GayandRight

My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam. I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Monday, February 19, 2007

The truth about organic food products....

They are actually harmful to the environment....
Organic food could actually be worse for the environment than produce grown using pesticides and fertilisers, say scientists.

A government report claims that, despite its eco-friendly image, some organic farming creates greater pollution and contributes more to global warming.

According to the study, certain organic foodstuffs — such as milk, chicken and tomatoes — produce more greenhouse gases, create more soil and water pollutants and require more energy and land for their production than those farmed by conventional methods.

As the first major report on the environmental impact of organic food production, the document will reignite the debate over the £1.6billion industry, which grew by almost a third last year alone and now accounts for four per cent of farm produce.

The market is forecast to be worth £2.7billion by 2010.

"You cannot say that all organic food is better for the environment than all food grown conventionally," said Ken Green, professor of environmental management at Manchester Business School, who conducted the research with the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs.

"If you look carefully at the amount of energy required to produce these foods, you get a complicated picture.

"In some cases, the carbon footprint for organics is larger."

The report looked at Britain’s 150 top-selling foodstuffs, as identified by supermarkets, and assessed energy use, the effect of by-products from farming, and the impact of processing and packaging of both methods.

It concluded that there was "insufficient evidence" to prove organically farmed food was better for the environment.

"In particular, organic agriculture poses its own environmental problems in the production of some foods, either in terms of nutrient release to water or in terms of climate change burdens," the report said.

5 Comments:

Blogger Spitfire said...

Good find! Thanks for the link, I will use in my next tutorial class when the hippies AKA colleagues in my class bow down to the organic gods

12:17 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

'Organic' pesticides are probably not much better for the environment than regular pesticides either - since it's just a label slapped on a bunch of regular pesticide that's less effective than the new stuff. But hey, it's all 'organic'! lol, lol....

I'll take money over brains for a dollar Alex!

1:23 AM  
Blogger Jesse said...

You:
[Organic foods] are actually harmful to the environment....

Article:
some organic farming creates greater pollution and contributes more to global warming.

(emphasis added)

---

Through a long line of reasoning stemming from your misinterpretation of the article (word choice IS important, yesiree), I came to this question:

If you weren't gay, would you still support gay marriage? Do you have proof that you would?

2:25 AM  
Blogger Griff said...

Not to mention the fact that there is some debate as to whether organic foods are actually healthier for you or not. You heard me correctly. Plants naturally manufacture biotoxins which are used to fight off pests that would naturally be encountered in their environment. By spraying with pesticides, you prevent the pests from attacking the plants, which prevents the natural toxins from being produced. How is this any better? For starters, most pesticides are government regulated, meaning we know what they do and how much can be used. The government, however, cannot regulate the cocktail of natural pesticides that plants produce. So by removing the pest, you remove the stimulus for natural toxin production by these plants.

How serious of an issue is this? People have died from eating organic potatoes, because they weren't properly cared for - the natural pesticides produced by the plants ended up affecting the humans who ate them.

The research is far from conclusive, however. Do a search yourself! Check PubMed!

12:20 PM  
Blogger Jesse said...

@Griff: Interesting, source? I could not find the potato incident you refer to.

8:24 PM  

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