5 Myths About Organic Food
March 5th, 2008
Robert Johnston at the First Post has an excellent short piece debunking popular myths about organic food. Essential knowledge to deflate those self-righteous foodies in your life.
Interest groups claim that organic food is healthier and better for the environment, but many of such claims are myths.
• Myth No. 1: Organic food is healthier.
Actually, scientific studies show more health risks from organic food than conventional food. This month in California, for instance, Salmonella was found in organic fertilisers which could contaminate fruit and vegetables.
In 2003, Dutch scientists established that organic chickens and conventional birds had the same rate of infection with Salmonella even though many organic farmers vaccinate their chickens against the bug.
Thanks, Aarathi!
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10 Comments
1. gimpy | March 5th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
While I am cynical about the Organic movement, regarding it as little more than an unscientific Steiner inspired early 20th century farming cult, that article you link to is also a little dubious. It makes dramatic assertions without providing any supporting evidence, particularly regarding methane emissions. Assertions without evidence should not convince the sceptical mind.
Rather than just criticise Organic farming surely it would be better to argue for an evidence based approach to farming where different farming methods are compared and the best selected regardless of its ideological underpinning.
2. Frank the SciencePunk | March 5th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Agreed, it’s a nice little article to start from, but I agree that ‘organic’ and ‘conventional’ farming are both loaded terms and we should demand evidence to ensure what we think we are getting (healthy/pesticide-free/low-impact) is really the case.
In the meantime though, it’s nice to knock the shine off organic slightly.
3. organic food « prac&hellip | March 5th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
[...] I saw this article in the First Post about organic food [via sciencepunk] quote: Myth No. 2: Organic farming is good for the [...]
4. Brian | March 5th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
…Interesting article. Have known about the non-biodegradeble pesticides on organic crops for some time….hence I’d actually rather buy ‘regular’ farmed crops.
Agreed with me also – I think such a study should also include Bio-mass farming aswell.
I think the sad fact of the matter is that convential farming methods make the systems of harvest and food production more efficient…so there is no realistic way everybody can eat organic and expect enough food to be produced…No matter what the fat lipped, essex chef says…
Interesting they mention the extra fuel used for organic crops…did anyone watch that Robert Newman stint he did on the history of oil? Off on a tangent – but there is an Interesting part on modern farming in there and the energy expended during crop production.
5. Daniel | March 8th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
I am an executive chef working in Australia and a keen gardner.
Organically grown fruit and vegetables are not only delicious they are packed with loads more nutritional value.
Modern farming strips the land of its minerals and vitality and is based on using petrochemical fertilisers. These contain only 3 elements, NPK or Nitrogen, Phosphourous and Potassium… organic has these 3 plus alll the micronutrients which are essential to human health and disease resistance.
By adding charcoal in soil such as Terra Preta (dark soil) used by the ancient Amazonians we can also use organic farming as a carbon-sink.
Terra Preta also removes the need for slash and burn farming destroying the plansts forests.
We are what we eat…
6. Frank the SciencePunk | March 8th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Daniel, I’m sure your cooking must be better than your science:
To my knowledge, organic foods have never been shown to be more nutritious than regular food. Also, being much more expensive, they are inferior for anyone on a budget, who can get much higher nutrition-per-dollar with regular food.
If modern farming really did strip land of its vitality, it would not provide us with massive increases in productivity we enjoy.
Night soil is another word for shit. Eating crops fed on night soil is a good way to get diseases like Trichuriasis. You might remember the video I posted a few days ago showing this.
You’re very confused on the idea of a ‘carbon sink’. This is something that takes carbon out of the atmosphere. Adding charcoal to soil will not reduce atmospheric carbon. Also, plants absorb carbon from the air, not the ground.
Finally, slash and burn is used to clear land for agriculture. Organic farming requires twice as much land as conventional farming to produce the same amount of food. Therefore, organic production methods = more slash and burn.
7. Daniel | March 10th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/futures/32443
Sustainable Futures
Jan 15, 2008
Ancient soil methods impress modern science and help climate
Terra Preta technique from the Amazon rainforest can sequester carbon and provide carbon-neutral energy.
An ancient agricultural technique from the Amazon rainforest is attracting the interest of scientists in the US and elsewhere for its ability to restore soil fertility, sequester carbon and provide carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative energy. The technique, being explored by scientists at Cornell University, is called Terra Preta. It involves slowly burning some of the unwanted plant matter in an area and adding the charred remains, termed “biochar”, back into the soil.
The investigations of Johannes Lehmann and his team at Cornell have revealed some interesting characteristics of Terra Preta soils. “The knowledge that we can gain from studying the Amazonian dark earths…not only teaches us how to restore degraded soils, triple crop yields and support a wide array of crops in regions with agriculturally poor soils, but can also lead to technologies to sequester carbon in soil and prevent critical changes in world climate,” he explained.
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Your worm video could have been for any number of reasons.
I would not recommend eating dirt in any form.
8. Frank the SciencePunk | March 10th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
@ 7. Daniel
Point taken, Terra Preta looks like a wonder material alright (and isn’t the same as night soil, my bad). But I don’t want to class it as organic food production simply because, as Brian and Giimpy have pointed out, we need to step beyond organic-vs-conventional farming and ask ourselves “what works best?”.
If Terra Preta ticks the boxes, let’s adopt it. But so long as we’re using land to produce crops, the nutrients we harvest for ourselves have to be replaced in the soil. And I don’t see how burning the remaining trash left after harvesting can somehow make up for that difference.
9. Jolly Sapper | March 12th, 2008 at 4:39 am
hmm…
The great organic con trick
Was it necessary to use both “con” and “trick” in the same sentence? Don’t they mean pretty much the same thing?
“Actually, scientific studies show more health risks from organic food than conventional food. This month in California, for instance, Salmonella was found in organic fertilisers which could contaminate fruit and vegetables.”
I don’t see any direct references to any identifiable scientific data in the article besides the vague “Dutch scientists in 2003.” So I don’t know who funded the study, if there was any subsequent studies by other scientists that found other information…
“In 2006, other Dutch scientists found that as many as three-quarters of organic chickens were infected with parasites.”
What kinds of parasites? Worms? Lice? My mother-in-law? What kind of damage would the parasites do? Would the parasite affect the meat/ egg production of the bird but otherwise the bird would be fine or does the parasite work the the ‘chest burster’ scene in Alien? The lack of specifics OR a link to a more detailed brief of what “parasites” the Dutch scientists found, doesn’t help me see why “organic” food is bad. Hell we probably all have parasites but since we’re healthy, body fights them off.
“Organic manure can also carry the dangerous bacteria Campylobacter which causes stomach infections, vomiting and diarrhoea. The Danish National Veterinary Laboratory found Campylobacter in 100 per cent of organic chicken flocks but only 36.7 per cent of conventional chicken flocks.”
From the US Center for Disease Control:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/campylobacter_g.htm#How%20common%20is%20Campylobacter
“How common is Campylobacter?
Campylobacter is one of the most common bacterial causes of diarrheal illness in the United States. Virtually all cases occur as isolated, sporadic events, not as a part of large outbreaks. Active surveillance through FoodNet indicates about 15 cases are diagnosed each year for each 100,000 persons in the population. Many more cases go undiagnosed or unreported, and campylobacteriosis is estimated to affect over 1 million persons every year, or 0.5% of the general population. Campylobacteriosis occurs much more frequently in the summer months than in the winter. The organism is isolated from infants and young adults more frequently than from other age groups and from males more frequently than females. Although Campylobacter doesn’t commonly cause death, it has been estimated that approximately 100 persons with Campylobacter infections may die each year.
How can campylobacteriosis be treated?
Virtually all persons infected with Campylobacter will recover without any specific treatment. Patients should drink plenty of fluids as long as the diarrhea lasts. In more severe cases, antibiotics such as erythromycin or a fluoroquinolone can be used, and can shorten the duration of symptoms if they are given early in the illness. Your doctor will make the decision about whether antibiotics are necessary.
Are there long-term consequences?
Most people who get campylobacteriosis recover completely within 2 to 5 days, although sometimes recovery can take up to 10 days. Rarely, some long-term consequences can result from a Campylobacter infection. Some people may have arthritis following campylobacteriosis; others may develop a rare disease that affects the nerves of the body beginning several weeks after the diarrheal illness. This disease, called Guillain-Barré syndrome, occurs when a person’s immune system is “triggered” to attack the body’s own nerves, and can lead to paralysis that lasts several weeks and usually requires intensive care. It is estimated that approximately one in every 1000 reported campylobacteriosis cases leads to Guillain-Barré syndrome. As many as 40% of Guillain-Barré syndrome cases in this country may be triggered by campylobacteriosis.
How do people get infected with this germ?
Campylobacteriosis usually occurs in single, sporadic cases, but it can also occur in outbreaks, when a number of people become ill at one time. Most cases of campylobacteriosis are associated with handling raw poultry or eating raw or undercooked poultry meat. A very small number of Campylobacter organisms (fewer than 500) can cause illness in humans. Even one drop of juice from raw chicken meat can infect a person. One way to become infected is to cut poultry meat on a cutting board, and then use the unwashed cutting board or utensil to prepare vegetables or other raw or lightly cooked foods. The Campylobacter organisms from the raw meat can then spread to the other foods. The organism is not usually spread from person to person, but this can happen if the infected person is a small child or is producing a large volume of diarrhea. Larger outbreaks due to Campylobacter are not usually associated with raw poultry but are usually related to drinking unpasteurized milk or contaminated water. Animals can also be infected, and some people have acquired their infection from contact with the infected stool of an ill dog or cat.
Apparently Campylobacteriosis isn’t all that life threatening. Just wash your damn hands after you played with dead meat and don’t under cook it.
Organic and free-range poultry are more likely to be exposed to bird-flu, so the government now allows organic chickens to be kept indoors.
How will you know if your birds are resistant to the virus? Not all cases of “bird flu” are the A/H5N1 (the most nasty) so are birds diagnosed with “bird flu” correctly ID’d as having the A/H5N1? Does every animal that is infected with the A/H5N1 have zero chance of living? If they to survive couldn’t their body have an immune system you’d want to try to pass down to the next generation of birds so as to better resist the “bird flu”?
Two organically raised cows burp the same amount of methane as three conventionally fed cows and methane is 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2.
Burping is part of ANY ruminant, as its how they get their cud back up to be chewed. Pumping a ruminant (whose digestive tract has a vast and varied number of bacteria who break down the grass) full of antibiotics (which kill off the bacteria, upsetting their digestive tract) probably causes the ruminant to fart a lot more than a ruminant who isn’t pumped full of antibiotics. Think about it, you fart more when you’re stomach is upset because you’re sick or you ate something that doesn’t agree with your belly right? Same applies to cows.
Most modern pesticides are biodegradable, but ‘natural’ pesticides, like copper, stay in the soil forever.
This doesn’t make any sense, if something is biodegradable then it will remain in the soil. The “modern” pesticide takes time to bio-degrade and in that time probably kills just as many worms as using copper solutions would. I don’t understand the comparison.
Organic farmers…
I’m not sure who is being referred to, the wife and I have been trying to have a back yard garden and a number of animals on the land we live on (chickens, goats, horses) and we consider the stuff we grow in the back yard to be organic. So is the article referring to “certified” large scale organic farming or to anybody who thinks keeping chemicals to a minimum and doing the work yourself (for yourself) is trying to “con” people?
Myth No 4: Organic food does not contain additives.
The paragraphs that follow this heading could have had more information as to specifically which types of organically grown/produced/processed foods used the additives. I’d also like to know which foods and why, would be required to use the list of caustic/toxic substances “that contaminate” food.
I’ve seen the conventional poultry supply catalogues and I’ve seen the detergent that they sell to clean the chicken poop off of eggs.. dish soap and food grade hydrogen peroxide do just fine as far as I’m concerned.
Organically reared animals can have up to a quarter of their daily food from non-organic sources and all organic food can contain five per cent of conventional ingredients. But wait, I thought there WEREN’T that many people doing organic farming. Certainly not enough to feed every man, woman and child. So how could there be enough excess organic food to feed a completely organic feed ration to “organically” reared animals?
• Myth No. 5: The demand for organic food is at an all-time high.
At the end of the Second World War all our food was organic so, in fact, demand has actually gone down by 98 per cent over the last 60 years.
This might be confusing supply with demand. If the majority of your food is supplied by a few companies who have massive volumes of product then they can easily beat out any small time “organic” farmer through sheer attrition.
10. Frank the SciencePunk | March 12th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
It’s good that this article is invoking a lot of discussion – that’s why I posted it. I don’t have time to answer all your questions right now, Jolly Snapper, so I’ll just clear up your question on pesticides:
Pesticides are heavily regulated and one of the properties measure is how long it persists in the environment. Ideally, this should be as short as possible, so that farmers can target pest outbreaks without lingering residues harming non-target species, and also so that residues do not persist on the crop at the consumption stage. For example, the insecticide pyrethrin is sprayed at night, and breaks down quickly on exposure to sunlight.
While you’re right in some sense to say that biodegraded substances “remain” in the soil, those like pyrethrins will be quickly rendered harmless, whereas “organic” compounds such as copper sulphate persist in a harmful state for much longer.
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