Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Former inspector lifts lid on the murky world of organic food
http://asiancorrespondent.com/58047/former-inspector-lifts-lid-on-the-murky-world-of-organic-food/

If organic food was that bad for us, none of our ancestors would have 
survived long enough to invent RoundUp – so an earlier post titled Organic 
Food Isn’t Needed was not meant to be taken entirely seriously.

However 40 Germans are now dead, and thousands have been made ill by sprouts 
thought to have come from an organic farm in southern Germany.

As a result of that post, a former organic food inspector from Canada, Mischa 
Popoff contacted this blog with the following article. Mischa is the author 
of Is it Organic? and has been warning about inadequate testing of organic 
produce in North America for years. Looking at the system in Australia, it 
too appears to depend on paper trails rather than actual testing.

Of course, organic food is safe when properly managed, but Mischa’s work 
raises serious questions about this very issue. Find out more here, and 
thanks to Mischa for providing the following article:

Is it certified organic death?

If ever there was an argument for the organic industry to buckle down and 
finally start field testing, this is it.

Forty deaths and over 3,200 illnesses caused by certified organic bean 
sprouts, tainted with a rare strain of E. coli, originating from an organic 
farm in Germany.

But hey… at least all the paperwork for organic certification was filled out 
correctly. Right? Feel better now? Like hell you do!

German officials say they won’t reprimand the owners of this organic farm 
because, “You cannot punish someone for having bad luck.” ‘Scuze me? Bad 
luck? The multi-billion-dollar certified organic, global industrial-complex 
has been riding on a non-scientific wave of pure hype for over a decade now. 
As someone who grew up on an organic farm and inspected over 500 organic 
farms and processing facilities, let me make this crystal clear: there is NO 
ROUTINE FIELD TESTING in the organic industry! None.

Do you think maybe… just maybe, the lack of laboratory analysis might’ve had 
something to do with the failure of German officials to notice that one of 
their organic farms was about to kill 35 people? Sure it did.

Since 1998 I have been asking why we don’t test organic farms and processing 
facilities to ensure they’re actually organic. Instead, paperwork is relied 
upon; mountains and mountains of useless paperwork.

Didn’t we learn anything from Bernie Madoff? He kept up on all of his 
paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In fact, he gave 
SEC-sponsored talks promoting the very regulators he was gaming. (Don‘t feel 
ripped off though; they were free talks!)

Madoff did everything the regulatory bureaucracy required of him… on paper, 
and then bilked investors for billions of dollars as others in the financial 
community tried in vain to blow the whistle on him. That’s where paperwork 
gets you.

I finally gave up asking why we didn’t field test organic farms and 
processing facilities to ensure prohibited substances like uncomposted manure 
weren’t making their way into the organic food chain. Rather than play along, 
I put down my pen and began openly lobbying for testing of all organic farms 
and processors at least once a year on a surprise basis.

I wrote articles and gave countless interviews, and last year I released a 
book on the subject describing how political activists who’ve never worked a 
day on a farm took over the organic industry and purposely eliminated field 
testing so they could import phony organic products from nations like China, 
Brazil and Mexico. It’s called Red-Green wealth redistribution; my detractors 
call it “sustainability.”

If you buy certified organic food, all that stands between you and E. 
coli-induced haemolytic uraemic syndrome is record-keeping… exhaustive, 
mind-numbing record keeping. If HUS doesn’t kill you it requires a kidney 
transplant, so it’s not surprising that many journalists say a moratorium on 
the organic industry is in order.

David Mastio of the Washington Times, for instance, points out that twice as 
many people have now died from eating organic food than died in the Gulf of 
Mexico oil-rig explosion and the nuclear power plant meltdown in Fukushima, 
Japan. Pajamas Media warns more succinctly, “Eat Organic and Die.” But the 
powers-that-be in the organic industry are already pushing back, attacking 
their detractors personally instead of responding to our genuine concerns; a 
tactic I have grown accustomed to over the years.

All that’s required to avoid a repeat of this tragedy is what every honest 
organic farmer I’ve ever met wants: routine, unannounced, organic field 
testing. No more useless paperwork!

But, would you believe that at the last Annual Meeting of the Organic Trade 
Association the possibility of testing organics was only under consideration 
for GMO content, not for toxic pesticides, synthetic fertilizer or fecal 
coliforms? Want some poop in your certified-organic salad?

If you can stomach it, pick up a copy of my book and read about pig farmers 
right here in North America who got their farms certified as organic just so 
they could dispose of tons of hog feces. And good luck finding an organ donor.

Make no mistake; these deaths in the European heartland of the global organic 
movement are a wake-up call. Where, pray tell, is the science in this 
industry I was once proud to say I grew up in? Where’s the common sense?

Mischa Popoff is an IOIA Advanced Organic Inspector and is the author of Is 
it Organic? which you can preview at www.isitorganic.ca.