Study shows organic food to be deadly!

This is a "FOLLOW THE MONEY" article.

WTO, Codex Alimentarious etc want to impose very strict mangement practices on farms. The object is to displace family farms and put in factory farms. The European Union has already displaced many family farmers www.i-sis.org.uk... However the organic movement, the locovore movement, as well as science studies show monoculture intense farming with heavy antibiotic use is bad for the land and people. www.pewtrusts.org...

Here in the States and in other countries there has been a real grassroots fight to bring awareness to the sheeple of the dangers of Monoculture Farming and the Dangers of Vertical Integration under only three or four corporations. The USDA and FDA are not happy about the "misinformation" the anti-animal ID crowd is putting out. This "independent study" from the Chinese is just the ammo they need. Remember the USDA and FDA are allowing China to export poor quality food and products under the FREE TRADE agreement. If the Sheeple figure this out it is bad news for China and the other countries exporting junk to the USA.

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by JPhish

 

Yeh. J.C. Bose. Being from that part of the world myself, I had to read one of his essays in school when I was fourteen.

In literature class.

The idea that plants can feel emotions is yet another warm-fuzzy myth without any hint of scientific support. More here.

The fact that plants have a nervous system and react to outside stimulus is documented in The Secret Life of Plants with experimentational validation and bibliography.

Again, you're grabbing onto the authority argument, because you left brain slaves need someone to tell you what to think, because living in a world where there is always two sides to every story and people have to take an individual stand, apparently is too much for you.

There are scientific studies either way for almost everything. Where do YOU in good judgement honestly stand?

Anyone that has plants knows they react positvely to love and shy away from hate, like any animal would. Have you even had a pot plant?

[edit on 10-9-2008 by Zepherian]

reply to post by Astyanax


The GMO crops are not as good as advertized.
checkout
www.pewtrusts.org...

www.abovetopsecret.com...'

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by Amaterasu

 

This is your idea of scientifically tenable evidence? A heap of god-bothering tosh that has to be undercut with a statutory disclaimer in order to avoid being deservedly sued by the family of some poor pillock who actually followed the diet and ended up in hospital, or croaked? Gosh, that's really convincing.

This is YOUR idea of openmindedness? A load of vitriol heaped on something you haven't read? Of course they are going to cover their tail ends with disclaimers. That is the publisher's requirement. It's SOP. I roll my eyes.

And I already stated that it had religious yah-da yah-da. But it ALSO HAS SCIENCE. If you don't read it, (something extremely rude here)!

I am curious... What do YOU attribute the cancer epidemic to?

What epidemic?

(Scroll down to the graph, please,)

Live and learn, eh?

I would LOVE to, but there were no graphs (except one I clicked around for that had SAMPLE plastered across it...and that one was for the years 2000 to 2004, a very poor sampling. Do they have one for 1950-2008?).



[edit on 9/10/2008 by Amaterasu]

reply to post by Zepherian

The fact that plants have a nervous system and react to outside stimulus is documented in The Secret Life of Plants with experimentational validation and bibliography.

I asked you to show me evidence that organic farming produces yields equal to non-organic farming. I am uninterested in propaganda concerning the finer feelings of broccoli.

Again, you're grabbing onto the authority argument, because you left brain slaves need someone to tell you what to think.

And what is The Secret Life of Plants in your eyes, if not an authority?

Living in a world where there is always two sides to every story and people have to take an individual stand, apparently is too much for you.

Yet here I am, taking on the lot of you single-handed, arguing patiently for commonsense and rationality in the eye of a hurricane of misinformation and superstition, carefully supporting my statements with reliable, trustworthy data and enduring your gratuitous insults without retaliating. Is that not taking a stand?

There are scientific studies either way for almost everything.

No, there are not. If you think there are, you understand nothing of science. But then, so few people do...

Have you even had a pot plant?

A few. Not to mention a large tropical garden that required a pretty backbreaking Sunday to maintain - I'm glad I don't have it any more. And - oh yes - when my country was run by Socialists and I was about eleven, we had to dig up our school playing-fields and 'grow more food for the nation'. Early morning, before classes commenced. The hard way, with mattocks and hoes. Traditional farming, you know. The old-fashioned, organic sort.

* * *

reply to post by crimvelvet

The GMO crops are not as good as advertized.

When did we start talking about GMO crops?

[edit on 11-9-2008 by Astyanax]

reply to post by Amaterasu

Of course they are going to cover their tail ends with disclaimers. That is the publisher's requirement. It's SOP.

Not for scientifically authenticated, peer-reviewed work. Look, your book is bogus. You have admitted that it pushes a religious angle, which utterly invalidates it as a scientific document. I have established that its author is a quack with a meaningless Ph.D from a massage school. His publishers insist, quite rightly, on putting a disclaimer, not just on his book, but on the web site. Yet here you are, still defending the indefensible. I raise my hat to your tenacity and your steadfast refusal to look reality in the face.

There were no graphs (except one I clicked around for that had SAMPLE plastered across it...and that one was for the years 2000 to 2004, a very poor sampling. Do they have one for 1950-2008?)

Couldn't work the taps, eh? Okay, I'll do it for you:


US Cancer Incidence and Mortality, 1975-2005




Trends in US Cancer Incidence and Mortality, 1975-2005



source

2005 appears to be the last year for which statistics have been compiled so far.

As you can see, cancer incidence has been falling, not rising, for the last fifteen years or more, and cancer mortality has declined since 1975.

Some epidemic.

cancer mortality has declined since 1975.

Chemo came in at about this time. That may have a great deal to do with the decline in cancer mortality. My Mom was treated with chemo and died from it so her death was due to "heart attack" not cancer.

reply to post by crimvelvet

Chemo came in at about (1975)

Chemotherapy has been in serious use since the early 1960s, advancing slowly all this time. There is nothing special about 1975, as far as I can tell, either from a chemotherapy-advance point of view or any other; it's just the earliest year for which SEER have graphable statistics on their site.

Besides, the important thing (if we're talking about an 'epidemic') is not mortality, but incidence. On the graph, the turning point seems to be about 1993. The decline may have numerous causes, chief among them the success of anti-smoking programmes.

Be that as it may, the point remains clear. There is no known link between cancer and eating food farmed by modern techniques. None.

If you disagree, prove me wrong.

Now that doesn't sound very reasonable.

The next miracle cure for cancer is insecticide?

Why don't they just advise us to take a daily tablespoon full of DDT.

And the cancer rates in the U.S. haven't been dropping as they claimed. It's more or less stable.

What has dropped is the death rates from cancer that is attributed to the better cancer treatment rather than junk food and pesticide-laden vegetables.

Cancer Statistics 2008

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by Zepherian

 

1) I asked you to show me evidence that organic farming produces yields equal to non-organic farming. I am uninterested in propaganda concerning the finer feelings of broccoli.

(...)

2) Yet here I am, taking on the lot of you single-handed, arguing patiently for commonsense and rationality in the eye of a hurricane of misinformation and superstition, carefully supporting my statements with reliable, trustworthy data and enduring your gratuitous insults without retaliating. Is that not taking a stand?

(...)

3)

There are scientific studies either way for almost everything.

No, there are not. If you think there are, you understand nothing of science. But then, so few people do...


(...)

4) A few. Not to mention a large tropical garden that required a pretty backbreaking Sunday to maintain - I'm glad I don't have it any more. And - oh yes - when my country was run by Socialists and I was about eleven, we had to dig up our school playing-fields and 'grow more food for the nation'. Early morning, before classes commenced. The hard way, with mattocks and hoes. Traditional farming, you know. The old-fashioned, organic sort.

Edit Note: numbering by Zepherian

1) I answered that already, you might not get more one crop yields, but you sure get more foodstuff for acre, because it's multicrop systemic agriculture with livestock mixed in. Anyone with common sense realises that a garden vegetable patch produces more food per area than a monoculture let's say corn field. Throw in a few chickens for good measure.

2) This is like a reverse ad hominem, putting yourself on a pedestal. I won't even go there.

3) I repeat: there are ad hoc science studies out there. In a capitalist system information can be ordered, bought and paid for and passed as legitimate science. I reject the argument of authority in all cases, and try and patch together my own belief system the best I can. As my lovely old grandfather used to say: I hear what they say and am left with what I think of it. I call it informed full spectrum skepticism.

4) I just don't believe you here. Sorry, but out of all the people I've known who have actually worked with nature none of them ended up with such a blatant disrespect for her. So I'm just going to ignore this one, my apologies for having to reject your claims.

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by crimvelvet

 

If you disagree, prove me wrong.

Asking someone to prove a negative is the most dishonest of debate techniques, as it is not philosophically possible.

The main problem I see with this little debate is that, so far, everyone's right. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides aren't primarily what's killing people, and all the "organic" vegetables you can eat won't keep you healthy if the other 80% of your diet is double cheeseburgers, french fries, and Ding Dongs.

How can a discussion about something as uncertain as nutrition get so polarized? There are as many different "good" diets as there are cultures, and probably more. There are also quite a few "bad" diets. According to many doctors and nutritionists that I've spoken to, the key is moderation and variety. A variety of foods and everything in moderation.

How about a little common sense on both sides?

Natural or organic farming does have its advantages. Done properly, it doesn't deplete the soil. Done properly, the foods produced are chemical-free and higher in nutritional value. Can we replace mass-produced foods with organic farming? No. But for those of us who have a choice, natural foods can be purchased or grown (I have a large garden which produced a boatload of tomatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, and watermelon this year.), and they certainly aren't harmful. A farmer with a few hundred acres would have some real problems keeping the pests off of his tomatoes without pesticides. No problem for me - I only had 10 tomato plants; I just checked them every day and picked the bugs off by hand and destroyed them.

The reason that "they" are trying to convince the public that organic isn't better should be obvious .. every person like me who starts having their own garden, keeping a few chickens, or buying local produce at the farmer's market instead of the big-chain grocery store is taking their business away from big business, and if enough of us do it we might actually cut into their profit margins. Oh, dear!

However, what "they" are carefully not mentioning is that the issue goes far beyond organic farming vs. factory farming. The unhealthiness of a "regular" food such as a Ding Dong primarily has nothing to do with how the wheat, sugar cane, and cocoa were grown - it has to do with all of the processing the ingredients are subjected to and all of the chemicals and unnatural substances (such as margarine which has more in common with plastic than butter) that have been added to it to make it not spoil and have the desired color, texture, and flavor.

If you force the issue to be between organically grown wheat and "regular" wheat or even genetically modified wheat, you won't see much difference. So the PTB will try their hardest to make that the issue, and you are flocking right along. The issue - which any reasonable person ought to be able to understand - SHOULD be the difference between something made out of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, cocoa, and vanilla extract, and something whose ingredients - the ones that aren't simply chemicals - are mangled beyond recognition by "refining," processing, bleaching, etc.

The difference between Grandma's PB&J sandwich and a PB&J Uncrustable, or between Mom's meat loaf and Stouffer's salisbury steaks, is not so much how the peanuts, wheat, and grapes were grown or how the cow was raised as it is about all the chemicals and additives that aren't food at all, and all of the nutrients that have been removed from the original foodstuffs by excessive processing.

They also carefully failed to mention that when your body is "inimical" to parasites and pathogens, it's also going to be "inimical" to the good microorganisms we all have to have to survive, such as the bacteria in your gut which help you digest your food.

Regarding the claims of the original OP, I'm not buying it. Yeah, organisms may have an easier time growing in a body that's not polluted with chemicals - but a healthy body has a healthy immune system that tends to knock out intruders before they get a foothold.

But hey, it's a nice spin for all those folks who secretly despise their brown rice cakes and wild salmon patties and were just begging for an excuse to go get a double cheeseburger and large fries.

I wondered why I could not find my post in this thread. Then I realized that this is the exact same topic of a thread that the Op posted also on the 8th, but two hours later. I will quote my post from that thread in full.
In addition to spamming the board with false propaganda, it is the same propaganda.
DocMoreau

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by DocMoreau
The source website looks like bunk to me, first of all.

Second, commons sense tells us that this story has to be false. 'Organic' food, is food grown without pesticides and without chemical fertilizers. It is the food that our Grand Parents and Great Grandparents ate, and their generations and older, rarely died of Cancer. Interestingly, the Cancer rates have grown at nearly the same rates that society has increased the use of Chemical Fertilizers and Pesticides (which themselves are often know Carcinogens). Don't be naive, or bigoted towards Organic foods, it leads you down a path of ignorance.

Politically, 'Organic' foods tend to be much more locally sourced than their mainstream chemically grown counterparts, which has a secondary effect preventing Chinese export of food products. That is, unless the Chinese want USDA investigators 'living' in their food processing plants. In order for the Chinese to sell 'Organic' foods in the United States, they would have to pass USDA certification, or implement their own program modeled after the USDA one, but possibly exceeding it. Even then, the USDA would need to 'certify' their certification.

Most of all, I think this 'article' is designed to pacify a future populace of their education about nutrition. I think that without the use of Petro-Chemically engineered foods, that the Population of China would grow very hungry. I think that this article, and its placement here at ATS are here to obfuscate the truth, and give credence to propaganda. If the people of China understood the truth about the foods that they are given, they would revolt for those reasons alone.

Deny Ignorance
DocMoreau

reply to post by Heike


Good post in general.

If you want an organic way to keep pests off your plants there are several. Judicious use of ash for example under certain circumstances can clear pests off plants, and I am sure there are many other examples, besides the obvious one that is using the pests natural predators and spreading them through the culture.

Besides, the whole point of organic is you don't have to have huge plantations. What's wrong with a centralized market and a decentralized production like we used to have? Oh, right, that had too much fair competition and no price fixing... See how this works?

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by Amaterasu

 

Of course they are going to cover their tail ends with disclaimers. That is the publisher's requirement. It's SOP.

Not for scientifically authenticated, peer-reviewed work. Look, your book is bogus. You have admitted that it pushes a religious angle, which utterly invalidates it as a scientific document. I have established that its author is a quack with a meaningless Ph.D from a massage school. His publishers insist, quite rightly, on putting a disclaimer, not just on his book, but on the web site. Yet here you are, still defending the indefensible. I raise my hat to your tenacity and your steadfast refusal to look reality in the face.

So you will not read it. [shrug]

Whatever, dude.

There were no graphs (except one I clicked around for that had SAMPLE plastered across it...and that one was for the years 2000 to 2004, a very poor sampling. Do they have one for 1950-2008?)

Couldn't work the taps, eh? Okay, I'll do it for you:


US Cancer Incidence and Mortality, 1975-2005

Trends in US Cancer Incidence and Mortality, 1975-2005

source

2005 appears to be the last year for which statistics have been compiled so far.

As you can see, cancer incidence has been falling, not rising, for the last fifteen years or more, and cancer mortality has declined since 1975.

Some epidemic.

Some data. I'm looking for data reflecting what it looked like in 1950. NOT 25 years later, already into the depletion and toxic dumping of and into our soils and water.

Better yet, what did it look like in 1900?

Prior to the last century, cancer was a rarity. By 1975, we had been pouring toxic waste into our water for some 25ish years, using chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides on our crops, and the nutrient values in what was put on our tables had dropped significantly.

Show me the data from at least 25 years before.

[edit on 9/11/2008 by Amaterasu]

Originally posted by crimvelvet

cancer mortality has declined since 1975.

Chemo came in at about this time. That may have a great deal to do with the decline in cancer mortality. My Mom was treated with chemo and died from it so her death was due to "heart attack" not cancer.

There's another problem with "statistics." Rename things, find reasons to discount things, and the data can be manipulated to show whatever one wants it to show.

I do not trust these data that our friend is using to "prove" his point.

reply to post by Zepherian

[1, 2, 3, 4]



1. No, you haven't answered it already. You just made some unsubstantiated claims. Now you're making another one. Show me the data that prove it. Provide some evidence. If you can't do that, well, it's all just hot air, isn't it?
   
   
2. Putting myself on a pedestal? On this entire thread so far I've seen only one post in support of my position; all I've had from the other posters is disagreement. And I certainly don't mind this; I'm merely stating that the 'single-handedly taking on the lot of you' is literally true - if you don't count that one post. Or is it that you regard the adjectives 'patiently' and 'carefully' as unbearably egotistical?
   
   
3. I see you require an explanation. Here goes. Scientific studies seek to establish facts, not theories. Nature is, on the whole and on the human scale, consistent. The facts do not change no matter who studies them. What varies is the interpretation. Now do you get it?
   
   
4. So I'm a liar, then, as well as a fool and a slave. You take a great deal upon yourself when you make such sweeping judgements about a person's character based on a few posts in an online forum thread. What do you imagine that and your indecent haste to the pillory say about your character?
   

Asking someone to prove a negative is the most dishonest of debate techniques, as it is not philosophically possible.

I am not asking anyone to prove a negative. That would be asking crimvelvet to prove that (for example) organic food hasn't harmed anybody.

What I am asking him or her to prove is that food produced by modern farming methods is more harmful than food grown using 'traditional' or organic methods. Obviously, I'm not talking about food that was cultivated using now-banned pesticides or something like that; I'm talking about food that was produced according to methods that conform to current standards and guidelines.

That's all it takes to prove what you incorrectly call a 'negative': one good study.

reply to post by Heike

A star from me, Heike, and a on your post. You may not be entirely surprised to discover that I agree one hundred percent with everything you have written in your post. Some of those opposing me on this thread, however, will be.

reply to post by Amaterasu

So you will not read it.

I will not read it. Life is short and good books are many. There is no time waste on bad ones.

I'm looking for data reflecting what it looked like in 1950. NOT 25 years later, already into the depletion and toxic dumping of and into our soils and water.

You're the one who's claiming a cancer epidemic; you should be the one posting evidence of it. I shall not indulge you further. Find the proof of your wild assertions for yourself, if you can, and post it.

1) My statement stands, I hold it as self evident, if you don't I can't really believe you regarding 4), as I can't understand how you could have that experience and still defend industrial monoculture.

2) Pointless sidetracking.

3) Interpretations are subjective, and data can be selective. Not all studies are honest, and the data you use on this thread to try and prove your points, for example, is wholy inadequate. Besides, I'm giving opinion based on life experience, it is not my intention to do a scientific paper on this subject, or to pose as a scientist with loaded numbers.

4) See 1.

5) He would not have to prove them more harmfull, although the toxicity levels of pesticide use should be obvious by now, he could also argument that industrialized agriculture produces underpar products from a nutritional level. Which is why they taste worse, despite looking like something from a decorative wax fruit jar.

Also, regarding 5), in your own post you stated above that interpretations are subjective, yet now state that studys can be objective, as one of them can prove a point. Right...

The positions you defend, given the body of knowledge around the whole agriculture debate make you seemed biased towards industrialized agriculture in the face of all reason. I am biased towards natural agriculture because multiple experiences have shown me industrialized agriculture is under par and monopolistic, and will lead us to tragedy. You're position seems to be: it's great, we get more yields of crap per acre. And you try to whitewash it to make people not see the sad reality that modern industrialized agriculture is toxic.

I could research this and give a thousand links, but I prefer to just leave it as opinion, and people can make of it as they will.

One last plug to The secret life of plants, the importance of that book is hard to understate for anyone wanting to know why people like me take positions like this.