Mother Talkers

View Story | 32 comments

  • Yup. (0 / 0)

    I do buy some organic stuff because I worry about the way that we're farming. I prefer local produce from producers that I know are doing the right things (with or without small amounts of pesticides and fungicides). But as a biologist, I've always said that I'm way more worried about biological contaminants than chemical ones. Give me DDT over E.coli on my veggies any day.

    • Interesting point (0 / 0)

      Give me DDT over E.coli on my veggies any day.

      and not one I'd heard before...can you elaborate for us non-scientific types?

      Thanks!

      • only because (0 / 0)

        You can almost drink DDT (not that I'd recommend it). It's not great for birds, but it isn't actually that bad for people. E. coli can make you sick and kill you. As Lyn says below...Mother Nature is a bad ass. The stuff that she has made is way worse for us than the stuff we make ourselves.

        • Organic or not? (0 / 0)

          I see your argument but I'm not sure it is enough to sway me away from the top 10 organic. Perhaps the best solution is to purchase local/seasonal produce and buy organic milk and eggs. I don't know. What do you do, aussieyank and lyn and our other scientists out there?

          • what we do (0 / 0)

            Crop protection is DH's field; he's currently at a company that does organic crop protection but has also done pesticide development with a conventional large multinational.  Me, I try to buy produce as much as possible from our farmers market, which is year-round and excellent. But Mr International Pesticide Expert?  He buys conventional and often can't be bothered to rinse the fruit off.

            Most organic milk isn't from pastured cows, so it doesn't address the health issues I care about (feeding grains to a ruminant is biologically inappropriate).  rBST doesn't bother me.  So I'm not willing to pay the premium, even though I am concerned about antibiotic misuse.  

          • Wasn't really an argument against organic. (0 / 0)

            I still don't really want to eat pesticides...it was a just a comment about which one I would RATHER eat if it came down to it. I'd still choose neither. :)

            But I attempt to buy our meat and produce from farmers that I know at our local farmers market. They may not be certified organic (it's pretty expensive to get that certification), but I know that if they say their lambs are happy, they are. And I can visit their farms to see that their soil is good and their plants are thriving. I'd love to buy organic pasture fed milk, but my kids tear through it so fast that I can only manage maybe 2 litres out of 5. The qualifications for  these things are also different here in Oz. I would buy anything "organic" from the supermarket in the US. I just don't believe the big corporations. At all.

            But I'm a geneticist/biologist, not a nutritionist or pesticide chemist. There's no reason why my opinion is any better than anyone else's...I just know WAY too much about the way we eat and metabolize things. Which is usually a handicap more than anything else. :)

    • Word. (0 / 0)

      Non-biologists don't seem to appreciate what a nasty mother***ker Mother Nature really is.  :-)

      The Sigma chemical catalog had a separate list of their most dangerous chemicals; these could not be purchased without special authorization and their use had to be justified and approved.  I think nearly all were natural products.  Alpha-amanitin, botulism toxin, anthrax toxin, neurotoxic venoms, . . . .

View Story | 32 comments