Bio:French for "we saw you coming?"

[YCCMB]

?

[Jonzjob]

The only thing that I can suggest is that you pays yer money and you makes yer choice.

Our choice is to eat organic as much as we can and we ain't going to change that for anybody. That's our choice!

Anyone up for one of the latest from our trans Atlantic cousins, just passed by their food and drugs people. GM salmon that grows about 3 times quicker that normal salmon. I wonder if it gets bigger on the way home from the laboratory, sorry, shop ??[:-))]

[YCCMB]

So, in summary, eating organic food makes you healthier, and each purchase comes with a free piece of the moral high ground.

Of course it's a free choice. I'll take my chances. Just as we all did before "organic" was invented.

[Jonzjob]

Organic was never invented Betty. The chemicals are the inventions me-thinks and the likes of Monsanto are the ones making the big bucks and not the producers who have gone back to more natural ways.

High moral ground? I wouldn't know what that is, but if it is where I am standing then I wonder why I'm not looking down on anyone?

We also buy raw milk products and like them. I have raw milk in my tea. We have raw milk butter and cheeses. Why? Because we think that they taste better. The main problem that folk have with milk is because it's been almost destroyed by the processing done to it. Raw milk is good as long as it comes from cattle that have been raised properly and not pumped full of antibiotics so that they will grow faster.

[YCCMB]

Oddly enough, raw milk makes me physically sick. That's just a fact. Oh, and it was instrumental in my dad contracting polio.

Have you really ever considered the residual effects of some of the "natural" pesticides that are used on organic produce? Because I venture to suggest that most organically grown produce is grown using some form of pesticide and many of the things used (cf the article I linked earlier) are as harmful - if not more so - than their chemical alternatives.

But for some it's a lifestyle choice and it's not that that I'm arguing against..it's the fact that I can't see the justification for what can be (as in my original, rather innocuous example) a four-fold price hike. If you can afford it, fair play to you.

[Gardengirl]

I don't see anything to do with being on moral high ground about eating organically-grown food.

At times, prices are a lot higher than for other produce, but at times it can be bought at a similar price in UK and France. Salads are one example; 90 cents for organic or chemically treated this weekend. Wine is another - 5 litres of organic wine from a local winery cost €20.80 on Saturday for the better of their 2 reds that are bag in box.

I won't eat chicken or eggs that aren't organic since being shown round an agricultural college in England about 35 years ago - the state the chickens were in was pitiful.

I ate organically grown fruit and veg from an early age - my father had 2 allotments and a good-sized back garden and grew a lot of our food after WW2. No added chemicals, plenty of well-rotted manure.

I ate the same food as everyone else at college for 3 years, then my husband and I bought a house with a large garden and I grew much of our fruit and veg organically. The whole garden is organic. My vegetable garden in Berkshire has produced large amounts of organic fruit and veg and our sons grew up eating it; we've lived there for about 35 years.

I also bought organically grown food from a market garden. Once organic food became more widely available, I bought it from shops too.

Here in France we're lucky to have very good organically grown wine nearby, and their shop about 2 minutes from our apartment for bread, meat, vegetables etc as well as wine. There's also a greengrocer a further 10 minutes walk away who sells mostly organic produce. I buy organic produce, including eggs, from stalls on our market, and buy from local producers if I can't buy organic.

Our use of products such as Ecover is another lifestyle choice we've made over the last 40 or so years, much dearer here in France than in UK, especially when Waitrose have their buy 3 for the price of 2 offers on, a few times each year, when I stock up.

[idun]

 In the last week or so, I some sort of consumer program on the BBC about food and bio veg vs the other veg was tested and there was apparently little difference.

I cannot be bothered with bio.

[andyh4]

I sense emotions are beginning to run and with them goes the common sense.

So just as a few reality checks:

1. Chemicals versus "natural" products. Well water is a chemical H2O and belladonna - deadly nightshade - is entirely natural. So let's stop this silly chemical chant please.

2. Organic chickens and eggs are more likely to carry salmonella than those raised on non organic farms.

3. Pasteurisation of milk (a French invention) was developed to prevent the spread of various diseases that can be carried in milk - and at the time of its inception

Cholera, TB and Polio (as mentioned) were the most common but there were/are many more (listeriosis). Of course we now protect ourselves from some of these with injections (ie we input chemicals into our bodies by unnatural means) - something that some seem to object to happening to animals but seemingly OK for humans. Pasteurisation adds no chemicals to the milk.

4. Completely neutral scientific studies have failed to show any improvement in the quality of organic produce over non-organic.

5. Most people are unable to detect any difference between bio and non bio products in blind tastings. Those that do detect a difference are as likely to prefer non bio as bio.

Having said all of the above, we grow most of our vegetables and only spray insecticide, pesticides or herbicides in extreme cases. The most harmful chemical we have added to our garden in the last two years is salt (for killing deep rooted weeds) and washing up liquid (against greenfly) - both incidentally illegal.

I use manures to improve fertility - but this does not come from bio farms so probably contains traces of pesticides and antibiotics. I assume those who are so heavily into bio take precautions against such contamination of their land.

The year before that I will admit to applying paraquat to the centre of our driveway and round-up spot applied to the leaves of bindweed coming up in the asparagus bed.

So my plea is let's try and calm down and stop attacking one another for principles that might just not be as justified as we might think. Bio products have their place, but non-bio products do allow us to feed the world.

[Gardengirl]

Calm down, stop attacking, silly chemical chant - I thought we were discussing what we ourselves do or don't do; no attacking or a need to calm down from what I've read, although I might have missed some posts along the way. We each make our own decisions based on our enjoyment, beliefs etc.

I'll add that my brother-in-law worked for DEFRA doing testing at their labs in London then at Norwich and York for several years, and was pretty surprised at the levels of pesticides in various fruit and veg their lab tested. That's going back quite a few years now and is widely known nowadays, but his family started washing all fruit and veg very carefully from then on and he's very pleased each year to receive apples from our unsprayed trees.

[Jonzjob]

As I said before, without swinging me 'eavy 'andbag, you pays yer money etc. and we won't be changing what we do so I out of here folks.

Enjoy [8-|][8-|]

[YCCMB]

[quote user="andyh4"]

3. Pasteurisation of milk (a French invention) was developed to prevent the spread of various diseases that can be carried in milk - and at the time of its inception

Cholera, TB and Polio (as mentioned) were the most common but there were/are many more (listeriosis). Of course we now protect ourselves from some of these with injections (ie we input chemicals into our bodies by unnatural means) - something that some seem to object to happening to animals but seemingly OK for humans. Pasteurisation adds no chemicals to the milk.

[/quote]

Another reason I don't drink unpasteurised milk. I had to wait until I was 28 and my dad, (who wore a caliper all his life because of his polio) was dead before I was vaccinated against polio, as he was so very concerned that I might even contract it from the vaccine that he refused to allow me to be vaccinated. He was an analytical chemist by profession, so I guess he knew a bit about what he was doing.

As I've said (repeatedly), each to his or her own. And I've recommended his book, so I'll leave you with a little piece by Jay Rayner, which in my (entirely) personal opinion, sums up why I think there's a lot of con (in the English sense, I hasten to add!) in the whole organic movement.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2003/nov/09/foodanddrink.restaurants

[nomoss]

Our amah used to grow organic vegetables in the little garden by her quarters - that is until I went back there one day to investigate a rather bad smell, and discovered a large tub of stale urine, which she told me was very good for the garden - maybe it wasn't just urine[+o(].

Even so, I insisted she put it down the drain, despite her insistence that everyone used such liquid, and solid, waste on their vegetable gardens.

Having lived in other faraway places we have always thoroughly washed our vegetables, but from then on we also immersed them in a bleach solution before washing, and never buy "organic" or "bio".