Wasn't your point in starting this thread to argue that it shouldn't be the FDA's job (or any other government entities')?

Even if it is the FDA's job, I'm not so sure it should be. Consider its latest ineptitude: blaming the salmonella outbreak on tomatoes, costing the tomato industry roughly 100 million dollars, or 1/3 its business each month for the past few months. While all along Mexican jalepanos were really to blame.

Meanwhile, the government spends half a trillion dollars bailing out irresponsible lenders and borrowers, yet (so far) refuses to own up to its own mistake by paying tomato growers restitution.

The organic movement is basically a movement to completely abandon the amazing technological innovations in agriculture in the past several decades. Billions of lives have been saved as the result of genetic engineering techniques, mostly selective breeding, that have allowed for more robust, higher yield crops. The guy who started all of it, Norman Borlaug, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. At that point it was estimated that he had already saved over one billion lives. One billion. The combined humans killed during both world wars is about 92 million. Those wars were easily the greatest tragedies in the history of man kind. And all that is less than a tenth of the lives that one man saved nearly forty years ago. Idiots that want to replace current methods with organic would put us back 50 years in agricultural technology. It's the biggest possible insult to anyone that has ever died of hunger.

Basically, the bottom line is that if you support anything organic, you're an absolutely horrific human being.

I suppose that's not really fair. Most people have been scammed into thinking that organic is something good.

But the people that started the organic movement, and the troglodytes at Greenpeace that support it, should probably be executed for crimes against humanity.

And I'm against the death penalty.

Good thing there's really no such thing as organic, then. It's just a word to slap on a label to please suburban soccer moms (even though you use all manner of pesticides and fertilizers). Also, is it even possible to buy organic seeds?

But that's Jif. The big brands extract some of the peanut oil (as much as legally possible while still calling it peanut butter, which is 10% of the peanut butter's volume) and replace it with partially-hydrogenated oil. They claim it makes the peanut butter easier to spread but I know they're goddamn liars.

All of the organic peanut butters I've seen leave the peanut oil intact. So I'd say this is probably the worst example of the ills of the organic foods movement.

My remark still stands then, although I was thinking about stuff like organic fruits, veggies, and milk when I typed it.

hmm?

Besides sounding like a pretty flakey study (for example, it isn't published in a scientific journal or corraborated by other scientists), it fails to take simple economics into account. Organic farms are both less productive and more labor-intensive.

And the only measure of nutrition they use is "60% more antioxidants" and "more healthy fatty acids." ....and? Antioxidants may help (whatever that means) prevent certain cancers? If this all is really true and organic food is much more nutritious, then where are is all the confirming scientific evidence around the globe?

And even if it turned out this was 100% true, what do you expect people to do? Make their farms less productive?

Not exactly. To be organic, synthetic pesticides and fertilizers are not allowed. Also, depending on the organic certifier (which is an issue because there are quite a few and the standards vary), there are limits on the number of times pesticides can be used and circumstances than have to be met to use them.

To be organic in the pure sense of the word, yes. To slap organic on your label, no.

Wrong, once again.

Under law, to use the word "Organic" on a food product, you have to be certified and regularly inspected by an agency accredited by the USDA.

"To be Certified Organic (as opposed to Certified Naturally Grown), a grower must keep detailed records of planting, cultivation, fertilization, harvest, and storage, and must pay for both organization membership and periodic inspection."

Also, my father was heavily involved in the industry and told me all sorts of horror stories about what can pass as "organic," which is basically everything.

Well, yeah. People are willing to pay that much more for organic products that the farm can operate with decreased productivity and sometimes will turn a larger profit too. I worked on an organic dairy farm for a bit as a teen and that was the farmer's situation. He was much better now he was selling milk registered as organic to M&S than he ever was selling "normal" milk to the big supermarkets. The drop in productivity isn't necessarily all that great either (depending on the produce), in his case it was mostly when cattle on anti-biotics had to go through a rest period of no milking.

I'm not a big fan of extra governmental regulations, no. However, if there are food laws being made, I don't understand why the Food and Drug Administration isn't the one making said laws.

You're right, but my point was just that the organic crops themselves mean nothing.

The FDA does not make laws. They are part of the executive branch, they aren't allowed to make laws. Congress makes the laws, they enforce them.

Which people generally use a slippery slope fallacy when responding to things like this. "Firs the government regulates poisons in my food, then they're telling me what to think!!"

Fact of the matter is that not all government regulation or intervention is negative, and some people just oppose it do to ideology (and some make terrible governing choices as a result, e.g. GWB's government)

It's not Bush's fault that the majority of Americans are ****ing retarded.

ITSBUSHSFAULTFOREVERTHING!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!






obviously, just kidding.

Hmm...most of the food I eat comes from the Farmer's market. I wonder how organic that is

Shortening does make the food taste better, it gives baked goods a nice mix of flake and tenderness and it's used for frying because it's refined enough to give the food a nice color and not make the air all stanky. Of course you could replace shortening with lard or coconut oil and get much of the same effect.

Organic eggs (in the UK at least) are SO MUCH BETTER than battery reared hens' eggs.

Such yellow goodness

Or tallow, which is why McDonalds had the best fries before the health thing.

AFAIK lard can be substituted directly for vegetable shortenings.

The trick they pull is they take out lots of normal fat, and replace it with a little bit of trans fat. So they can put less fat on the nutrition label.

Which is really stupid on the part of the consumer, because for the most part it's not the consumption of fat that makes you fat.

Goes to show you how much attention I pay to them.

As Potato said, there are minimum standards that must be met that have been set forth by the FDA. There are lots of organic accreditation groups that are far stricter than the FDA.

...isn't that, oh I don't know, what you get paid for?