Shitting on your doorstep is a better term than the boomerang affect in my opinion.
EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
221–230 of 315 posts
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Maybe I'm a Calvinist. I'm definitely happier in the Netherlands. My general experience was that Irish laws existed mostly for show and if you followed them you were a chump. Unless you wanted to smoke a joint now and then, of course. Ireland supposedly cares about nature too, but you can still buy truckloads of turf off the side of the road in Offaly. Good luck getting those rules enforced. When we still lived in Du…
> I think when you're threatening your neighbours and letting dangerous dogs loose on other people's land where there's kids or sheep then authoritarianism is called for.
It doesn't have to require authoritarianism to keep the peace. It also doesn't seem like it could only be solved by an authority. If there's a dangerous dog on your property, shoot it if you can't get it to leave and fear for the safety of your kids or sheep.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Maybe I'm a Calvinist. I'm definitely happier in the Netherlands. My general experience was that Irish laws existed mostly for show and if you followed them you were a chump. Unless you wanted to smoke a joint now and then, of course. Ireland supposedly cares about nature too, but you can still buy truckloads of turf off the side of the road in Offaly. Good luck getting those rules enforced. When we still lived in Du…
> I think when you're threatening your neighbours and letting dangerous dogs loose on other people's land
I know too little about this specific situation, but did the neighbour not stop despite being asked to?
I haven't been to Ireland or the Netherlands (aside from driving through of course), but from what I've heard I would not like it in the latter. Nature appears to be scarce there, as for some reason the Dutch insist on being an agricultural superpower despite the population density.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#224Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#225If 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.
This is nothing new though. A small number of poor countries manufacture goods and mine materials in pretty terrible conditions that are illegal in the countries consuming those goods and resources.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#226Earlier 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?
OMG the planning system is definitely an issue in this country. I did try to wing it but had to demolish a small structure, retention was not approved. Their letters are insanely threatening, like you can go to jail or pay a fine in millions. But then another time I just did the planning permission in my own name, drawings and all and it was approved fairly quickly despite me not being an eng or arch. It depends on the town/city you are in and the planning department. I used to deal with planning in other European countries and Ireland just lacks technical supervision step, hence the dependence on neighbours notifying the council and on the front loading of the initial application process.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#227Earlier 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?
What happens if you criticize the government of Japan?
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#228Earlier 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…
One way to view current US politics is that the broader banana republic tendency ran out of South American governments to overthrow and moved back to the domestic government, which has now taken on all the corruption and extractive politics of South American CIA-backed dictatorships. The violence levels are not comparable .. yet. But having an explicitly political paramilitary force that's shot a few citizens in the street is not a good sign.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#229More 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.
If this report is seeing spices from outside the EU containing contamination then there are organic options available, as I'm looking at my EU made (comes from France) organic certified Cumin.
Re: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
#230If 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.
If it is not allowed to be used in the EU, it shouldn't be allowed to export it.
> Although these chemicals are not allowed on the EU market, they can still be exported from European Member States to third countries. From there, they can return to Europe as residues in imported food — a “toxic pesticides boomerang” that puts consumers at risk.