Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

This is interesting: today by sheer coincidence I met the chair of our NM 
Organic Commodity Commission, at a market where we both sold our produce. But 
I saw no point in sharing our views on certification.

The reason I passed on this article was his point about no field testing for 
violations. He's correct. The same point was made by Eliot Coleman in one of 
his books.  And at least in the U.S. this is a loophole big enough for a 
whole fleet of trucks to ride through. That being the case I see no way 
certification can guarantee any grower strictly meets the organic standards, 
esp with huge corporate growers and food processors.

Again, the Devil is in the details. In spite of all the paperword required, 
there is no testing of the actual produce for pesticides. But there's more. 
Without thorough field testing there is no possible way to certify that 
pesticides, herbicides, fungicides etc. have not been used and are not 
present in the soil that grows the crops. Ditto for chemical fertilizers. In 
fact, such thorough testing would cost so much it would bankrupt the farmer 
or the agency doing the certifying. But it's not required, hence simply not 
done. I've read the rules for certification in the U.S. Anyone can.

True organic growing is fine. What's not fine is the bureaucratic 
certification rules that simply do not, and cannot, guarantee crops are grown 
organically. This is terrible for consumers thinking they're buying organic. 
But it's great for the food industry corporations growing certified and 
getting a premium price for it.

All inspectors can inspect is the record keeping. They can't tell if I put 
some 10-20-10 NPK on my bean beds. Or if I used some methyl iodide on my 
strawberries. Or Roundup on all the weeds. There's no way without specific 
and costly testing for those things and a hundred other things that violate 
organic standards.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 6/24/2011 at 9:18 PM John D'hondt wrote:

>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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