea bags even though they're a top source of microplastics.

People don't even know. I had long assumed that it was only the obvious nylon pyramid tea bags that were plastic, and only recently discovered it's _all_ tea bags.

Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices

#79

Post by enlyth »

Etheryte wrote: post #56
kryptoncalm wrote: post #21

More relevant is that 14 out of 64 samples had levels above the legally allowed limit (MRL), of which 12 pesticides that are not approved in the EU (page 12 of report). This is more severe than products 'containing' pesticides, which could as well be advancements in measurement. Problematic products are: Peppers, dried (6x), Cumin (3x), Rice grain (2x), Tea leaves and stalks (1x), Non-fermented tea leaves (1x), Mix o…

Cumin always shows up on these lists, whether it's with heavy metals or something else. It's to the point where I've more or less just stopped cooking with it because I don't trust it to be safe.

I probably have a weird gene or something but cumin smells like disgusting body odour to me and any food that has any trace of it I cannot eat or I will gag

This doesn't happen to me with anything else, I'm not a picky eater and will happily eat literally anything else

Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices

#80

Post by SchemaLoad »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #18
andrewstuart wrote: post #14

I carefully check the label and try to only buy Australian made 100% food. I never buy any food ever from China.

Does that meaningfully restrict which foods / ingredients you can get?

In terms of fresh meat and vegetables, it's pretty much all grown/produced in Australia. Anything canned / dried is often imported though. Things like rice or coffee beans you technically can buy Australian grown but you'd have to go out of your way to find it.
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