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Re: Compost Tea and Organics



Hello Douglas and others,

We may disagree less than at first thought, it's just i have grown a
little bit allergic to the word haccp. I do not claim to be a haccp
expert either, but I came across haccp since it was developed and
introduced when my little business was active and I saw trouble
was coming with haccp for small companies like mine.
I am not against the risk analysis part of haccp per se. My biggest
problems are with the solutions that are being prescribed and by
the way haccp is implemented. I'll try to explain: to my
understanding it was originally the WHO who asked for a haccp
system including the primary sector, so really from the land to the
plate of the consumer. Quite soon in the political process the
primary production phase was emitted, so haccp would start as
soon as the products came form the land. I agree with what Allen
said about this. It can lead to the situation that a completely
polluted piece of meat is being handled with all kind of extreme
hygiene measures. One has to make sure that this piece of meat
is stored and transported at a certain temperature strictly etc.
Also, certain cleaning materials have to be used and one can't use
organic cleaning materials under haccp. Certain old ways of
producing foods like are no longer allowed under haccp. Here you
have to think for example about smoking foods on certain types of
wood. Some of these old practices (used safely for hundreds, if not
thousands of years) are just not allowed under haccp. You can
also think about foodproducts that use raw ingredients.
So, in the sphere of solutions it is all based on a kind of
conventional chemical-scientific thinking. Concerning the risk
analysis procedure, I think one has to watch out for similar faulty
scientific thinking in defining what are risks.
I do agree with identifying risks and I do agree this should start with
the primary producers. If I get clean, healthy seeds and foods, I do
not need to take all kind of extra measures in order to not produce
contaminated foods. If the eggs I get are healthy, I need to worry
less when I use them raw.
And if they are not I can do what I want and still be not safe. When
my little seedcompany turned in a cateringservice I always used 90-
95% organic ingredients. I never had one problem with
foodpoisining and I know cause I worked in an office where I saw
the people everyday. Only once there was a small incident and that
could be traced back to a non-organic cheese, which was bought
at the market in a week during summer when it was hot. The
person affected appeared to be in bad health also so all in all it was
a very minor incident. I never did haccp but I did observe the
advises given to kitchenexploiters: be careful with meat (separate it)
do not put very hot and very cold foods to close next to each other
and things like that. Now, with haccp, I have a problem. If I would
want to produce foods for some company, most if not all will ask
for haccp certification. For the price alone I could not afford it and
besides, I refuse to be obliged to use chemical cleaning material
when I know organic ones are just fine.
Concerning compost teas, I learned from the inforamtion posted
here that only in specific cases there can be a problem. Also the
way of how to avoid the problem is known. What more do you
need?  Learning more about how a certain process works, after you
know it is a safe process, is not really haccp but just more learning
about how something works. I hope I made a bit clear how I look at
it.

regards
wytze

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