Re:We’re Scientists, Moms, And We Avoid Non-GMO Products
by AngrySkillzz on Monday November 07, 2016 @06:32PM
(#12896265)
Pesticides are used on organic food too. Often they use much larger volumes of less effective pesticides to compensate.
Re:We’re Scientists, Moms, And We Avoid Non-GMO Products
by a_bonobo on Monday November 07, 2016 @09:30PM
(#12897131)
The non-use of pesticides can be a problem too - there was an outbreak of a dangerous E. coli strain in Germany 2011 due to a contaminated organic farm. (Interestingly, the E. coli in question had acquired a few extra genes encoding for the toxin from another E. coli strain, natural GM)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Germany_E._coli_O104:H4_o...
Re:We’re Scientists, Moms, And We Avoid Non-GMO Products
by kafkaesq on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @03:55PM
(#12903856)
Just because the outbreak occurred on an organic farm... doesn't mean it was "caused by" the lack of pesticide use (or any other cultivation practices, per se). In fact, as to that particular outbreak, the very WP page you cite says:
Using epidemiological methods the outbreaks in 2011 were traced to a shipment of seeds from Egypt that arrived in Germany in December 2009.
Citing as a source:
http://phys.org/news/2012-02-insight-whole-genome-sequencing...
Why is it "strange and unearned"? In many states / countries there are specific regulations that qualify what can be labelled "organic" or not (having to do largely with whether certain classes of pesticides or fertilizer were used in their production or not, for example).
Are you saying that pesticides in the food chain are complete red herring, and that any concern about them is "strange and unearned"? I'm not sure I quite follow you, actually.