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dennis avery on poop



Dennis Avery still claims that organic farmers use manure (not
compost)fertilizer and this somehow poses a greater problem than the
liquid pig manure sprayed on crops in conventional farming.As I watched
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf  on CNN I was startled," what is dennis avery
doing on CNN"? I thought for a long time:-).
Does Eating an Organic Food Diet Increase One's Health and Spirituality?
NO

- Dennis T. Avery, Charleston Gazette,  April 20, 2003

According to organic advocates, eating organic food seems to offer many of
the benefits of a religion: s It gives a sense of spiritual oneness with
all creation.

* It offers the food shopper a thankfully expensive forgiveness for
humanity's "original sins'' of pushing aside and polluting Nature. * It
identifies the organic consumer with such famous eco-saints as Rachel
Carson and public TV's eco-preacher, David Suzuki.  *  It offers its own
version of hell for eco-sinners - non-believers being riddled by cancers
from man-made pesticides.

The real question for most consumers is whether organic food is anything
more than mystical Back-to-Nature worship?

The Institute of Food Technologists - an international nonprofit science
society - recently answered that question with a ringing "No!'' as it
published a new expert report on what it considers the real danger in our
food supply - food-borne bacteria.

Organic foods are not superior in nutrition or safety, says the IFT.
Worse, it warns, organic foods "have the potential for greater pathogen
contamination'' because they're typically fertilized with manure.

The new IFT report warns that science can't yet ensure the food-borne
pathogens often found in manure will be killed during composting. In other
words, organic food is not better - it's more dangerous.  "Consumers need
to understand that organic production does not mean pesticide-free and
pathogen-free production,'' says the IFT's Carl Winter, FoodSafe Director
at the University of California/Davis.

Winter notes that both organic and conventional farmers use pesticides -
all of them poisons. The EPA even classifies one of the widely used
organic pesticides - pyrethrum - as a "likely human carcinogen.'' However,
the IFT says the pesticide residue risks in our food are "negligible''
compared with the bacterial risks.

Nonsmokers' cancer risks have been declining in America since the 1970s,
during the heyday of pesticide application. We keep living longer - in
part because pesticides have reduced the real cost and broadened the
availability of fruits and vegetables. Eating five servings of produce per
day cuts our total cancer risk in half, no matter how the produce is
grown.

Foodborne bacteria, on the other hand, remain a real death risk in modern
America, killing thousands of people per year and sickening millions.
Eating organic food is still almost certainly less dangerous than
preaching the gospel while handling rattlesnakes, as do some who say it
brings them closer to God.

"Conventionally grown foods that utilize well-researched techniques -
including biotechnology - benefit all consumers worldwide with a more
abundant and economical food supply, foods of enhanced nutritional
quality, and fresh fruits and vegetables with improved shelf life,'' says
IFT President Mark McLellan, director of Food Science and Engineering at
Texas A&M University.

Is organic better for the environment? Vaclav Smil, author of "Feeding the
World: A Challenge for the 21st Century,'' says relying only on organic
fertilizers would allow us to feed only half the world's people - or force
the hunger-stricken to clear the world's remaining forests to plant more
low-yield crops.

Of course, those who turn 19th-century farming technology into a cult will
be slow to accept the word of prestigious food science associations or
world-famous farming experts. The certainty of faith makes it easier to
disregard evidence that doesn't reinforce the believer's "Articles of
Faith.''

True organic believers can even embrace the ultra-organic dogma of
biodynamics, which claims that burying a cow's horn filled with manure
during certain weeks of moonshine will mysteriously fertilize a whole
field.

Believe it or not.