hello wytze,
>I pay more for organic foods and I like to pay the farmer, not
>the certifier, because I have to mainly rely on the farmer, not
>on the certifier. I pay more because I want not all kind of
>chemicals in and on my food, and what imo is good agricultural
>practice foods. Certification has a value. I guess there are pros
>and cons to certifying, organic foods in supermarkets etc. The
>rules Sal sent around look proposterous. It seems certification
>fees could be related to income at the least, and not so
>excessive. Farmers are being sucked. Thanks Sal.
16 years ago our institute organized the famous "VDLUFA-study"
(at least famous in europe).
the goal of the study: to find out, if there is any difference
between conventional and organically grown food. and as we knew,
that if something isn't sprayed, you won't find residues, we did,
what mr. john consumer does: we went to the local markets around
and bought fruits and vegetables, which were declared as
"organic", "demeter", "bioland", "bio-dynamic", "naturally grown",
"biologic" (so a colorful mixture of labels, claims and promises).
and to be sure, that we were not misunderstood in what we would
like to buy, at every market and every stand we bought we asked (at
least once!, if we were sceptical for several reasons, we asked up
to three !! times), if the vegetables we would like to buy, REALLY
are certified organic and REALLY were homegrown on the own farm (it
was a really large study, so it was not possible to control these
things and it wasn't our INTENTION. this one was to find out:
WHAT IS OFFERED IN THE MARKET AS ORGANIC FOOD? (as understood by
the consumer)
there were NO statistical differences in pesticide residues, in
minerals (some essential ones statistically higher, some lower),
in phytoalexines, in heavy metals, nitrates, taste (triangle test)
or dry matter.
we got under extreme heavy fire from ifoam for the "mal-design"
of the study. according to them we did not differenciate between
"REALLY organic" and "CLAIMED organic". that certainly was
correct, but the design of the study was to find out, what john
consumer gets, when he buys "organic" and hasn't the possibility
to find out, if the claim is true (the label can be faked, the
seller might not be the real producer). so remember: we did NOT go
to the farms, but to the market and to special "bio-food-shops". so
we behaved like the usual consumer from middle-sized to large
cities.
among others i myself (and the lady clerk - we made a really nice
couple being afraid and deeply concerned about the dangers from
food) went to buy some of these foods and i swear you: EVERYONE
of these market sellers LOOKED TRULY HONEST and their answer to
our (sometimes repeated) question sounded CONVINCING and
according to the expression in their faces they all were going
straight to heaven because of their honesty.
but evidently some of them cheated or had themselfes been cheated
before, because we found no real differences between the groups
(the false "organics" had watered down the results from our
daily routine analysis (but here the foods are taken from the
field by us).
now: what would be your conclusions from these results ??
(we did not draw further conclusions in the publication beside
the usual scientific babble you'll found under "conclusions".
but looking back my own conclusions were:
a) don't rely on food declared as "organic" on the farmer market
b) people are willing to cheat to get the higher price for
"organic"
c) take a look at the farm of the seller (if there's ANY at all)
d) certification is only the partial answer, CONTROLS are more
important
e) forget about fantasy names as "truly organic", "BIO-DYNAMIC",
"biologically produced", "organic", "naturally grown".
me relying on claimed organic food of unknown providence without
a registered label ?? forget it !!!!
f) rely on your home-grown food, your neigbor farmer or even
better your friend, who is a farmer and who tells me: "this
part of the field with leaks is sprayed against aphids (if the
whole batch of 250.000 leaks contains ONE living aphid, the
substitute of the supermarket chain will return the entire
batch on MY costs), this part on the left isn't sprayed and
for own consumption. take as much as you need, wash it for
removing the aphids, which MIGHT be between the leaves and for
that you'll install my new hard disk in my pc, when we're home
again. that's an option for me and maybe a lot of people, who
read here, because they have daily and intense contact with
farmers and know the behinds. but is this an option for the
other consumers ???
any more conclusion, any objections ?
what measures would you take to protect you from these false
claims of some "make-money-fast" boys ?? would you take any at
all or let them do their dirty work ??
klaus
---------------
klaus wiegand
+-[Quote of the day, powered by k. wiegand]-+
| |
| An eye for an eye only succeeds |
| in making the whole world blind. |
| Eleanor Roosevelt |
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