At 08:24 AM 4/13/01 -0600, Lynnet Bannion wrote:
>
>This criticism of "organic" may have been true 40 years ago, but now there
are
>numerous excellent certification agencies, so "organic" does mean that the
food
>was raised without chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.  And I
for one
>am happy to be eating foods without the dozens to hundreds of poisonous
>chemicals on it and in it which not only are not paleo, but were not in
food even 60
>
>years ago.  This is only "ideological" if you are DuPont or one of the other
>multinational corporations that make this stuff and promote it to farmers.

I would respectfully disagree.  While there is a lot of certification wrt
process, there is nothing really to prevent cross-contamination which,
iirc, is indeed a problem for many organic farmers.  Not their fault, not
much, if anything they can do about it, but those 100s of chemicals have so
permeated most of the inhabited areas, at least in the US, that it's neigh
on impossible to avoid getting some of them.

That is not to say that organic produce and meat isn't better, often,  just
not always and not necessarily as significantly better as I, for one, would
like.

Also, from what I understand, when it comes to organic meat, by legal
definition, that doesn't necessarily mean "always been free of antibiotics,
etc." but more along the lines of "been free for x number of days/weeks
before slaughter".  Am I misremembering this?

Then there's the legal and realistic definitions of "free range" and
whether this is truly reflected in the animal's diet.

Then, even with produce, there's a difference between just organic and
organic with proper crop rotation, etc., to keep the soil rich.  Has
certification gotten to the point where the higher standards are *the*
standards?

Dianne