OCA & Dennis Avery Debate Organic Foods

CHARLOTTE (NC) OBSERVER

Organic foods: Dangerous for human consumption?
Posted on Sat, May. 18, 2002

Organic foods are the fastest growing items in America's grocery carts

RONNIE CUMMINS
Knight Ridder/Tribune

LITTLE MARAIS, Minn. - Organic foods are the fastest growing items in
America's grocery carts. Ten million households, comprising 30 million
people, are now buying organic foods on a regular basis.

At the current rate of growth, 24 percent annually, or roughly 10 times the
rate of growth of conventional foods, the nation's $10 billion organic food
industry will become the dominant form of American agriculture by the year
2020.

Here are 10 reasons why:

1. Consumers worry about untested and unlabeled genetically engineered food
ingredients in common supermarket items. Genetically engineered ingredients
are now found in 60 percent to 75 percent of all U.S. foods. Although polls
indicate 90 percent of Americans want labels on gene-altered foods,
government and industry refuse to label. Organic production forbids genetic
engineering.

2. Consumers worry about pesticide and drug residues routinely found in
non-organic produce, meat and dairy products. Consumer Reports found that 77
percent of non-organic produce items in the average supermarket contain
pesticide residues. The beef industry acknowledges that 94 percent of all
U.S. beef cattle have hormone implants, which are banned in Europe as a
cancer hazard. Some 30 percent of all U.S. dairy cows are injected with the
controversial genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone, banned in every
other industrialized country in the world. The Centers for Disease Control
recently warned that 16 percent of all U.S. ground meat contains potentially
dangerous antibiotic resistant bacteria. Organic farming prohibits the use
of pesticides, drugs, hormones and antibiotics.

3. Consumers are concerned about irradiated foods. Congress is moving to
remove required labels from irradiated foods and replace these with
misleading labels that use the term "cold pasteurization." The USDA promotes
the use of irradiated meat in school lunches. Organic certification
prohibits nuclear irradiation.

4. Consumers worry about filthy slaughterhouses, e-coli, salmonella and
fecal contamination. The CDC estimates that 76 million American suffer food
poisoning every year. There are no documented cases of organic meat, poultry
or dairy products setting off a food poisoning outbreak in the United
States.

5. Consumers are concerned about toxic sewage used as fertilizer on
conventional farms. Organic farming prohibits the use of sewage sludge.

6. Consumers worry about the routine practice of grinding up animals and
feeding them back to other animals, a practice that has given rise to a form
of human mad-cow disease in Europe. Organic animals cannot be fed rendered
animal protein.

7. Consumers care about humane treatment of animals. Organic farming
prohibits intensive confinement of farm animals.

8. Consumers are alarmed about chemical fertilizers, pesticides and feedlot
run-off polluting their drinking water. Organic farming forbids chemical
fertilizers, pesticides and feedlots.

9. Consumers are concerned about purchasing foods with high nutritional
value. Studies show that organic produce contains more vitamins and
important trace minerals.

10. Consumers care about preserving family farms. Just about the only small
farmers making a decent living these days are organic farmers, who get a
better price for their products.

For all these reasons, American consumers are turning to organic foods, part
of an overall movement toward healthy living and preserving the environment.

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Ronnie Cummins is the national director of the Organic Consumers
Association, 6101 Cliff Estate Rd., Little Marais, MN 55614.

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DENNIS T. AVERY
Knight Ridder/Tribune

WASHINGTON - A folk singer named Raffi recently got a headline in the
Toronto Globe and Mail by asserting, "We're poisoning our children. ...
Today's produce is full of toxic residue, and our children are most at
risk."

I agree that we are needlessly poisoning our children, but not with
pesticide residues. We're poisoning too many of our kids with virulent new
strains of such food-borne bacteria as E. coli, Salmonella and
Campylobacter. Every year millions of American kids are sickened, thousands
hospitalized and dozens killed by food-borne bacteria.

Recently, a team of Danish veterinarians reported that all 22 organic
broiler flocks they investigated were infected with Campylobacter, one of
the most common causes of food poisoning in Europe.

But E. coli O157:H7 is perhaps the deadliest risk in our modern food supply
and its primary hiding place is in the cattle manure with which organic
farmers fertilize their food crops. Composting is an erratic process
definitely not guaranteed to kill all the dangerous bacteria.

Worse, recent research shows that O157 can enter the very tissues of plants
like lettuce and spinach, so they can't be washed off. O157 strikes an
estimated 20,000 people in the United States every year, killing up to 500.

Dr. Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University
of Georgia, says he's worried that more organic farmers using more manure on
food crops could mean more food-borne disease.

Doyle and other U.S. food safety experts feel frustrated about protecting us
from the food-borne bacteria because they've already found an answer and we
refuse to use it!

Tiny doses of irradiation electron beams or gamma rays could protect our
fruits, vegetables, poultry and hamburger. America has been irradiating its
mail since last fall, when terrorists began sending letters full of anthrax
spores. Far smaller doses of irradiation on our foods would not only kill
all dangerous bacteria but would also keep the food fresher by killing the
microbes that cause food to rot.

Raffi and his organic friends say irradiation is more dangerous than the
bacteria. That's nonsense. Fifty years of frenzied searching has yet to turn
up the first victim of the cancers that Raffi says are caused by pesticide
residues.

Indeed, non-smokers' cancer rates have been declining in America during the
heyday of pesticide use. Everyone from the Canadian Cancer Society to the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration says pesticide residues are safe.

Raffi himself asks why a folk singer should be writing about pesticides. He
says it's because of the children. OK, let's look at kids and pesticide
residues. Fruits and vegetables are humanity's strongest weapon against
cancer. The 25 percent of North America's population that eats the most
fruits and vegetables has literally half the total cancer risk of the
one-fourth that eats the least produce, no matter how it was grown.

It's tough to get kids to eat five servings a day of blemished organic
produce. And it's tough for parents, especially poor ones, to pay twice as
much for five-a-day servings of organic fruits and veggies.

If you want to learn guitar playing, ask a folk singer like Raffi. If you
want to protect your children's health, look for a different sort of
expertise -- one based on science.

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Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute and was a senior
agricultural expert for the U.S. Department of State. Write to him at Hudson
Institute/DC, 1015 18th Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20036.