Subject: Re: Pesticides in Organic Farming
From: [email-masked] (Louis Hom)
Date: 26 May 1994 15:58:45 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture

In response to Brian Baker's message:

	It's statistically meaningless, but I must say that with one exception,
all of the responses that I got from consumers indicated that they had no idea
that organic farmers were allowed to use pesticides and other chemical inputs.
	The reason I originally wrote this was that I used to be one of the
people who didn't know about it and it really disappointed me to find out the
truth.  The fact is that state organic farming laws allow the potential for
organic farming to be at least as harmful(environmentally speaking)
as conventional practices, which is
entirely contrary to the spirit of the organic philosophy.
	With regard to food safety issues, some of the replies that I got from
consumers were requests basically for documentation of their preconceptions
relating organic produce to better nutrition and reduced cancer rates.  Maybe
this is the fault of the NRDC or Pure Foods or someone like that, but these
claims are definitely out there.
	The Kovach study that I cited was made available to me in a class I
took at Cornell (pomology).  The reason I didn't give a journal citation is
that I don't have one.  The version I saw was manuscript or preprint form
or the like.
	I've been trying to establish this dialogue between growers/certifiers/
sellers and consumers, with the goal of getting consumers and the media to
understand what they're asking for when they're making demands for organic.
It really irks me to see someone (usually a consumers' advocate of some kind)
using organic and pesticide/chemical-free in the same sentence.  It's 
unfortunate that the misperception continues, because there are very important
issues involved.  It doesn't matter to me where it started;  I just wish
someone would take the step of making the definitions clear.  I never meant to
imply malice on the part of anyone, though.
-- 
										****************************************************************************
*   Lou Hom			*	"All folks are family."            *
*   [email-masked]       *    			-- John Saponara   * 
****************************************************************************