Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

I simply have to reply to this because it is a cloaked attempt to push for 
pesticides and toxic chemicals in food. That is to me what organic farming 
is basically about , no chemicals with known and unknown side effects in 
food.

In fact the attack on organic farming in this article is so serious for 
instance journalists screaming for a moratorium on organic food 
production... Does this mean they only want well poisoned gmo food? And in 
combiunation with the fact (to me and others) that this new (definitely not 
just "rare") Shiga toxin producing, mega antibiotic resistent E. coli must 
have been produced in a laboratory I suspect that there is every chance that 
this bug was deliberately introduced in an organic business. I mean ordinary 
E. coli and other bacteria are almost omni present and if this sprout 
producer were anything but scrupulously hygenic these bugs would be found 
regularly in their end product and that would show up in plentiful but minor 
infections of their clients. If this happened at all they would soon be 
found out. One single complaint and they would be investigated leaving no 
stone unturned this being Germany and YES, they would loose their organic 
certification immediately if something was found.

As far as I know nothing was ever found until now when a bug bred for 
bio-warfare shows up. How suspicious is that? Is this a push for gmo 
alfalfa? For an organic sprouter would be required to start from certified 
organic alfalfa seed grown without chemicals on land that had not seen 
chemicals for a minimum three years and absolutely gmo free. And they want 
to put a moratorium on that?

The rest of the article is worse than that, industry promoted, extreme right 
lunatic fringe, trebble toxic BS. The Russians have published data to the 
tune that at least a million people died because of Chernobyl and those in 
the know say that Fukushima is going to be a hundred times worse at least. 
The Chernobyl reactor was entombed in a few weeks and that resulted in a 
measurable drop in average intelligence in all children in Skandinavia and a 
measurable rise in child mortality in the US. Fukushima is expected to belch 
out tons of plutonium for at least three years, one single pound of which, 
evenly distributed would kill every human on earth.
Orghanic food worse than the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico? Ask the 
thousands who are sick and dying in the US Golf states at the moment.

In one word, this article is such crap that I would never have thought to 
see it on this list!

I myself am no longer certified organic for the reasons that the paper work 
indeed took too much of our time and that the organic mark up of our sales, 
if any, was not at all sufficient to pay for our certification fee. We could 
no longer financially afford it.

That said, I have only but praise for the insight and sharp nose of our 
organic inspectors. I can't see anybody getting away with falsified 
paperwork and declarations with these people here in Europe. I myself would 
have no trouble to see whether any type of chemical had been used on a farm 
in the last few years and these inspectors were at least as sharp.
And of course, we produce nearly all the food we eat ourselves here. Of 
course we follow organic rules and then some (but without the paper work).

Lividly yours,
John



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.

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