"Organic" Is The Latin Word For "Grown In Pig Shit"

This story fits right in with the story of about two years ago when a number of people in the United States died after eating organically grown produce from California.

Organic food is another fraud foisted on society.

On Tuesday, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that Karch had discovered that the O104:H4 bacteria responsible for the current outbreak is a so-called chimera that contains genetic material from various E. coli bacteria. It also contains DNA sequences from plague bacteria, which makes it particularly pathogenic. There is no risk, however, that it could cause a form of plague, Karch emphasized in remarks to the newspaper.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/05/super-rare-e-coli-sickening-germany/38324/

"Though a spokesman said yesterday the call for imprisonment was not meant to be taken literally"

No,of course not,Dr.Suzuki was misquoted,or misspoke,or his truth that day was different from his truth today............

Grocery shopping yesterday,needed bananas,the regular variety were yellow and 68 cents a pound,the organic were half black and 99 cents/pound.

Well, environazis love the idea of reducing the world's population, sooooooooo....this type of thing is just another way of getting to that end.

You know, for all the genius adjectives these guys are usually haloed with - Suzuki, Gore, Obama etc. etc. don't come across as very bright in the common sense department....genius in a Dr. Evil sort of way??

Who's ignoring the climate science David? The real science.

Can we please force feed Suzuki some of these green sprouts?

Not to self, we invented pesticides, herbicides and uber clean production methods because the "green method" was total shit.

Jeepers, I'm no fan of Suzuki, Gore, et al, but I am an organic farmer. Should I go to jail too? Should we blame this on organic, sprouts, or Germany, you pick one. Lots of conventional food scares in the past, nearly all of them conventional. Do I blame the conventional production system? No, that would be simplistic.

ps. I read the link. 'no e-coli found on the suspected product'. Forgive me for my cynicism, but I don't think we will find the truth listening to the media. That's why I come here, but to take a swing at organic production is a little over the top. Thoughful analysis please, the sensational crap I can get anywhere,

Cheers,

dirtfarmer

Our current world is too far removed from the world that made developing chemical fertilizers (and vaccines, and antibiotics) necessary. So nobody today can comprehend the fear people had of Polio, or Small Pox, or the looming food scarcity of the late 1800's. So all of the advances that keep babies from dying, and coloured vegetables always available at the supermarket are seen as Evil and Predatory. Maybe we do need a famine...

Been doing a little experiment as of late. I go to the local super market and buy a platter of organic vegetables. I eat as much as I want then put the rest in the fridge. Next time I buy the non organic platter of the same vegetables eat what I want and put the rest in the fridge. So far every organic platter has spoiled almost overnight while the non organic vegetables remain edible for almost a week.

I have no problems with organic foods - including milk products and free-run eggs as well as fruits and vegetables.

I have a problem with organic as a 'progressive fetish' where we see the upscale people buying these products, which are always more expensive, because it somehow ties in with their 'champagne socialist' ideas about 'saving the environment.

I know some people who are small-scale organic farmers; I get their products. They simply don't want the chemical additives to the foods. These chemical additives are primarily fertilizers and pesticides...and even some 'growth hormones'

But it's a LOT of work because without the chemicals, there's a lot of hand weeding, a lot of hand-picking off of insects and grubs. A lot of protection needed from birds and animals (nets).

Organic farming isn't just 'fertilizing with manure'; it's about the pesticides and growth chemicals that are added to produce more crops and reduce pesticide damage - which can be enormous. Some insects and birds can eat through your crop in a day.

Now, whether organic methods and the work required can produce enough food to support a large population - that's another story.

The label "organic" is simply a marketing gimmick designed to fool people into thinking that they are eating healthier, more environmentally sound food when this is not the case. All they get, for the most part, is a thorough wallet cleansing.

The reason that these E.coli outbreaks happen is because organic rules prohibit the use of chemical fertilizers, forcing organic growers to rely on manure for nutrients, which, if not composted properly, can be a huge source of pathogens.

Calling chemical fertilizers "unnatural" is, in itself, utterly preposterous. What are potash, sulfur, and phosphate, other than naturally occurring rocks? What's "inorganic" about that? Even nitrogen fertilizer is hardly unnatural, because it's condensed out of the air!

I have a U-Pick berry farm, and I won't fertilize with animal manure because of the danger of getting pathogens on the fruit. I use chemical fertilizers which are eschewed by the organic movement primarily because they are made in large factories by corporations, and not because they are unsafe or environmentally unsound.

If you know anything about chemistry you know that many chemicals are organic compounds which exist in nature. It just so happens that there's many pesticides which consist of organic compounds. So can someone please explain to me what "organic" even means? To me this is one giant scam linked in with the green house gasbag scam.

I know a couple of families who are very low income people who struggle to even feed themselves. They're complete hippy types which is part of the reason why they make so little money btw. Anyway they actually feel guilty when they buy non-organic when money is tight. These eco-terrorists are causing great harm.

If E-coli is being transferred from pig poop to the veggies, then today's neophyte organic farmers don't have a clue about what they are doing -- they're not waiting long enough for the manure to thorougly rot and break down properly. Depending on the type of manure and the conditions it can take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years before manure is ready. If you seed in fresh s**t or spread it near plants not only will you get E-coli on the veggies, but you will be lucky if they survive at all.

But the real argument is more elemental than that, and what I don't understand is how E-coli could survive on fresh vegetables if you are washing them properly after bringing them home from market. Is the E-coli actually absorbed into the cells and biology of the veggies themselves? I've
never heard of such a thing, and I wish Health Canada would for once inform the public how these "new" bacteria, viruses, etc. are actually TRANSMITTED, but they never do.

Here's what I know from living in the Third World and being exposed to practically every known infectuous disease known to man:

1/ if you wash your veggies it doesn't matter if they were grown in a maggot-infested outhouse -- they will still be safe to eat. If you want to be extra careful you keep a gallon of clean water handy with 5 or 6 drops of pure bleach added (per gallon) -- just dip the veggies in the solution for a few seconds then rinse (in lab experiments even the HIV virus cannot survive the presence of bleach!).

2/ Cook suspicious meat thoroughly -- no red meat, plain and simple.

3/ Handwashing before, during and after food preparation -- retardedly simple but effective.

Unless I've been out of the loop for too long why wouldn't these methods work today? And why isn't Health Canada educating the public on these things? In cahoots with the pharmaceutical companies for innoculations or antibiotics marketing perhaps?

It simply doesn't make sense that veggies can "catch" E-coli -- they don't have colons! The bacteria is likely only on the surface of the vegetable and can easily be washed off or disinfected...

Organic means that it was grown without any chemicals. It does not mean its better for you. A great example is that organic farmers often use metals for pesticides instead of chemical pesticides. The metals are oftentimes worse for humans and worse for the environment, but they are 'natural' which is all that organic regulations care about.

The demand for so-called "organic" produce is also linked to the 300 mile food initiative (the idea of buying locally). Together these 2 new memes have single handedly saved the small family farm from extinction. It has also saved a lot of rich fertile crop land from the developers. We don't have a whole lot of prime farm land in Canada, it seems foolish to threaten the foo supply with yuppy condos.

Personally I don't give a fxxx what the percived benefits of eating naturally taised local food is in the usually warperped perspective of urban yuppy trend slaves.

This is one green trend that has worked out well for small local producers and consumers. Fresh naturally raised local produce purchased at market from its producer compared to imported super chain store produce is like the difference between prime rib and a big mac. I cook, I know.

Anyone who advocates mass produced corporate farmed junk produce over locally produced wholesome natural food has either a reasoning problem or ideological blinders on.

I have nothing against organic farming per se.

What I object to is sales pitch and demonization of the conventional ag industry that actually does feed the world.

What is the problem with outsourcing the awful, labor intensive, low paying work of growing food to the mexicans? Last time I checked Canada is an arctic country where you can only grow food for a few months a year. We don't need small family farms.

"And why isn't Health Canada educating the public on these things?"

I dunno, it might "offend" some certain third worlders living here now, or first worlders, too? I know that's "raaaaacist", but we spend a lot of taxpayer's money on ESL so we can communicate with them, why not health related stuff? Besides, aren't our publicly-funded schools educating kids on this, or what?

Frankly, most of our food related problems are due to poor farming practices (and they are usually born & raised here)and I would suspect most are due to marginal operations that will shoot, shovel and shaddap for the most part, but alternatively they'll just ship that old cow off to the abbatoir for a fast buck hoping nobody notices.

And that could just as easily be an "organic" farm operation. You're all farmers and I don't care if you use Roundup or not as a marketing tool. There is a level of trust from us non-farmers and that seems to be whittled away more and more with more of these outbreaks happening. Must be the cost of fuel.

What ever happened to washing your fruit and vegetables before eating them?

"Last time I checked Canada is an arctic country where you can only grow food for a few months a year. We don't need small family farms."

I'm not a farmer, but even I know that "farms" today that are "family" are Big Businesses, even in southern Ontario where I'm from. Out here we used to feed the world on grain, but lately it seems that a certain entitiy has gotten in the way of that "Arctic farming" practice. It's called the CWB.

I dunno, but around July I like to motor around the prairies (gosh, and waste precious gasoline!) and photgraph the miles upon miles of "Arctic farming" that is done up here, it has a particular bright green hue and the big square-mile patches of bright yellow canola backdropped by a dark blue sky are just eyecatching.

Farming is the west's "other industry" that shares the land with oil & gas production that either warms or cools the world, depending on what time of year it is.

By the way, we use efficient machines to farm out here, what do they use in Mexico, slave labour?

'We' don't need small family farms? Who says? Just you?

Small and medium size businesses - and that includes small farms - are the backbone of our economy.

If anyone wants to run a small family farm - are you seriously suggesting that 'we' should not allow this?

I think they are great; the produce is fresh - and yes, fresh tastes completely different; and I think it's better for you.

I agree that 'everything is natural' so to speak since even the chemicals we mix come from the material physical world. BUT - they don't all come in the same combinations or quantities, naturally, as they do in the manufactured. That's the difference.
An aspirin is 'natural' - in that White Willow has the same chemicals in it; but, one aspirin is not the same, in your body, as twenty.

Joe - I don't know where you buy your produce from, but organic fruits and vegetables do not go bad overnight in the frig.

ricardo- thanks for your post.

Occam
"Anyone who advocates mass produced corporate farmed junk produce over locally produced wholesome natural food has either a reasoning problem or ideological blinders on."

The ideological blinders are why a socio/economic/political agenda is successfully disguised as a health issue. Promoting "organic food" is an anti-capitalist project.

The COLD WAR is over, their side lost and they refuse to accept that...hence COAGW and "organic food"...GREEN agenda is just the last echo of a failed ideology.......hopefully the last.

What probably happened was that the manure those sprout farmers with e.coli used in Europe was not well rotted. The soils used for the sprouts should have been certified rotted. There you go, one more new department in the EU government in Brussels to close the cracks left by the planners.

sasquatch

Maybe its you who should take the binders off and google HR 875.

HR 875, introduced by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, is essentially a giant gift package for Monsanto, mandating the criminalization of seed banking, prison terms and confiscatory fines for small farmers and 24 hour GPS tracking of their animals, and of “industrial” standards to independent farms.

Monsanto, ADM, Sodexo, Tyson, and other mega corporations want nothing less than full control of the land, the end of normal animals so they can substitute patented genetically engineered ones, and the end of normal seeds and thus of seed banking by farmers or individuals.

If allowed to continue, every farmer in the world could come to rely on Monsanto for their seed supply! With thousands of organic farmers driven out of business, purchase diflucan they would be that much closer to dominating the food supply of the world, since organic farms don’t use Monsanto seeds or toxic products.

From ET back up the thread:

"Now, whether organic methods and the work required can produce enough food to support a large population - that's another story."

The answer to that is clearly no.

Moving forward, organic farming would better be described as Low Yield Organic farming.

I suggest that the problem here is people and not organic farming. For the record health problems and dangers from what is now considered conventional agriculture by far outnumber any from organic production, but again I say the problem lies with people usually caused by greed, taking shortcuts and cutting corners. I also practise organic or more what I would call natural or traditional agriculture. At the same time I recognise on both sides of agriculture, organic and non organic, one can find ideologues for whom it is a blind article of faith. The claim that either one of these will save the world is ridiculous in my opinion.

One German organic farm has killed twice as many people as the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the Gulf Oil spill combined.
crickets.

@ dmorris, Dr. Suzuki misquoted? Not likely when you take into account that to a Marxist truth is what advances their agenda at any given time.

Let me rephrase my sentence of my post @ 10:39. Organic food is not the fraud, it is the religion of denigrating conventional farming that is the fraud.

Et says it well both times and so does Kate when she clarifies my thoughts @ 10:39.

A retired dirtfarmer.

PS. The production from organic grain farms in my neck of the woods comes no where near the production on conventional crop farms. Besides the organic farms spread certain weeds all over the countryside.

Organic food is, for the most part, a harmless and faddish marketing ploy based on faith and ignorance, a form of tax on stupid rich people. I consciously avoid organic because I don't want to promote it and statistically, it has a higher probability of e-coli or other manure-based pathogens. Nitrate nitrogen (NO3) that is taken up by plants is a chemical compound that occurs in nature (manure) and by man made processes. It's the same chemical either way.

A Japanese nuclear meltdown, the ultimate anthropogenic atrocity fails to kill one person but an icon of anti-industrialism, organic farming, kills 30 and sickens thousands. Move along, nothing to see here folks!

Stage II will involve the removal of that most toxic of chemicals, Chlorine, from the water supply. In their minds it's probably better to die of Cholera than be "polluted" by another evil chemical.

Richfisher wins the thread. I have not seen that mentioned anywhere. And the Germans have sworn to eliminate nuclear power too.

What ever happened to washing your fruit and vegetables before eating them?

or cooking them .

wouldnt have had this problem with sauerkruat.

Dr. Mengale Fruitfly Suzuki has been promoting organic farming ala Cuban style for years along with CBCpravda. in cuba they use donkeys as power and fertilize with human excrement , a sure way to reintroduce pathogens back into the food supply. The fact that Cuba cant feed itself didnt seem to come into the thought process. so switch to this style of farming and half the world dies. guess what , it wont be the rich folks, so Suzuki is effectively promoting the death of poor people worldwide , aka most environmentalists.

On a small scale with certain crops it's often more feasible to go "organic", using that as a marketing tool, not dealing with the expense of specialized herbicides/equipment, while commanding a premium price.

My goal isn't a lofty crusade to feed the world or save the planet, it's to make as much $$$ as possible on a small amount of land. Sounds like capitalism to me!

Not to be picky but sprouts are not grown in any kind of manure nor in a farmers field. The sprout is created when the seed germinates, and the medium is water. Sprouts are very small and can be grown in a glass jar in your kitchen. Sprout farmers use special equipment and it doesn't include soil. Alfalfa and clover sprouts make nutrient dense food, usually added to sandwiches.
When you see alfalfa and clover in a field its a plant, not a sprout. I laughed when I tried to imagine a farmer harvesting sprouts in his field.

How could sprouts become contaminated with ecoli? The seeds, the water, the equipment, or the handlers not washing their hands? The other theory I've heard is that the new deadly strain was created in the lab and the food was deliberatly contaminated to serve a one-world political agenda.

My former company owned a mushroom company, which I visited periodically. They composted their own compost and it was a very well controlled intricate process with special machines to move and turn the compost, which was done on long cement pads. The heat generated by the process was amazing and the air would steam on cold days. It took a fair length of time to turn the manure into black crumbly non-smelling soil for the mushroom beds. There were inspections throughout the process to ensure no pathogens were in the finished product.

Compare that to Walkerton where raw manure run off was allowed to flow into the town's wells. Of course nothing could go wrong as the town's 2 technicians were right on top of the process carefully monitoring the water purity. sarc/off

We've had a garden for over 30 years and it would probably qualify as organic. Yes it does take allot of work weeding, expensive netting not to mention the $2,000 greenhouse I put up this year: you can buy allot of veggies for $2K. I do it because my wife loves gardening (is a master gardener) and having grown up on a farm. It is definitely much more expensive to grow than buy at our local supermarket. As far as the organic business goes, our newspaper had a section on it claiming our area organic farmers make about $79,000 a year in profit. What they didn't say is that was split up between 17 farms and that works out to less than $5,000 each: works = poverty wages.

Once again Pollyanna I mean ET beaks off about that which she has no experience. First of all dear Polly read my post, I said almost overnight. In other words before I wanted to finish eating the organic produce it had spoiled. Once it was spoiled the next evening three other times It was spoiled within two days of purchase. The none organic vegetables remained edible for about a 5 days some times a bit longer. Of the five times that I kept track of non organic produce it never spoiled in two days. BTW both organic and non organic vegetable trays were purchased at the same big name retailer. Oh one more thing I'm not anti organic. I raise my own vegetables without use of chemicals. I have farmer friends who raise free range chickens and turkeys and chemical free beef and mutton which I am happy to purchase and eat.

Back in the 1970s, Professor Cohen offered to eat as much plutonium as Ralph Nader would eat caffeine — an offer Nader never accepted.

Perhaps we should set up a similar offer to Soozooki. Except rather than caffeine, make it "organic" bean sprouts from Germany.

Same for those envirofascists who always play the game of asking CEO's of oilsands companies to drink a glass of water out of the Athabasca.

How could sprouts become contaminated with ecoli?

Water contaminated with fecal matter used for sprouting process.
JMO

"The none organic vegetables remained edible for about a 5 days some times a bit longer. "
Were they of the exact same variety? Often the commercial varieties are developed specifically to be harvested underripe, last longer in storage and resist mechanical damage, sometimes at the expense of flavor, while many organic & local growers choose heirloom or common garden varieties. e.g. tomatoes

"Organic" food is the salve that soothes Liberal guilt. If the world relied exclusively on organic food, half the world population would die of hunger.

I grow organic veggies, however my compost is made from soil, grass and leaves no kitchen waste and no poop. Growing food in shite is a receipe for disaster.

Military-industrial-complex, meet environmental-climatic-chaos.

Rose,

Not to be a stickler, but without shite or other waste, methinks your veggies are going to be pretty anaemic on that diet alone. Unless you've got exceptional soil, but by next year or the next you'll have to put shite in it because it will be depleted of its nutrients.

You essentially have your plants on a diet of mulch -- good for keeping in the moisture and the soil soft, but useless for nutrients.

Moving forward, organic farming would better be described as Low Yield Organic farming.

I look at it as being similar to the fact that if you take a cow from short grass country and move her north where lush, long grass, grows, she'll damn near starve to death until her stomach expands. In short grass country, the heaviest calves produced usually happen in the driest years.

Higher yield is usually a tradeoff with nutrients. A fact borne out by the taste of those giant strawberries. Or, lack of taste.

Not to be picky but sprouts are not grown in any kind of manure nor in a farmers field.

Yeah, city type folks should stick to their own area of expertise. They do more harm than good to "conventional agriculture".

ChrisinMB makes some good points @ 2:03. Small scale organic foods grown locally for local niche markets are a good fit for Saturday market shoppers.

Joey also has a good point @ 2:47. Not to in any way promote communism, but the Russian peasant farmer could barely feed himself before the communists came along. It was the pre-1917 farmers that embraced modern, for the time, farming methods that took up the slack and were even able to export foodstuffs to western Europe. Often the progressive farmers were those that had been brought to Russia during the late 1700s and early 1800s as immigrants. The communists took away their land and imposed modern farming methods on all farmers, whether peasants or progressive middle farmers. At the cost of millions of kulak lives I might add.

If only there was a magic ray that could kill these pathogens without harming the food and keep it fresh longer..

Oh wait!

joe - do you think you could comment, just once, without insults? Hmmm? Try it.

And don't get into semantic nit-picking. Your 'almost overnight' has, grammatically, the emphasis on the word 'overnight'. And your comparison was that the organic ones decayed faster than the non-organic ones.

You gave no reasoning for this difference; I don't know what you were suggesting. But, as ChrisinMB points out - was it a valid comparison?

The organic foods, picked to be fresh - vs the non-organic, picked to travel, aren't a valid comparison.
Also, you ignore the preservatives added to the commercial fruits and vegetables in packaging or as spray.

Now, can you try for a mature, non-insulting comment? Just once?

Growing food in shite is a receipe for disaster.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but, all shite is not equal. Herbivores have a totally different digestive system than omnivores.

Stay away from a hippy's zuchinni.