191–200 of 208 posts
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>You might choose not to eat the non-organic food but you can't avoid the Atrazine [1] in the rain That's a very US-centric point of view. It was banned in the EU for a reason.
The principle of least harm. But I was replying to someone who said they live in Central Arizona. Ironic that Atrazine is produced by a Swiss company and can't even use it in their own country.
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I've never heard of this. Do you have an actual source?
Only primary sources. Pick a few chemicals, find their LD50 from a MSDS, find their application rate. Run the numbers. An organic fungicide: copper sulfate pentahydrate (aka CuSO4) A non-organic fungicide: iprodione (aka Rovral) LD50 of CuSO4: 472 mg/kg (rat) [1] LD50 of Rovral: 2g/kg (rat) [2] So straight up, the organic is four times more lethal to mammals. But that is just the beginning, because you have to use a…
The organophosphate (e.g., methyl chlorpyrifos, dimethoate, methidathion and methyl parathion) pesticides used in conventional agriculture have half lives of a little less than a week to two weeks on the surface (and a half life of years in water and soil), while pyrethrins have a half life of hours in sunlight and 2 weeks in soil.
Both organophosphates and pyrethrins have toxic effects on mammals, but one is less likely to be present on purchased produce since, at least, four half lives (97% degraded) will have passed for pyrethrins, in a single day.
In the extreme, organochlorines (e.g., aldrin, chlordane, dieldrin and dicofol [OK, DDT and such are in this class too]) were spayed on conventional crops. These have half lives measured in years (on the surface), and their residues are found, in the environment, decades after specific compound bans.
Finally, US grown rice/citrus contains arsenic (there is no safe limit established for inorganic arsenic) because of conventional pesticides containing arsenic being sprayed on cotton fields (California rice/citrus is generally safer than that grown in Southern states).
All this said, I believe (opinion) that USDA organic allowing the use of so many pesticides was a give away to big ag, so they could participate in the "organic craze" without substantially changing their production practices. Personally, I buy pesticide free vs. organic when available.
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> I take away visions of someone using way more chemical than necessary when reading this The vision is spraying with the deadliest and sometimes illegal pesticides (DDT and other things). The "shit of out" is comparing to "0 pesticides". That means plucking bugs by hand in the evening from potatoes, weeding by hand, watering by hand. > Judicious use of pesticides can improve plant health and increase yields, but tha…
Have you hand plucked bugs by hand from potatoes? My mom has a small garden (and I helped her around when I was little), it takes a LOT of time to pluck all insects from just potatoes. That is time just for that can easily be 4-6 hours. Also plucking in the evenings is like reading a book on dark side of Mars, in a barrel. You can't spot the fuckers in low light, you need best light available so only morning and in t…
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Off topic but just in case you didn't know, the expression is "I could NOT care less."
You might not be aware that the idom "I could care less" is in common usage, espechally in American english, and has the same meaning as "I could not care less".
Also, when many people read "I could care less", they assume the writer has a deficiency in their education and/or attention to detail. Seldom is it advantageous to write "I could care less" instead of "I couldn't care less".
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And when you think about it, you realize that this bizarre rules is a statement that FDA inspectors believe farm operations are so unsanitary across the board that they refuse to use a standard farm restroom. That tells me all I need to know about the quality of USA factory farms.
I'm not sure that is the reason they won't use the restrooms nor that we are actually hearing the specifics of the rule nor the reason for it or if it is anything more than internet rumor (wouldn't be surprised). People like Michael Pollan are ideologues (a good writer...I have read "Botany of Desire") but you have to take some of their views, particularly on science, with a grain of salt. Something like Micheal Moor…
Perhaps highly opinionated, but ideologue? How much science is he getting wrong, and how much of that is because he actively denies it?
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> American Food Safety bill that was prepared by Monsanto Was it just Monsanto? They are a relatively small business of the businesses that deal in agriculture. I'd be surprised if the bigger companies would let them have free reign over the decision making process like that (though I'm sure they're happy to have Monsanto as the fall guy, so to speak). The only reference to the bill, with respect to who wrote it, tha…
Is there really bigger companies than Monsanto doing the same thing? If so, and the power/bullying that Monsanto has proven it holds, we need to be really scared. Because the financial needs to defeat Monsanto can bleed even a State dry, so if they are just a front of whats to come, how could we win? I would love to hear more on these other companies and organizations.
The market cap is just 63B. In comparison, a Walmart is 240+. The main reason they are smaller than their competitors is that they separated their biotech arm from their chemical company roots, while most of their competitors are still mainly chemical companies: BASF and DuPont. If we just compared their seed-producing operations though, Monsanto is probably larger, but it's not as if I've checked the numbers.
The thing about political influence is that it's not really about size, but about being in a position so that you do not have clear opponents. Farmers as a whole do not dislike Monsanto, or they'd not buy their seeds. They tend to lower crop prices, so it's not as if the next level in the food production chain has a problem with them either. So, as far as getting laws that are helpful to them, their one opponent is certain kinds of environmentalists. It's how lobbying works: It's easier to get a few people to spend a lot of an effort than to get a whole lot of people to do very little.
Url changed from http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press.office/press.release/item/new-stu... , because several commenters were complaining about there being no link to the paper. We had to compress the title to fit.
I actually did that on purpose, and then immediately commented on the submission with a link to a page that contains the paper and supplemental data. The reason I preferred to post the press release was simply because it explains the significance of the study and gives a little history, something that might not be obvious if I simply linked to the paper directly. Unfortunately, my comment wasn't seen by many :-(. It…
This case was unusual because the subject was controversial, the thread ballooned quickly, and the link to the paper got lost.
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Selective breeding is a comparatively slow and safe process. You're altering a species within its own parameters. It has little resemblance to the frankensteining we're doing right now. I'm not against it, I'm just not sure we've a developed a proper test suite to secure the process.
Selective breeding has allowed humans to transform wolves into Chihuahuas, an inedible wild grass called Teosinte into Corn (Maize), and many other drastic modifications. But those aren't "frankensteining", apparently. To paraphrase Stewart Brand, inserting the DNA to express a protein that a mammal cell normally does into a plant cell does not mean it will be furry.
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> Is there really bigger companies than Monsanto doing the same thing? I concur, who are these hidden giants?
I'm not sure they are exactly hidden. I'd consider them household names. BASF and Bayer are larger, Dow and DuPont are roughly the same same size as Monsanto, and Sysgenta is slightly smaller. In hindsight, it would have probably been better to say that Monsanto is a medium sized business, relatively speaking, in that agriculture space.