I hope each one of you signs this!
EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
211–220 of 315 posts
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
People still use tea bags even though what they contain is a byproduct of tea production and barely counts as tea.
Then where does the real stuff go? The arabs, indians?? Tea bags are the mass market in Europe for example. Hardly anyone uses tea leaves (are they different?). I know an Iranian in the Netherlands who says the tea there is mostly coloring.
India, China and Japan are the largest markets for quality whole leaf tea. Tea bags contain fannings and dust, the lowest quality byproducts of tea production. Try a single estate TGFOP and you’ll never want to drink tea from a bag again.
Chinese tea is again a whole different world from Indian tea, and has a much broader spectrum of complexity. You could spend a lifetime learning about Chinese tea.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#213If a pesticide is banned to use inside the EU, it should also be banned to import into the EU products that were grown using that pesticide.
Surely that depends on the reason for the ban? Say it is banned in the EU because of concerns about secondary environmental impact, a different country with a different ecology could reasonably decide to keep using it.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#214Earlier 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.
Are you sure the basic proposition of organic isn't "we can get people to pay more if we put on this label".
Speaking for myself, yes, I am sure. See previous comments for explanation.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, scientific research established that DDT was perfectly safe, too! Scientists even used to eat it to "prove" that it was safe. In reality it depends, being biology, "safe level" is also very relative since you don't know every effect the substance has on the body. That's why pesticides and other chemicals such as bisphenols are regularly phased out, since effects can appear long after "scientific research" es…
We update our beliefs as we get new data. There's not much else we can do. There's a common thought pattern among conspiracy theorists. "Some conspiracies turn out to be real" so that justifies their belief in their very specific conspiracy theory. The same pattern occurs when we talk about chemicals in our diet or the environment. "Some chemicals turn out to be dangerous" but that doesn't prove that a specific conce…
There is certainly more that we can do. Ie being more careful with introducing new chemicals with largely unknown long term effects.
The burden of proof shouldn't be decades of research seeing thousands of people developing serious health issues and/or dying, and then reacting. It should be on companies, having lengthy and expensive process for approval and then continue reviewing. This is not some app release ffs, we talk about lives and health of billions, how much more we can fail our children if we fail this.
Or you know what, you can do that with you and your kids, but please allow me and my family to use more conservative approach, I am happy to pay a bit extra.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know someone close who grows oranges in Spain. He has to go through hell, had to rework multiple times the fields so that they pass the strict Spanish regulation for organic produce. They get evaluated not only on the final product being pesticide free, but also on the full process being compliant, with heavy fines for non compliance. This is fine-ish, except that the imported oranges get checked only seldomly (if…
I was surprised after moving to Ireland to discover that you can break the law and nothing will happen. I went through hell with planners (idiots who don’t believe in climate change and hate eaves) while people around me put three mobile homes on their land as well as building two permanent homes with no permission (and ripping out ancient hedgerows) and successfully got retention. Why even bother?
We’ve had a warmer than average year worldwide every year since 1976. I suppose it’s just coincidence that exactly what climate scientists said would happen keeps happening and keeps getting worse.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
An odd exception to that trend is dairy products (thanks to the hard work of various US Dairy Councils). Ice Cream, sold as "Ice Cream" in the United States, is vastly superior to most anything you'll find in the rest of the world. 10% milk fat (more exactly 1.6 lb per pre-mixed gallon, but that's simply a bizarre way of phrasing it), no more than half air by volume. 6-10% other dairy solids (lactose, whey). Compare…
Yeah, the US FDA allows artificial growth hormones in dairy so let's drop this comical charade that US dairy is good.
It's banned in the EU mostly for animal welfare reasons, not for food quality reasons.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Last year I was in a Samsung shop when one couple remarked to me that it was the second time they came to buy the same phone for the wife in a month. Then naturally I asked for the reason why, I thought they like it so much to buy a second one. Apparently the couple just recently come back from a trip in Ireland and lost the new Samsung phone there. Someone has stolen the wife's baggage from the bus when it's doing t…
what happens if you criticise the government in these safe countries?
Generally nothing. In Singapore, there are some risks.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was surprised after moving to Ireland to discover that you can break the law and nothing will happen. I went through hell with planners (idiots who don’t believe in climate change and hate eaves) while people around me put three mobile homes on their land as well as building two permanent homes with no permission (and ripping out ancient hedgerows) and successfully got retention. Why even bother?
I jokingly refer to this as the Catholic principle: "sin first - confess and repent later" as it's a common theme in countries that are/were traditionally Catholic, including my own. It's really just places culturally untouched by Calvinism, Puritanism and the like, all of which put emphasis on order. The last thing to attempt bringing order to them were various forms of authoritarianism and they didn't last. I think…
It's not just a Catholic thing, in Book II of Plato's Republic (written ~2,400 years ago) Adeimantus mentions that some people say there's no point in acting justly because you can just act unjustly and sacrifice to the gods later to make it up.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#220If a pesticide is banned to use inside the EU, it should also be banned to import into the EU products that were grown using that pesticide.
Canadian lentils are sprinkled in glyphosate to kill them so they can be harvested (as the climate there doesn’t allow for this to occur naturally). They’re then harvested and shipped back to the EU where such a practice is forbidden. But it happened outside of the EU so it’s magically safe.