"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
In message , Alan Gould
writes
In article , Bob Hobden

writes

That's not my understanding Alan, I understood some chemicals and
"natural"
plant extract chemicals are allowed, and as some plant extract
chemicals
will kill I don't see they are any more valid in an organic garden
than man
made ones.

All substances living or inert have elements in them which can be
expressed in chemical terms. Whether they are benign or malign
depends
on how they are used. For example, a cup of water can kill if it is
consumed wrongly, whereas Joan takes Warfarin daily as a medicine.

The dose makes the poison. And it takes quite a bit more than a cup
of
pure water to kill someone by toxicity (a couple of gallons or so).

BTW Warfarin is one of those nasty synthetic chemicals that you so
despise in gardening - originally intended as a rodenticide. It
happens
to have useful effects in lower doses.

I, too, am rather surprised to hear that Joan is actually donsenting
to eating Warfarin. That puts orders of magnidude more rat poison
into her than she will ingest in a lifetime of eating non-organic
vegetables. How ironic. (I, too, eat Warfarin. I also enjoy
non-organic veggies as well as organic veggies)

As with the word organic, the word chemical has several
definitions. In
the context of organic horticulture, chemical refers to
manufactured
chemical poisons such as herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, etc.
These are often (wrongly IMHO) all expressed as pesticides.

Standard definition for the chemicals intended to eliminate pests.

Along with
chemical fertilisers and lethal home-made potions none of them are
acceptable in commercial organic horticulture.

Though many of the would be Organic growers indulge in extremely
dangerous kitchen sink chemistry based on dubious recipes using
"natural" toxic ingredients on the web. Among the more dangerous
ones
are those based on tobacco. It isn't all that hard to extract enough
nicotine from one or two cigarettes to kill a human if you use the
right
solvent. And nicotine carries mosaic virus which is quite
promiscuous in
the plants it will infect.

Non-commercial
recreational gardeners can do as they please, but those who wish to
eat
properly safe organic food need to keep to commercial standards.

Those who want to market their expensive produce to the worried well
with a simple message under the Organic(TM) supermarket banner
double
wrapped in multiple layers of plastic packaging and air freighted
round
the world can do so with great profitability.

It is far better to go for minimum inputs farming where the least
possible amount of pesticides are used, but synthetic chemicals are
still allowed. Unfortunately, the most sensible farming methods do
not
have the cult following of Organic(TM).

Hear hear.

I am all for local farmers markets. But it is utterly ludicrous to
have
Organic(TM) produce flown from Thailand causing far more pollution
and
use of resources than the worst possible forms of local industrial
farming.

There may be different arrangements for so called 'Organic (TM)'
produce, but I have never discovered any food on sale under that
name.
Could you detail where you have seen it?

What I meant by that is, the organic stuff sold in supermarkets
and similar
which is produced on factory type farms like the other non-organic
produce,
i.e. highly commercial, millions of £'s involved.......

No food can legally be sold for public consumption as organic
unless it
carries an authorised symbol of organic quality. That guarantees it
to
be in compliance with the regulations. There are cheats and
tricksters
in any aspect of business, but anyone who tries to defraud organic
consumers risks losing their livelihood. If you know it to be
happening,
report them, the bigger they are, the heavier they fall.

There are plenty of frauds based on using modern high tech analysis
to
show that the pesticide residues in non-Organic(TM) crops are below
the
limits of routine detection. The paperwork is then faked to come
from
genuine organic locations by dubious middle men. There are several
such
prosecutions in the pipeline but it remains to be seen if any
convictions will be made. The scientific evidence is hard to present
to
a jury.

Organic(TM) products lacking in preservatives are also capable of
harbouring some extremely nasty bacteria and fungi producing toxins
like
botulinum and aflotoxins. These are of course deliberately ignored
by
the Soil Association because they conflict with their intended
simplistic message.

Evil natural residues in food can be every bit as dangerous as the
synthetic chemicals! Look back to historical cases of ergot
poisoning
for example.

Regards,
--
Martin Brown