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The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
"Tim Tyler" wrote in message ... A report on a recent government survey of UK pesticide usage: `` TOXIC COCKTAIL IN FRUIT AND VEGETABLES June 19, 20002 FOE Friends of the Earth¹s analysis of the latest Government survey of pesticide residue results reveal that a cocktail of pesticides above legal and safety limits has been found in a range of fruit and vegetables. The results were published today by the Pesticides Residues Committee (PRC) http://www.pesticides.gov.uk http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/committ...sumtabsrev1.pd f is the actual data in the report Some of the key findings of the report a * UK grown non-organic strawberries contained dicofol at illegal levels. Dicofol is not approved for use on strawberries in the UK. Dicofol is similar to DDT and is a suspected hormone disrupter. The 3 organic strawberry samples were free of residues. The actual figures were Concentration range number in that range dicofol 0.02 (i.e. not found) 59 (MRL = 2*) 0.08 1 (MRL = 0.02*) 0.2, 0.2 2 as for the three organic strawberry samples being free of residues, I would love to discover how they found this out because no where in the data summary is the term organic used other than as in 'organic bromide' or 'inorganic bromide' indeed doing a search through the entire document similar claims seem to have been made with no actual reference to the data provided in the report Jim Webster |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
In uk.rec.gardening Jim Webster wrote:
: "Tim Tyler" wrote in message ... : Jim Webster wrote - or quoted: : : : :: 1) There is no direct health cost, due to the approvals testing. : : : : : : : :So you claim - yet pesticides kill thousands anually. : : : : Most pesticide deaths are likely to be lingering ones - rather than : : straight poisonings. The cancer deaths are not likely to show up in : : studies like this one. : : : most pesticide deaths are suicides or accidents where children have : drunk : : out of the wrong bottle. : : That has not been established - since the frequency of other : pesticide-caused deaths has probably not been so well documented. : wrong again, it is very well documented in the website whose address you : posted No it isn't. The overall frequency of pesticide related deaths is not known. For one thing not all the mechanisms of poisoning are yet known. : I refer you to : http://www.sums.ac.ir/IJMS/9934/abdollahi9934.html : perhaps you should read web pages before you quote them -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
On Sat, 24 May 2003 12:30:00 +0100, Malcolm
wrote: In article , martin writes On Sat, 24 May 2003 11:45:40 +0100, Oz wrote: It's just the same as cars and knives kill people when misused, as well as a wide range of other unnatural causes of death. You wouldn't suggest banning knives because some people kill others with them, for example. Knives above a certain size are banned in UK. ITYM, *carrying* knives above a certain size is banned. which makes it quite hard to use them to kill people The govt. is proposing to lock up people for up to 10 years for killing people with a car. -- martin |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Xref: kermit uk.environment.conservation:42927 uk.rec.birdwatching:67353 uk.rec.gardening:144780 uk.rec.natural-history:14639 uk.business.agricultu113342
In uk.rec.gardening Jim Webster wrote/quoted: : http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/committ...umtabsrev1.pdf : is the actual data in the report : Some of the key findings of the report a : : * UK grown non-organic strawberries contained dicofol at : illegal levels. Dicofol is not approved for use on : strawberries in the UK. Dicofol is similar to DDT and is a : suspected hormone disrupter. The 3 organic strawberry : samples were free of residues. : The actual figures were : Concentration range number in that range : dicofol 0.02 (i.e. not found) 59 : (MRL = 2*) 0.08 1 : (MRL = 0.02*) 0.2, 0.2 2 : as for the three organic strawberry samples being free of residues, I would : love to discover how they found this out because no where in the data : summary is the term organic used other than as in 'organic bromide' or : 'inorganic bromide' "Three of the samples tested were labelled as organic and did not contain any residues." - http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/committ...rep-01rev1.pdf [on page 22] : indeed doing a search through the entire document similar claims seem to : have been made with no actual reference to the data provided in the report You've just demonstrated that your searching skills are not very good. Can you be specific about what you think is not supported by the data? -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
"Tim Tyler" wrote in message ... In uk.rec.gardening Jim Webster wrote: : "Tim Tyler" wrote in message ... : Jim Webster wrote - or quoted: : : : :: 1) There is no direct health cost, due to the approvals testing. : : : : : : : :So you claim - yet pesticides kill thousands anually. : : : : Most pesticide deaths are likely to be lingering ones - rather than : : straight poisonings. The cancer deaths are not likely to show up in : : studies like this one. : : : most pesticide deaths are suicides or accidents where children have : drunk : : out of the wrong bottle. : : That has not been established - since the frequency of other : pesticide-caused deaths has probably not been so well documented. : wrong again, it is very well documented in the website whose address you : posted No it isn't. The overall frequency of pesticide related deaths is not known. For one thing not all the mechanisms of poisoning are yet known. just read the web page you posted a link to : http://www.sums.ac.ir/IJMS/9934/abdollahi9934.html Jim Webster |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
"Tim Tyler" wrote in message ... In uk.rec.gardening Jim Webster wrote/quoted: : http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/committ...sumtabsrev1.pd f : is the actual data in the report : Some of the key findings of the report a : : * UK grown non-organic strawberries contained dicofol at : illegal levels. Dicofol is not approved for use on : strawberries in the UK. Dicofol is similar to DDT and is a : suspected hormone disrupter. The 3 organic strawberry : samples were free of residues. : The actual figures were : Concentration range number in that range : dicofol 0.02 (i.e. not found) 59 : (MRL = 2*) 0.08 1 : (MRL = 0.02*) 0.2, 0.2 2 : as for the three organic strawberry samples being free of residues, I would : love to discover how they found this out because no where in the data : summary is the term organic used other than as in 'organic bromide' or : 'inorganic bromide' "Three of the samples tested were labelled as organic and did not contain any residues." - http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/committ...rep-01rev1.pdf [on page 22] : indeed doing a search through the entire document similar claims seem to : have been made with no actual reference to the data provided in the report You've just demonstrated that your searching skills are not very good. no, it was a different document. Let us however look at the document you quoted 22 Strawberries EU (Table 11) Introduction This survey was carried out as part of the co-ordinated EU programme. UK strawberries are available mainly between April to October, but imported varieties are available all year round from various countries, although the majority of the imported strawberries available in the UK are of Spanish origin. This is an annual survey and this report gives the results for the whole year. A number of recently approved pesticides for use on strawberries, such as fungicides from the strobilurin group, e.g. trifloxystrobin, have been sought for the first time. Results 2001 A total of 179 samples of strawberries were tested for 42 pesticide residues in various combinations or suites (see footnote to Table 13). Half of the samples were UK origin and half were imported. Residues were found in 115 (64%) samples. There were 4 MRL exceedances and 2 'technical' UK non-approved uses. The MRL exceedances were as follows: dicofol (MRL 0.02 mg/kg2) was found at 0.2 mg/kg in 2 UK samples; kresoxim-methyl (MRL 0.05 mg/kg3) was found at 0.09 mg/kg in a UK sample; penconazole (CAC MRL 0.1 m/kg) was found in a sample from Israel at 0.2 mg/kg. The 2 UK dicofol MRL exceedances were also 'technical' non-approved uses because the approval for dicofol expired at the end of June, and the samples were purchased after this date and were found to contain residues of dicofol. However, it is likely that at the time the dicofol was applied to the strawberries it would have been approved for use. In addition, a number of residues were found with no MRLs: bupirimate found at 0.02 - 0.8 mg/kg; fenhexamid found at 0.05 - 4.3 mg/kg; pyrimethanil found at 0.02 - 0.9 mg/kg; cyprodinil found at 0.02 - 0.1 mg/kg; trifloxystrobin found at 0.06 mg/kg. Risk assessments (see the section on 'Dietary intake implications' for full details) have shown that none of the residues were of concern for consumer health. Seventy-eight (44%) samples were found to contain up to 6 multiple residues. Three of the samples tested were labelled as organic and did not contain any residues. 2 A new EC MRL of 0.02 mg/kg for dicofol was implemented on 1 July 2001. 3 An EC MRL of 0.05 mg/kg for kresoxim-methyl was implemented on 15 April 2001. No previous MRL. Chlorothalonil was removed from this survey due to difficulties likely to have arisen as a result of processing at ambient temperature. Previous survey results Results 1999 In the survey of strawberries carried out in 1999, residues were detected in 36 (80%) of the 45 samples tested. Nineteen (42%) had multiple residues; one UK sample contained 5 individual pesticide residues. There were no MRL exceedances. The residues found most frequently were bupirimate, iprodione and pyrimethanil. This survey was the first time pyrimethanil was sought in strawberries. In addition residues of vinclozolin (indicating mis-use) were found in 1 sample of UK origin below the EU MRL of 5 mg/kg. Conclusion The latest survey shows that residues were found in 64% of samples tested. There were 4 MRL exceedances and 2 technical non-approved uses. These results suggest a slight improvement on the occurrence of residues in the samples tested, however, there appears to have been an increase in MRL exceedances. However, none of the residues found were of concern for consumer health. Please Note, In the document you quoted it specifically says NONE OF THE RESIDUES FOUND WERE OF CONCERN FOR CONSUMER HEALTH As for organic passing or failing, in many commodities they didn't even test organic, and 3 samples (as opposed to fifty or sixty conventional, seems to be the limit. Note also Celery (Table 4) Introduction Celery has been sampled regularly as part of the rolling programme, mainly due to concerns over MRL exceedances in imported sources, in particular of Spanish origin (the main source of imported celery). Previous surveys have also highlighted problems with residues in organic produce. Jim Webster |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
"Hämisch Macbeth" wrote in message ... "Oz" wrote in message ... Remember france, for many years, exported three times the amount of organic wheat than it produced. The fraud was caught, but it took years and was exceptionally obvious. What is the problem with that? The consumer was happy that they were eating organic wheat and the producer was getting a premium. If you pay extra for something which is imposible to verify you deserve to be fleeced. It's actually quite likely that falsely labelled organic produce has a worthwhile placebo effect - it's a shame it was stopped as it probably had a beneficial health effect for those who are prone to worry that the sky is falling in. Michael Saunby |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Tim Tyler writes
Jim: : wrong again, it is very well documented in the website whose address you : posted No it isn't. The overall frequency of pesticide related deaths is not known. What you mean is that there may be, or may not be, more than stated. In short, you don't know, and nor does anybody else because it's supposition. What can be said is that there is no evidence of it, and the work done on safety margins strongly suggests there are none. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:
: Tim Tyler writes :It does seem likely that these statistics are unlikely to cover many of :the slower deaths from pesticide exposure. : What slower deaths? : Give me a government website giving these consumer deaths. Ones from pancreatic cancer - for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract ....or liver cancer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract :Accidents. If the toxic chemical had not been around in the first :place they would never have happened. In such cases it's harder :to avoid pointing the finger at the pesticides making the environment :a more dangerous place by their presence. : So ban knives, cars and alarm clocks first. : Rather than something that is completely safe when used as directed. Whoa - I don't want pesticides banned. [snip material about detecting fungal growth] :::However, if they wind up on the produce, consumers should expect to :::see them on the label. :: ::: No need, current use of pesticides leaves minute, usually undetectable, ::: residues which are perfectly safe. :: ::Levels of safety of most pesticides are not known. : :: ********. : :It's true. Science doesn't offer certainty - and there are a very :large number of ways in which human health can be adversely affectd - :it's impossible to test them all - and testing is usually the only :way to be at all sure. : Certainty is NOT the same as 'the levels of safety are well known'. : Nobody can ever be certain about anything, so it's a moronic thing to : say. I'm merely pointing out that the safely of pesticides remains open to doubt. Government regulators have demonstrably been wrong before on the subject - with unpleasant consequences. :Of course there are ethical problems associated with testing :pesticides on humans. This makes things even harder - often :the very tests that are most needed can't legally be performed. : They aren't needed. [...] Not if you simply put your trust in the government regulators as guardians of the truth, no. They have a lot of pesticides to examine - and don't have unbounded resources. I expect to see more mistakes - though perhaps not quite on the grand scale of previous screw-ups. :: I quoted some of the info. ALL approved pesticides have a :: full toxicology, far far more detailed than pharmaceuticals or :: materials you find in the home (plastics and detergents for example). : :: And that is despite the fact that your consumption of residual pesticide :: remnants and residues is at worst in microscopic quantities. : :Plastics tend to be inert. : Take a look at pthalates used in plastic manufacture. : Take a look at the carcinogenic properties of benzene (in your fuel : tank). Which is why I said "tend to be" rather than "are". :Detergents are often poisonous. : Yet you wash your veg for ten minutes in them. Uh - how do you know how I treat my vegetables!?! I never put my vegetables anywhere near detergents. :I can easily believe more effort is put into testing pesticides :than detergents - but that hardly means that they are safe. : It does, because they must pass ALL the tests to be approved. You presume an exhaustive set of tests. A false presumption. ::Scientific investigations have difficulty showing things are ::safe in long-lived organisms like us. Lifetime trials are ::frequently required - probably across multiple generations - ::before you can claim something is safe with much in the way ::of certainty. Such trials have not been performed in humans. : :: They have been performed in a range of mammals and appropriate safety :: levels set. If you followed your dictum then we should not be using any :: modern plastics, paints and other things found in life. Indeed many of :: them have been shown to be toxic, yet they are still used because people :: want their utility. : :I don't mind other people eating pesticides - if they choose to. : Remember antibiotics are a pesticide, too. Of sorts. : One little pill probably contains more than a lifetimes exposure to : pesticide residues. On what scale? :Basically what I want is more ability to control my own level :of pesticide consumption - so I can down-regluate it in areas :I am concerned about. : Then don't buy organic. [...] You seem to have "a thing" about organic produce. It seems to be contrary to the evidence suggesting pesticide residues are lower on organic produce. :Doing that today would restrict the diversity of foods available :in my diet. : Tough. Grow your own food. Yes, I do. I just have not yet managed to grow *all* my own food. :: Labs are not particularly 'low disease', no high accumulation :: of animals ever is. : :Yes they are. Disease is often a function of the environment. : Quite, and packing lots of animals together tends to a high disease : challenge. For some diseases - whereas very many other infectious diseases are completely absent, since their germ line was not present in the founders - and there's no outside contact. :Lab animals are in a highly artificial environment - and face :different challenges. For example normally there are no predators. : Predators are not diseases. : Few farm livestock have predators either. : No difference there. We are not talking about farm animals. We are talking about pesticide trials on animals - and whether they are an adequate model for humans. Humans certainly *are* hunted on occasion - mainly by other humans. ::I don't regard today's level of testing pesticides to provide ::much more than minimal protection. : :: Then you are an idiot or quite ignorant about it. : :I mean that it's minimal compared to what it could be - not that :it doesn't protect people from pesticides at all. : At 50M quid a hit, more than has been spent on plant toxin research : since the dawn of time, it's most certainly not minimal but (in the view : of manufacturers) excessive overkill. :In other words the safely level could usefully be many times higher - : How? In most cases by using less. :and the risk could be made many times lower. : How do you know? It stands to reason that we are not yet on the pinaccle of pesticide safety. We are still in the biotech dark ages - there's very much we don't know - and ignorance is dangerous. : We are using the safest products ever found right now. I don't doubt that - and safety will hopefully continue to improve. ::: Obviously you couldn't use the same safety spec as for pesticides as ::: you would have few, probably no, allowed food plants. :: ::I think you'll find eating no food at all kills you fairly rapidly. : :: Yes but: : :: 1) I could select less toxic plant foods. :: 2) I could use low toxicity cultivars. : :Well only up to a point - eventually you will run out of less-toxic :foods to switch to. : Indeed, but you could influence it. I do try to do that. I also try to have a very diverse diet - in an attempt to prevent too much of any one thing causing harm. : Of course the big problem, and why no significant work has been done, is : that everyone expects plant toxins to be so dangerous that all vegetable : foods would have to be banned for safety reasons. Nobody wants to go : down that route. Frankly, I can't see it as a likely scenario. :: Noting the strong relationship between plant toxins and pest resistance :: (it's why the toxins are there in the first place) it would almost :: certainly be safer to use plants bred for low toxin production and use :: the much safer pesticides to control the pests. : :You seem heavily in favour of spending pesticide research dollars :on eliminating natural food toxins - perhaps by breeding. : Hardly. We would need more and much better pesticides to keep pests off : the very highly disease susceptible plants that would result. :/Eventually/ I would rather have safe man-made toxins to deter :predators than poisonous natural ones. However - currently - :many of the natural toxins have their upsides - often in the :form of cancer prevention. : Claims rarely (if ever) supported by solid evidence. I don't agree. There is pretty extensive evidence for the anti-cancer activity of many plants - IMO. :E.g.: : :L-Canavanine :A Potential Chemotherapeutic Agent for Human Pancreatic Cancer :http://www.szp.swets.nl/szp/journals/pb363194.htm : :Resveratrol - which belongs to a group of compounds known as stilbenes, :which are spontaneously synthesized on the surface of grapes as an immune :response to attack by fungal diseases - and improves heart health; : :Glycosides: :http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/.../glucosin.html : :...and Phytoestrogens: :http://www.herbalchem.net/Introductory.htm : :I'm not sure it would be a good idea to breed such "toxic" :agents out of food - since one of the things they are good at :killing is human cancers. : They may also *cause* human cancers, cell killers often do. Very probably - most things give you some sorts of cancer and suppress others - but the net result is that the overall incidence of cancer mortality falls - for a good many green vegetables, anyway. :The natural toxins have been around longer, :our bodies have had a chance to get used to them - :and there has been more opportunity for study. : 1) So what if they have been around longer. Think strychnine. : 2) Our bodies didn't evolve to consume a small range of food plants. : Take out the brassicae and solanum groups and there isn't much left. : 3) There has been virtually NIL study on plant toxins. : So wrong on all three counts. We know a fair bit indirectly about plant toxins from the study of human nutrition. It may not have been medicine's most explored area - but to say we know "virtually NIL" on the subject seems like an overstatement to me. ::Eating fruit and vegetables is important to good health. : :: Eating healthy meat and veg is, and pesticides help enormously here. :: Not only that, but the abundance of food available today is DIRECTLY :: the result of the introduction of safe effective pesticides. : :...amongst many other modern farming techniques - including the :use of machinery - : Irrelevant. It does nothing more than could be and was done by hand : (better). You're mistaken there... :and things like a global market in seeds and produce. : That's always been there (not that it has any relevance to your : submission). ....and there. :I suspect that eventually mechanical barriers to pests will eventually :make many of today's pesticides redundant. : Dream on, you have no idea what you are talking about. Rather obviously, I'm talking about growing a greater proportion of things "under glass" - or in controlled environments. You may have noticed that there's been something of a trend in that direction over the last hundred years. -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Jim Webster writes
Results 2001 A total of 179 samples of strawberries were tested for 42 pesticide residues in various combinations or suites (see footnote to Table 13). Half of the samples were UK origin and half were imported. Residues were found in 115 (64%) samples. Remember residues means it was detected, the actual levels may well (and probably were) far below the MRL. Given 179 samples: The MRL exceedances were as follows: dicofol (MRL 0.02 mg/kg2) was found at 0.2 mg/kg in 2 UK samples; 1.1% kresoxim-methyl (MRL 0.05 mg/kg3) was found at 0.09 mg/kg in a UK sample; 0.6% penconazole (CAC MRL 0.1 m/kg) was found in a sample from Israel at 0.2 mg/kg. 0.6% These are pretty low occurrences, still well below the ADI. In addition, a number of residues were found with no MRLs: bupirimate found at 0.02 - 0.8 mg/kg; fenhexamid found at 0.05 - 4.3 mg/kg; pyrimethanil found at 0.02 - 0.9 mg/kg; cyprodinil found at 0.02 - 0.1 mg/kg; trifloxystrobin found at 0.06 mg/kg. Risk assessments (see the section on 'Dietary intake implications' for full details) have shown that none of the residues were of concern for consumer health. No cause for concern. Seventy-eight (44%) samples were found to contain up to 6 multiple residues. Three of the samples tested were labelled as organic and did not contain any residues. 1.7% of samples tested were organic. Please Note, In the document you quoted it specifically says NONE OF THE RESIDUES FOUND WERE OF CONCERN FOR CONSUMER HEALTH Hardly surprising given the sensitivity of modern analytical techniques. Celery (Table 4) Introduction Celery has been sampled regularly as part of the rolling programme, mainly due to concerns over MRL exceedances in imported sources, in particular of Spanish origin (the main source of imported celery). Previous surveys have also highlighted problems with residues in organic produce. Quite. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
In uk.rec.gardening Jim Webster wrote:
: "Tim Tyler" wrote in message ... : In uk.rec.gardening Jim Webster wrote/quoted: : : http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/committ...umtabsrev1.pdf : : is the actual data in the report : : : Some of the key findings of the report a : : : : * UK grown non-organic strawberries contained dicofol at : : illegal levels. Dicofol is not approved for use on : : strawberries in the UK. Dicofol is similar to DDT and is a : : suspected hormone disrupter. The 3 organic strawberry : : samples were free of residues. [...] : : as for the three organic strawberry samples being free of residues, I : : would love to discover how they found this out because no where in : : the data summary is the term organic used other than as in 'organic : : bromide' or 'inorganic bromide' : : "Three of the samples tested were labelled as organic and did not contain : any residues." : : - http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/committ...rep-01rev1.pdf : : [on page 22] : : : indeed doing a search through the entire document similar claims seem to : : have been made with no actual reference to the data provided in the : : report : : You've just demonstrated that your searching skills are not very good. : : no, it was a different document. Exactly - rather than look in the report cited you chose to only examine some tables from it. The full report contained the information you claimed was missing. -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Tim Tyler writes
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote: : Tim Tyler writes :It does seem likely that these statistics are unlikely to cover many of :the slower deaths from pesticide exposure. : What slower deaths? : Give me a government website giving these consumer deaths. Ones from pancreatic cancer - for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...ed&list_uids=1 2594778&dopt=Abstract sigh Pancreatic cancer mortality and organochlorine pesticide exposure in California, 1989- 1996. ...or liver cancer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...ed&list_uids=1 0620518&dopt=Abstract sigh Cancer mortality and environmental exposure to DDE in the United States. These are OC's banned in the early 70's you prat. :It's true. Science doesn't offer certainty - and there are a very :large number of ways in which human health can be adversely affectd - :it's impossible to test them all - and testing is usually the only :way to be at all sure. : Certainty is NOT the same as 'the levels of safety are well known'. : Nobody can ever be certain about anything, so it's a moronic thing to : say. I'm merely pointing out that the safely of pesticides remains open to doubt. Idiot, everything remains open to doubt, that proves nothing. Now you really are clutching at straws. Government regulators have demonstrably been wrong before on the subject - with unpleasant consequences. Indeed, but on pesticides in the last 10 years? :Of course there are ethical problems associated with testing :pesticides on humans. This makes things even harder - often :the very tests that are most needed can't legally be performed. : They aren't needed. [...] Not if you simply put your trust in the government regulators as guardians of the truth, no. Excessively paranoid is how the chemical manufacturers describe them. Usually products are approved for years before they get approved here as a result. They have a lot of pesticides to examine - and don't have unbounded resources. They do have unbounded resources, the chemical companies pay for it all. I expect to see more mistakes - though perhaps not quite on the grand scale of previous screw-ups. Scale is important. Minor 'mistakes' in the usual refinement of knowledge are to be expected. However I do not expect these to harm consumers, the animal testing and the very large safety margins should see to that. :: I quoted some of the info. ALL approved pesticides have a :: full toxicology, far far more detailed than pharmaceuticals or :: materials you find in the home (plastics and detergents for example). : :: And that is despite the fact that your consumption of residual pesticide :: remnants and residues is at worst in microscopic quantities. : :Plastics tend to be inert. : Take a look at pthalates used in plastic manufacture. : Take a look at the carcinogenic properties of benzene (in your fuel : tank). Which is why I said "tend to be" rather than "are". Quite. Potential hazards found via pesticide research because there was NO adequate testing of the plastic products. :Detergents are often poisonous. : Yet you wash your veg for ten minutes in them. Uh - how do you know how I treat my vegetables!?! I never put my vegetables anywhere near detergents. Ah, so the URL suggesting you should was to mislead others. Right. :I can easily believe more effort is put into testing pesticides :than detergents - but that hardly means that they are safe. : It does, because they must pass ALL the tests to be approved. You presume an exhaustive set of tests. A false presumption. It's as exhaustive as can reasonably be done. Much more exhaustive than is needed. Covers the arses of the pesticide directorate. :: They have been performed in a range of mammals and appropriate safety :: levels set. If you followed your dictum then we should not be using any :: modern plastics, paints and other things found in life. Indeed many of :: them have been shown to be toxic, yet they are still used because people :: want their utility. : :I don't mind other people eating pesticides - if they choose to. : Remember antibiotics are a pesticide, too. Of sorts. Nope, they are. : One little pill probably contains more than a lifetimes exposure to : pesticide residues. On what scale? Take your pick, total active or therapeutic dose. :Basically what I want is more ability to control my own level :of pesticide consumption - so I can down-regluate it in areas :I am concerned about. : Then don't buy organic. [...] You seem to have "a thing" about organic produce. It seems to be contrary to the evidence suggesting pesticide residues are lower on organic produce. It's very rarely tested, and rarely for organic pesticides. :Doing that today would restrict the diversity of foods available :in my diet. : Tough. Grow your own food. Yes, I do. I just have not yet managed to grow *all* my own food. Eat a smaller range or change your diet or get a bigger plot. We are talking about pesticide trials on animals - and whether they are an adequate model for humans. It's the best you can have other than testing on humans. This has been done on occasion, actually. No interesting differences showed up. : At 50M quid a hit, more than has been spent on plant toxin research : since the dawn of time, it's most certainly not minimal but (in the view : of manufacturers) excessive overkill. :In other words the safely level could usefully be many times higher - : How? In most cases by using less. Most farmers do use less wherever possible. But you have to use enough. This recent weather has made me increase my triazole level from the normal 50% to 75%, and if it doesn't improve, 100%. :and the risk could be made many times lower. : How do you know? It stands to reason that we are not yet on the pinaccle of pesticide safety. We may or may not be. I would hope for improvements, but many agchem companies are cutting down on research due to the very high cost of approvals. We are still in the biotech dark ages - there's very much we don't know - and ignorance is dangerous. Biotech? You approve of GM cultivars? I am amazed. But yes, they could well help. :: 1) I could select less toxic plant foods. :: 2) I could use low toxicity cultivars. : :Well only up to a point - eventually you will run out of less-toxic :foods to switch to. : Indeed, but you could influence it. I do try to do that. I also try to have a very diverse diet - in an attempt to prevent too much of any one thing causing harm. What crops are you growing this year, and what percentage of your total food intake (calories) do home grown crops amount to? : Of course the big problem, and why no significant work has been done, is : that everyone expects plant toxins to be so dangerous that all vegetable : foods would have to be banned for safety reasons. Nobody wants to go : down that route. Frankly, I can't see it as a likely scenario. Indeed, but then you have a problem with high resistance varieties (lotsa toxins) or more pesticide use (safer, lower levels of less toxic compounds). :: Noting the strong relationship between plant toxins and pest resistance :: (it's why the toxins are there in the first place) it would almost :: certainly be safer to use plants bred for low toxin production and use :: the much safer pesticides to control the pests. Left in case you figure out an answer. :The natural toxins have been around longer, :our bodies have had a chance to get used to them - :and there has been more opportunity for study. : 1) So what if they have been around longer. Think strychnine. : 2) Our bodies didn't evolve to consume a small range of food plants. : Take out the brassicae and solanum groups and there isn't much left. : 3) There has been virtually NIL study on plant toxins. : So wrong on all three counts. We know a fair bit indirectly about plant toxins from the study of human nutrition. Actually we no sod all. It may not have been medicine's most explored area - but to say we know "virtually NIL" on the subject seems like an overstatement to me. Give me some examples of LD50, noel and content of a few food plant toxins then. :: Eating healthy meat and veg is, and pesticides help enormously here. :: Not only that, but the abundance of food available today is DIRECTLY :: the result of the introduction of safe effective pesticides. : :...amongst many other modern farming techniques - including the :use of machinery - : Irrelevant. It does nothing more than could be and was done by hand : (better). You're mistaken there... Hardly, I am a farmer. :and things like a global market in seeds and produce. : That's always been there (not that it has any relevance to your : submission). ...and there. You are still wrong. Like most farmers I know a lot about seed development and production. :I suspect that eventually mechanical barriers to pests will eventually :make many of today's pesticides redundant. : Dream on, you have no idea what you are talking about. Rather obviously, I'm talking about growing a greater proportion of things "under glass" - or in controlled environments. To feed the world? speechless at the stunning level of ignorance You may have noticed that there's been something of a trend in that direction over the last hundred years. Not in the UK, it's almost zero now other than for cut flowers. Far too expensive. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Tim Tyler writes
Exactly - rather than look in the report cited you chose to only examine some tables from it. The full report contained the information you claimed was missing. And showed you were misleading people. (again) -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
If you pay extra for something which is imposible to verify you deserve to be fleeced. It's actually quite likely that falsely labelled organic produce has a worthwhile placebo effect - it's a shame it was stopped as it probably had a beneficial health effect for those who are prone to worry that the sky is falling in. Michael Saunby it is an interesting point. I think that anyone with hands on food experience knows that organic can taste better than some conventional. When our house cow is dry we end up buying organic milk. This was because it was the only milk we could buy that was not pasteurised, homogenised and standardised. I came to the conclusion that these three processes render milk virtually undrinkable. The organic we found was at least only pasteurised so was merely disappointing as opposed to actively unpleasant. The same could be said for meat. Because of the cost of organic grain, most organic beef will be grass finished. Personally I am a great believer in grass-finished beef because the flavour is so much stronger and superior to grain finished (although the latter may well be more succulent.). Our own milk which is not pasteurised, homogenised or standardised is better than organic, our own beef, grass finished, is on a par with organic. In these cases it is not that organic has any intrinsic advantages, it just uses certain procedures that are known to give better flavour (or in the case of milk, doesn't use certain procedures beloved of the supermarkets that extend shelf life but ruin the flavour.) As for any health benefit, it has been known for a long time that if you cut stress you tend to feel better and your health will probably pick up. If you are worried about various residues, then eating organic, even if contaminated with the same residues, will probably reduce your stress level and you will probably be healthier. Because the levels that come through on conventional products are so low, it almost certainly doesn't matter, from a health point of view, whether it is being switched for organic or not. It is more a trading standards issue rather than a public health issue. Something along the lines of buying knock off designer label stuff in a street market. Organic, if left to the producers, as opposed to the cliques who seem to rise to the top of the certifying bodies, will almost certainly be produced with rather more thought to flavour than to supermarket specifications which are more about visual appeal. Indeed it will be interesting to see if the flavour of organic produce degrades as the supermarkets start stocking more of it, and start insisting on long shelf lives and visual appeal. Jim Webster |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
"Tim Tyler" wrote in message ... In uk.rec.gardening Jim Webster wrote: : "Tim Tyler" wrote in message ... : In uk.rec.gardening Jim Webster wrote/quoted: : : http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/committ...sumtabsrev1.pd f : : is the actual data in the report : : : Some of the key findings of the report a : : : : * UK grown non-organic strawberries contained dicofol at : : illegal levels. Dicofol is not approved for use on : : strawberries in the UK. Dicofol is similar to DDT and is a : : suspected hormone disrupter. The 3 organic strawberry : : samples were free of residues. [...] : : as for the three organic strawberry samples being free of residues, I : : would love to discover how they found this out because no where in : : the data summary is the term organic used other than as in 'organic : : bromide' or 'inorganic bromide' : : "Three of the samples tested were labelled as organic and did not contain : any residues." : : - http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/committ...rep-01rev1.pdf : : [on page 22] : : : indeed doing a search through the entire document similar claims seem to : : have been made with no actual reference to the data provided in the : : report : : You've just demonstrated that your searching skills are not very good. : : no, it was a different document. Exactly - rather than look in the report cited you chose to only examine some tables from it. Lucky you pointed the other one out to me, after all I would have missed the phrase .. However, none of the residues found were of concern for consumer health The full report contained the information you claimed was missing. you seem to have overlooked something would you care to comment in detail on the report, I reproduce a section for you Results 1999 In the survey of strawberries carried out in 1999, residues were detected in 36 (80%) of the 45 samples tested. Nineteen (42%) had multiple residues; one UK sample contained 5 individual pesticide residues. There were no MRL exceedances. The residues found most frequently were bupirimate, iprodione and pyrimethanil. This survey was the first time pyrimethanil was sought in strawberries. In addition residues of vinclozolin (indicating mis-use) were found in 1 sample of UK origin below the EU MRL of 5 mg/kg. Conclusion The latest survey shows that residues were found in 64% of samples tested. There were 4 MRL exceedances and 2 technical non-approved uses. These results suggest a slight improvement on the occurrence of residues in the samples tested, however, there appears to have been an increase in MRL exceedances. However, none of the residues found were of concern for consumer health. Please Note, In the document you quoted it specifically says NONE OF THE RESIDUES FOUND WERE OF CONCERN FOR CONSUMER HEALTH Jim Webster |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Xref: kermit uk.environment.conservation:42939 uk.rec.birdwatching:67366 uk.rec.gardening:144803 uk.rec.natural-history:14651 uk.business.agricultu113360
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote: : Tim Tyler writes : Jim: :: wrong again, it is very well documented in the website whose address you :: posted : :No it isn't. : :The overall frequency of pesticide related deaths is not known. : What you mean is that there may be, or may not be, more than stated. : In short, you don't know, and nor does anybody else because it's : supposition. : What can be said is that there is no evidence of it, and the work done : on safety margins strongly suggests there are none. It flatly states my assertion in the document in question: ``WHO estimates that the incidence of pesticide poisoning, already high in developing countries, has doubled during the past 10 years. However, the precise annual incidence throughout the world and their severity are unknown.'' - http://www.sums.ac.ir/IJMS/9934/abdollahi9934.html If you want to support the case that we know how many pesticide poisoning cases there are, this is a rather poor document to cite in support - since it clearly states just the opposite. -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Jim Webster writes
Organic, if left to the producers, as opposed to the cliques who seem to rise to the top of the certifying bodies, will almost certainly be produced with rather more thought to flavour than to supermarket specifications which are more about visual appeal. Indeed it will be interesting to see if the flavour of organic produce degrades as the supermarkets start stocking more of it, and start insisting on long shelf lives and visual appeal. Absolutely true, but it's possible to have poor quality mass produced organic produce (which is increasingly happening) and high quality non- organic produce. This is particularly true of small producers who cannot bear the regulatory costs of organic production and are doing it as much for love as money. As anyone who has eaten stubbsy's (non-organic but utterly superb) smoked salmon can attest. It's not whether it has an organic label stuck on it or not, it's more how it was produced in the first place. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Tim Tyler writes
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote: : Tim Tyler writes : Jim: :: wrong again, it is very well documented in the website whose address you :: posted : :No it isn't. : :The overall frequency of pesticide related deaths is not known. : What you mean is that there may be, or may not be, more than stated. : In short, you don't know, and nor does anybody else because it's : supposition. : What can be said is that there is no evidence of it, and the work done : on safety margins strongly suggests there are none. It flatly states my assertion in the document in question: ``WHO estimates that the incidence of pesticide poisoning, already high in developing countries, has doubled during the past 10 years. However, the precise annual incidence throughout the world and their severity are unknown.'' - http://www.sums.ac.ir/IJMS/9934/abdollahi9934.html You moron, that's the people who are applying it getting contaminated. If you want to press for second and third world governments properly regulating the use of pesticides and educating on their use then I'm all behind you. It is, however, really a health and safety in the workplace problem. If you want to support the case that we know how many pesticide poisoning cases there are, this is a rather poor document to cite in support - since it clearly states just the opposite. No, you are just too blind to understand it. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:
: Tim Tyler writes :In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote: :: Tim Tyler writes ::It does seem likely that these statistics are unlikely to cover many of ::the slower deaths from pesticide exposure. : :: What slower deaths? :: Give me a government website giving these consumer deaths. : :Ones from pancreatic cancer - for example: :http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...ed&list_uids=1 :2594778&dopt=Abstract : sigh Pancreatic cancer mortality and organochlorine pesticide : exposure in California, 1989- 1996. :...or liver cancer: :http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...ed&list_uids=1 :0620518&dopt=Abstract : sigh Cancer mortality and environmental exposure to DDE in the United : States. : These are OC's banned in the early 70's you prat. You asked for: "slower deaths from pesticide exposure" When I give you "slower deaths from pesticide exposure" you now say that's not what you wanted after all. I wish you could learn to say what you *actually* want. Please don't call me a prat. Such name calling reflects poorly on you. ::It's true. Science doesn't offer certainty - and there are a very ::large number of ways in which human health can be adversely affectd - ::it's impossible to test them all - and testing is usually the only ::way to be at all sure. : :: Certainty is NOT the same as 'the levels of safety are well known'. :: Nobody can ever be certain about anything, so it's a moronic thing to :: say. : :I'm merely pointing out that the safely of pesticides remains :open to doubt. : Idiot, everything remains open to doubt, that proves nothing. : Now you really are clutching at straws. :Government regulators have demonstrably been wrong before on the :subject - with unpleasant consequences. : Indeed, but on pesticides in the last 10 years? I don't know of any quite so spectacular errors recently - but these are early days. You're hardly giving much of a chance for their errors to be exposed ;-) ::Of course there are ethical problems associated with testing ::pesticides on humans. This makes things even harder - often ::the very tests that are most needed can't legally be performed. : :: They aren't needed. [...] : :Not if you simply put your trust in the government regulators :as guardians of the truth, no. : Excessively paranoid is how the chemical manufacturers describe them. I'm sure the chemical manufacturers would be happier if their products could go straight onto the market - with no enforced testing at all. :They have a lot of pesticides to examine - and don't have :unbounded resources. : They do have unbounded resources, the chemical companies pay for it all. Reference to a dictionary should quickly resolve this issue. :I expect to see more mistakes - though perhaps not quite on the :grand scale of previous screw-ups. : Scale is important. Minor 'mistakes' in the usual refinement of : knowledge are to be expected. However I do not expect these to harm : consumers, the animal testing and the very large safety margins should : see to that. I'm a good deal less confident than you. I think many people today in the UK are suffering from exposure to pesticides. Pinning their symptoms on the pesticide makers may represent a challenge, though. [...] ::Detergents are often poisonous. : :: Yet you wash your veg for ten minutes in them. : :Uh - how do you know how I treat my vegetables!?! : :I never put my vegetables anywhere near detergents. : Ah, so the URL suggesting you should was to mislead others. : Right. What URL are you referring to? ::I can easily believe more effort is put into testing pesticides ::than detergents - but that hardly means that they are safe. : :: It does, because they must pass ALL the tests to be approved. : :You presume an exhaustive set of tests. A false presumption. : It's as exhaustive as can reasonably be done. : Much more exhaustive than is needed. : Covers the arses of the pesticide directorate. Arses that have been exposed in the past, I note. ::: They have been performed in a range of mammals and appropriate safety ::: levels set. If you followed your dictum then we should not be using any ::: modern plastics, paints and other things found in life. Indeed many of ::: them have been shown to be toxic, yet they are still used because people ::: want their utility. :: ::I don't mind other people eating pesticides - if they choose to. : :: Remember antibiotics are a pesticide, too. : :Of sorts. : Nope, they are. That's what "of sorts" means. :: One little pill probably contains more than a lifetimes exposure to :: pesticide residues. : :On what scale? : Take your pick, total active or therapeutic dose. So - you're talking "grams"? I don't believe it - this is a nonsense statistic. ::Basically what I want is more ability to control my own level ::of pesticide consumption - so I can down-regluate it in areas ::I am concerned about. : :: Then don't buy organic. [...] : :You seem to have "a thing" about organic produce. : :It seems to be contrary to the evidence suggesting pesticide residues :are lower on organic produce. : It's very rarely tested, and rarely for organic pesticides. Doesn't it need to pass through much the same regulatory testing as everything else intended for human consumption? ::Doing that today would restrict the diversity of foods available ::in my diet. : :: Tough. Grow your own food. : :Yes, I do. I just have not yet managed to grow *all* my own food. : Eat a smaller range or change your diet or get a bigger plot. I'm working on the last one. It's not just size, though - it's time - since the garden also needs working. [...] :: At 50M quid a hit, more than has been spent on plant toxin research :: since the dawn of time, it's most certainly not minimal but (in the view :: of manufacturers) excessive overkill. [...] ::and the risk could be made many times lower. : :: How do you know? : :It stands to reason that we are not yet on the pinaccle of pesticide :safety. : We may or may not be. I would hope for improvements, but many agchem : companies are cutting down on research due to the very high cost of : approvals. Any research is likely to build on the knowledge we already have. Unfortunately one of the documents cited here recently suggested global pesticide poisonings were still on the rise. That doesn't bode terribly well for safety. However in the long term, I'm optimistic - we will figure out how to avoid poisoning ourselves eventually. :We are still in the biotech dark ages - there's very much we :don't know - and ignorance is dangerous. : Biotech? You approve of GM cultivars? : I am amazed. : But yes, they could well help. I merely mean "biological technology". Perhaps I should have used the term "biological science" instead. FWIW, I think GM cultivars will prove to be of great importance and significance. However, many of the same sorts of safety issues surrounding pesticides will apply there - a healthy level of paranoia may be beneficial there also. ::: 1) I could select less toxic plant foods. ::: 2) I could use low toxicity cultivars. :: ::Well only up to a point - eventually you will run out of less-toxic ::foods to switch to. : :: Indeed, but you could influence it. : :I do try to do that. I also try to have a very diverse diet - :in an attempt to prevent too much of any one thing causing harm. : What crops are you growing this year [...] Some of the things I've grown (or am growing) this year: Basil, Broccoli, Cabbage (black), Cabbage (red), Celery, Chervil, Chickory, Chickpea, Chop Suey, Collard, Coriander, Corn salad, Cress (curly), Cress (land), Cress (water), Fennel, Flax, Kale (red russian), Lettuce, Mibuna, Mizuna, Mustard (red), Mustard (yellow), Mustard (spinach), Pak Choi, Spinach (perpetual), Radish, Rape, Rape (salad), Rocket (salad), Rocket (wild), Sesame, Sunflower, Texel, Turnip, Alfalfa, Aduki, Clover (red), Fenugreek, Lentils (puy), Mung, Pea, Soya, Amaranth, Buckwheat, Corn, Kamut, Quinoa, Rye, Spelt, Wheat, Raspberries, Taeberries, Loganberries, Wolfberries, Black Currants, Gooseberries, Hazel nuts, Apricots, broad beans, peas, onions, garlic, purple sprouting broccoli, swiss chard. : and what percentage of your total food intake (calories) do home : grown crops amount to? Most of my calorie intake comes from fruit, nuts, oils and seeds. I hardly grow any of them. The fruit I grow are almost all berries. I estimate I currently grow about 10% of my calories for the year - if that. ::: Noting the strong relationship between plant toxins and pest resistance ::: (it's why the toxins are there in the first place) it would almost ::: certainly be safer to use plants bred for low toxin production and use ::: the much safer pesticides to control the pests. : Left in case you figure out an answer. It's possible. I believe what I said on this point before was that I thought in the long term such a strategy might produce beneficial results - but that we didn't currently know enough to implement it safely. As I mentioned, the supposed plant toxins have some beneficial side effects. "Hormesis" - as it's sometimes called. Engineering or breeding them out without proper understanding of their roles may prove counter-productive. ::The natural toxins have been around longer, ::our bodies have had a chance to get used to them - ::and there has been more opportunity for study. : :: 1) So what if they have been around longer. Think strychnine. :: 2) Our bodies didn't evolve to consume a small range of food plants. :: Take out the brassicae and solanum groups and there isn't much left. :: 3) There has been virtually NIL study on plant toxins. : :: So wrong on all three counts. : :We know a fair bit indirectly about plant toxins from the study of :human nutrition. : Actually we no sod all. You like leaving out qualifications, don't you? ;-) :It may not have been medicine's most explored area - but :to say we know "virtually NIL" on the subject seems like :an overstatement to me. : Give me some examples of LD50, noel and content of a few food plant : toxins then. Some other day, perhaps - since doing so would prove nothing. ::: Eating healthy meat and veg is, and pesticides help enormously here. ::: Not only that, but the abundance of food available today is DIRECTLY ::: the result of the introduction of safe effective pesticides. :: ::...amongst many other modern farming techniques - including the ::use of machinery - : :: Irrelevant. It does nothing more than could be and was done by hand :: (better). : :You're mistaken there... : Hardly, I am a farmer. Think for a moment about what you're saying, then. ::and things like a global market in seeds and produce. : :: That's always been there (not that it has any relevance to your :: submission). : :...and there. : You are still wrong. Like most farmers I know a lot about seed : development and production. Perhaps read your own words again, then. You are apparently claiming that a global market in seeds and produce existed before the birth of the universe. ::I suspect that eventually mechanical barriers to pests will eventually ::make many of today's pesticides redundant. : :: Dream on, you have no idea what you are talking about. : :Rather obviously, I'm talking about growing a greater proportion of :things "under glass" - or in controlled environments. : To feed the world? Yes. : speechless at the stunning level of ignorance Don't underestimate technological progress. :You may have noticed that there's been something of a trend in that :direction over the last hundred years. : Not in the UK, it's almost zero now other than for cut flowers. ....and watercress, and tomatoes - and an increasing number of other things. : Far too expensive. Expense is one of the main problems - but prices are falling. I expect them to continue to do so. -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:
: Tim Tyler writes :Exactly - rather than look in the report cited you chose to only examine :some tables from it. : :The full report contained the information you claimed was missing. : And showed you were misleading people. (again) No it didn't. -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:
: Tim Tyler writes :In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote: :: Tim Tyler writes :: Jim: ::: wrong again, it is very well documented in the website whose address you ::: posted :: ::No it isn't. :: ::The overall frequency of pesticide related deaths is not known. : :: What you mean is that there may be, or may not be, more than stated. :: In short, you don't know, and nor does anybody else because it's :: supposition. : :: What can be said is that there is no evidence of it, and the work done :: on safety margins strongly suggests there are none. : :It flatly states my assertion in the document in question: : :``WHO estimates that the incidence of pesticide poisoning, already high in : developing countries, has doubled during the past 10 years. However, the : precise annual incidence throughout the world and their severity are : unknown.'' : : - http://www.sums.ac.ir/IJMS/9934/abdollahi9934.html : You moron, that's the people who are applying it getting contaminated. Surely important to the "overall frequency of pesticide related deaths". : If you want to press for second and third world governments properly : regulating the use of pesticides and educating on their use then I'm all : behind you. It is, however, really a health and safety in the workplace : problem. Caused by the presence of highly toxic substances - and not /just/ in the workplace - diffusing into the environment: Air Monitoring Finds Toxic Pesticides Drifting From California Farm Fields Airborne Poisons Found in More than 60 Percent of State Tests - http://www.safe2use.com/pesticidenews/ca-air.htm Pesticides Can Travel Thousands of Miles by Air - http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0207a...pollution.html -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
In article ,
Oz wrote: Tim Tyler writes By contrast - for many pesticides - the compensation accrues to the those in the supply chain - who can generate more produce - and the health cost is borne by consumers. 1) There is no direct health cost, due to the approvals testing. 2) There is most definitely a health cost for consuming produce contaminated by fungi. Aflatoxins and vomitotoxins for example. My problem with the views of you guys is your apparent certainty about this. You would have been among the people arguing that organochlorines had never been shown to be hazardous. Are you now? I will still grow what I can myself. I don't like eating carrots that I am advised to peel, and cut off the top cm. when I can grow my own with a mubh superior taste with no problems and no pesticides. I accept your comments about growing strawberries for example, ( about the difference of growing in vast acreages). I use very insecticides and no herbicides on my allotment. The three pests I get, are white flies on brassicas, but they don't do significant damage to my crop. The allotment site is rife with them. When I used to spray, I gave up, because there were many more around which soon took their place. (No I don't think using systemic options that afford protection for 3 weeks is worth the risks). Black fly on Broad beans is a problem on the Spring sown ones only, which I control with washong up liquid or pyrethrum. The other problem is milldew on Gooseberries. I thought that good pruning was going to deal with this, but have decided to get new stock with some resistant properties, as soon as this crop is in. Other pests are not a significant problem. I fully accept that the scale of agriculture is quite different, but also think that the self certainty about the rightness of using chemical control for everything, and the general conservatism of the industry, along with the domination of agriculture by established big business stifles much more innovative approaches that could be made. -- Regards from Robert Seago : http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/rjseago |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
"Oz" wrote in message ... Absolutely true, but it's possible to have poor quality mass-produced organic produce (which is increasingly happening) and high quality non- organic produce. This is particularly true of small producers who cannot bear the regulatory costs of organic production and are doing it as much for love as money. While politicians may be raving about the increase in organic, I have talked to a couple of organic dairy farmers who would go back to conventional but cannot afford to because this would mean paying back the conversion grant. The economics of organic production are getting rough, the supermarkets have started winding down the price of organic milk and other organic produce will follow. As anyone who has eaten stubbsy's (non-organic but utterly superb) smoked salmon can attest. It's not whether it has an organic label stuck on it or not, it's more how it was produced in the first place. When I did the first ring round to get people on Farmdirect that was an interesting experience. I came across a lot of people who were passionate about the value of organic production, but their passion was only matched for their contempt for the soil association. If someone is willing to set to and produce decent food to the best of their ability, and do this to a set of standards they believe in, then I have nothing but respect for them. But I am afraid that if something has to be flown into the country, it isn't organic any more, no matter what some certifying authority says. The idea that food miles are more virtuous than roundup is one for the logic choppers and 'how many angels dance on the head of a pin' brigade Jim Webster |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
"Robert Seago" wrote in message ... I fully accept that the scale of agriculture is quite different, but also think that the self certainty about the rightness of using chemical control for everything, and the general conservatism of the industry, along with the domination of agriculture by established big business stifles much more innovative approaches that could be made. Actually I suspect the end price stifles innovation. Lots of things that could be done, but damned few when the you can buy a tonne of malting barley for the price of fifty pints of bitter Jim Webster -- Regards from Robert Seago : http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/rjseago |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
"Jim Webster" wrote in message ... it is an interesting point. I think that anyone with hands on food experience knows that organic can taste better than some conventional. When our house cow is dry we end up buying organic milk. This was because it was the only milk we could buy that was not pasteurised, homogenised and standardised. I came to the conclusion that these three processes render milk virtually undrinkable. The organic we found was at least only pasteurised so was merely disappointing as opposed to actively unpleasant. The same could be said for meat. Because of the cost of organic grain, most organic beef will be grass finished. Personally I am a great believer in grass-finished beef because the flavour is so much stronger and superior to grain finished (although the latter may well be more succulent.). Our own milk which is not pasteurised, homogenised or standardised is better than organic, our own beef, grass finished, is on a par with organic. In these cases it is not that organic has any intrinsic advantages, it just uses certain procedures that are known to give better flavour (or in the case of milk, doesn't use certain procedures beloved of the supermarkets that extend shelf life but ruin the flavour.) As for any health benefit, it has been known for a long time that if you cut stress you tend to feel better and your health will probably pick up. If you are worried about various residues, then eating organic, even if contaminated with the same residues, will probably reduce your stress level and you will probably be healthier. Because the levels that come through on conventional products are so low, it almost certainly doesn't matter, from a health point of view, whether it is being switched for organic or not. It is more a trading standards issue rather than a public health issue. Something along the lines of buying knock off designer label stuff in a street market. Organic, if left to the producers, as opposed to the cliques who seem to rise to the top of the certifying bodies, will almost certainly be produced with rather more thought to flavour than to supermarket specifications which are more about visual appeal. Indeed it will be interesting to see if the flavour of organic produce degrades as the supermarkets start stocking more of it, and start insisting on long shelf lives and visual appeal. Hear, hear to all of this. But what's this about "_if_ the flavour of organic produce degrades"? I can't detect any flavour difference in supermarket organic produce now! I go to farm outlets or local markets if I want decent veg - and it then doesn't make a lot of difference whether I buy organic or not. It's down to the varieties grown, the freshness, the practices of the growers and their competence. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Tim Tyler writes
: - http://www.sums.ac.ir/IJMS/9934/abdollahi9934.html : You moron, that's the people who are applying it getting contaminated. Surely important to the "overall frequency of pesticide related deaths". We are discussing hazard to consumers, remember? You have no case, remember? : If you want to press for second and third world governments properly : regulating the use of pesticides and educating on their use then I'm all : behind you. It is, however, really a health and safety in the workplace : problem. Caused by the presence of highly toxic substances - and not /just/ in the workplace - diffusing into the environment: Workplace. Not consumers. Air Monitoring Finds Toxic Pesticides Drifting From California Farm Fields Airborne Poisons Found in More than 60 Percent of State Tests - http://www.safe2use.com/pesticidenews/ca-air.htm Fair bit of CO too, I expect. You are forgetting it's the dose that counts. If this were a problem, then it's one for the federal/state government to sort out. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Tim Tyler writes
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote: : These are OC's banned in the early 70's you prat. You asked for: "slower deaths from pesticide exposure" When I give you "slower deaths from pesticide exposure" you now say that's not what you wanted after all. We have been talking about modern sprays, not stuff last sprayed 30 years ago before regulations were properly imposed. I pointed out several times that quoting DDT stuff was irrelevant to today's products and should be ignored. I wish you could learn to say what you *actually* want. I wish you would read what is said. :Government regulators have demonstrably been wrong before on the :subject - with unpleasant consequences. : Indeed, but on pesticides in the last 10 years? I don't know of any quite so spectacular errors recently - but these are early days. You're hardly giving much of a chance for their errors to be exposed ;-) Idiot. It's not early days. Initial introduction of modern pesticides in the 50's and 60's. Some problems identified in the 60's. Dangerous stuff banned in the early 70's. Testing increasingly extended to about the mid 80's. ::Of course there are ethical problems associated with testing ::pesticides on humans. This makes things even harder - often ::the very tests that are most needed can't legally be performed. : :: They aren't needed. [...] : :Not if you simply put your trust in the government regulators :as guardians of the truth, no. : Excessively paranoid is how the chemical manufacturers describe them. I'm sure the chemical manufacturers would be happier if their products could go straight onto the market - with no enforced testing at all. Absolutely not. The costs of claims for damages could break them for what are, after all, relatively low margin products. :They have a lot of pesticides to examine - and don't have :unbounded resources. : They do have unbounded resources, the chemical companies pay for it all. Reference to a dictionary should quickly resolve this issue. Don't be pedantic. :I expect to see more mistakes - though perhaps not quite on the :grand scale of previous screw-ups. : Scale is important. Minor 'mistakes' in the usual refinement of : knowledge are to be expected. However I do not expect these to harm : consumers, the animal testing and the very large safety margins should : see to that. I'm a good deal less confident than you. I think many people today in the UK are suffering from exposure to pesticides. With totally no evidence, and good evidence to show completely the contrary. Pinning their symptoms on the pesticide makers may represent a challenge, though. Always hard with imaginary symptoms, or imaginary or wrong proposed causes. ::I can easily believe more effort is put into testing pesticides ::than detergents - but that hardly means that they are safe. : :: It does, because they must pass ALL the tests to be approved. : :You presume an exhaustive set of tests. A false presumption. : It's as exhaustive as can reasonably be done. : Much more exhaustive than is needed. : Covers the arses of the pesticide directorate. Arses that have been exposed in the past, I note. Where? DDT? They have all retired long ago. :: Remember antibiotics are a pesticide, too. : :Of sorts. : Nope, they are. That's what "of sorts" means. So why try and quibble? :: One little pill probably contains more than a lifetimes exposure to :: pesticide residues. : :On what scale? : Take your pick, total active or therapeutic dose. So - you're talking "grams"? I don't believe it - this is a nonsense statistic. Lesse. A gram of penicillin (my very first exposure to antibiotics, first tablet, some seven years ago). Lets take strawberries, clearly a well sprayed product, particularly the imported stuff. Rough estimate that 5% had residues of 0.1 mg/kg. 10kg at 0.1 mg/kg gives you 1mg but only 5% had residues so 200kg of strawberries gives you 1mg residues so 200,000 kg or 200 tons gives you 1 gm residues. Assume all veg has the same level of residues as strawberries (highly unlikely since they have been singled out as having more residues than most stuff). If you eat 1kg of veg/day, then 200T is 200,000 days or 550 years. So sorry, I was wrong, it's more like ten lifetimes (even more if you take the 5-day course!). Hardly scary. ::Basically what I want is more ability to control my own level ::of pesticide consumption - so I can down-regluate it in areas ::I am concerned about. : :: Then don't buy organic. [...] : :You seem to have "a thing" about organic produce. : :It seems to be contrary to the evidence suggesting pesticide residues :are lower on organic produce. : It's very rarely tested, and rarely for organic pesticides. Doesn't it need to pass through much the same regulatory testing as everything else intended for human consumption? Yes, but they have been using products approved many decades ago which very few conventional farmers use because they are typically highly toxic, not very effective and expensive. In the last few years several have been banned. Some examples a derris - rotenone - estimated human lethal dose 300-500 mg/kg. carcinogen. nicotine - LD50 rats 50-60 mg/kg toxic by ingestion, inhalation, skin. heavy metal compounds we already discussed. For comparison a nasty organophosphorous dimethoate has LD50 rats at 4000 mg/kg and you need less/ha. Certainly if I was asked to spray a field with derris or nicotine, I would refuse. I doubt anyone has developed tests to look at residue levels for these and I don't remember seeing them on the list of residue levels tested for. ::Doing that today would restrict the diversity of foods available ::in my diet. : :: Tough. Grow your own food. : :Yes, I do. I just have not yet managed to grow *all* my own food. : Eat a smaller range or change your diet or get a bigger plot. I'm working on the last one. It's not just size, though - it's time - since the garden also needs working. [...] :: At 50M quid a hit, more than has been spent on plant toxin research :: since the dawn of time, it's most certainly not minimal but (in the view :: of manufacturers) excessive overkill. [...] ::and the risk could be made many times lower. : :: How do you know? : :It stands to reason that we are not yet on the pinaccle of pesticide :safety. : We may or may not be. I would hope for improvements, but many agchem : companies are cutting down on research due to the very high cost of : approvals. Any research is likely to build on the knowledge we already have. Unfortunately one of the documents cited here recently suggested global pesticide poisonings were still on the rise. That doesn't bode terribly well for safety. However in the long term, I'm optimistic - we will figure out how to avoid poisoning ourselves eventually. :We are still in the biotech dark ages - there's very much we :don't know - and ignorance is dangerous. : Biotech? You approve of GM cultivars? : I am amazed. : But yes, they could well help. I merely mean "biological technology". Perhaps I should have used the term "biological science" instead. FWIW, I think GM cultivars will prove to be of great importance and significance. However, many of the same sorts of safety issues surrounding pesticides will apply there - a healthy level of paranoia may be beneficial there also. ::: 1) I could select less toxic plant foods. ::: 2) I could use low toxicity cultivars. :: ::Well only up to a point - eventually you will run out of less-toxic ::foods to switch to. : :: Indeed, but you could influence it. : :I do try to do that. I also try to have a very diverse diet - :in an attempt to prevent too much of any one thing causing harm. : What crops are you growing this year [...] Some of the things I've grown (or am growing) this year: Basil, Broccoli, Cabbage (black), Cabbage (red), Celery, Chervil, Chickory, Chickpea, Chop Suey, Collard, Coriander, Corn salad, Cress (curly), Cress (land), Cress (water), Fennel, Flax, Kale (red russian), Lettuce, Mibuna, Mizuna, Mustard (red), Mustard (yellow), Mustard (spinach), Pak Choi, Spinach (perpetual), Radish, Rape, Rape (salad), Rocket (salad), Rocket (wild), Sesame, Sunflower, Texel, Turnip, Alfalfa, Aduki, Clover (red), Fenugreek, Lentils (puy), Mung, Pea, Soya, Amaranth, Buckwheat, Corn, Kamut, Quinoa, Rye, Spelt, Wheat, Raspberries, Taeberries, Loganberries, Wolfberries, Black Currants, Gooseberries, Hazel nuts, Apricots, broad beans, peas, onions, garlic, purple sprouting broccoli, swiss chard. : and what percentage of your total food intake (calories) do home : grown crops amount to? Most of my calorie intake comes from fruit, nuts, oils and seeds. I hardly grow any of them. The fruit I grow are almost all berries. I estimate I currently grow about 10% of my calories for the year - if that. ::: Noting the strong relationship between plant toxins and pest resistance ::: (it's why the toxins are there in the first place) it would almost ::: certainly be safer to use plants bred for low toxin production and use ::: the much safer pesticides to control the pests. : Left in case you figure out an answer. It's possible. I believe what I said on this point before was that I thought in the long term such a strategy might produce beneficial results - but that we didn't currently know enough to implement it safely. As I mentioned, the supposed plant toxins have some beneficial side effects. "Hormesis" - as it's sometimes called. Engineering or breeding them out without proper understanding of their roles may prove counter-productive. ::The natural toxins have been around longer, ::our bodies have had a chance to get used to them - ::and there has been more opportunity for study. : :: 1) So what if they have been around longer. Think strychnine. :: 2) Our bodies didn't evolve to consume a small range of food plants. :: Take out the brassicae and solanum groups and there isn't much left. :: 3) There has been virtually NIL study on plant toxins. : :: So wrong on all three counts. : :We know a fair bit indirectly about plant toxins from the study of :human nutrition. : Actually we no sod all. You like leaving out qualifications, don't you? ;-) :It may not have been medicine's most explored area - but :to say we know "virtually NIL" on the subject seems like :an overstatement to me. : Give me some examples of LD50, noel and content of a few food plant : toxins then. Some other day, perhaps - since doing so would prove nothing. ::: Eating healthy meat and veg is, and pesticides help enormously here. ::: Not only that, but the abundance of food available today is DIRECTLY ::: the result of the introduction of safe effective pesticides. :: ::...amongst many other modern farming techniques - including the ::use of machinery - : :: Irrelevant. It does nothing more than could be and was done by hand :: (better). : :You're mistaken there... : Hardly, I am a farmer. Think for a moment about what you're saying, then. ::and things like a global market in seeds and produce. : :: That's always been there (not that it has any relevance to your :: submission). : :...and there. : You are still wrong. Like most farmers I know a lot about seed : development and production. Perhaps read your own words again, then. You are apparently claiming that a global market in seeds and produce existed before the birth of the universe. ::I suspect that eventually mechanical barriers to pests will eventually ::make many of today's pesticides redundant. : :: Dream on, you have no idea what you are talking about. : :Rather obviously, I'm talking about growing a greater proportion of :things "under glass" - or in controlled environments. : To feed the world? Yes. : speechless at the stunning level of ignorance Don't underestimate technological progress. :You may have noticed that there's been something of a trend in that :direction over the last hundred years. : Not in the UK, it's almost zero now other than for cut flowers. ...and watercress, and tomatoes - and an increasing number of other things. : Far too expensive. Expense is one of the main problems - but prices are falling. I expect them to continue to do so. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Robert Seago writes
In article , Oz wrote: Tim Tyler writes By contrast - for many pesticides - the compensation accrues to the those in the supply chain - who can generate more produce - and the health cost is borne by consumers. 1) There is no direct health cost, due to the approvals testing. 2) There is most definitely a health cost for consuming produce contaminated by fungi. Aflatoxins and vomitotoxins for example. My problem with the views of you guys is your apparent certainty about this. With good reason. You would have been among the people arguing that organochlorines had never been shown to be hazardous. Are you now? DDT is fine used in small amounts. The problem is that it does not biodegrade and is not well excreted by mammals. Used the way w.europe did, in small quantities on very few crops it might (but probably wouldn't) have been OK. Used in the US many times/annum on hundreds of millions of acres every year (not to mention in india, china and russia) it most certainly wasn't. That's why it was banned worldwide (except russia and china went on using it - despite what they said) in the 70's. I have no idea whether it would pass existing toxicity tests, almost certainly not as some of it's breakdown products are apparently carcinogens. It would certainly easily fail on biodegradeablility. For malaria control in third world houses, where the total world usage would probably be measured in a few tons, I would support it's informed use. There are very good reasons for this. I will still grow what I can myself. I don't like eating carrots that I am advised to peel, and cut off the top cm. when I can grow my own with a mubh superior taste with no problems and no pesticides. Here I have given up. Too many umbelliferae in the area (cowparsely and relatives) means root fly is guaranteed every year. I accept your comments about growing strawberries for example, ( about the difference of growing in vast acreages). I use very insecticides and no herbicides on my allotment. The swiss chard gets cabbage white about one year in three. The courgettes get viral attacks (no spray for that). The climbing beans/runners get aphid attack, but if left predators control this well as long as the fly comes in early. but I haven't used an insecticide for 10 years. Paraquat, sometimes roundup is a handy weedkiller. Gets used once or twice a year. A dose of bag npk about once every two years. The three pests I get, are white flies on brassicas, but they don't do significant damage to my crop. The allotment site is rife with them. When I used to spray, I gave up, because there were many more around which soon took their place. (No I don't think using systemic options that afford protection for 3 weeks is worth the risks). Whitefly? Do you mean the woolly aphid? Funnily I haven't come across real whitefly as a brassica problem. Black fly on Broad beans is a problem on the Spring sown ones only, which I control with washong up liquid or pyrethrum. The synthetic pyrethrums are probably better and safer than pyrethrum. I've put the book away, so I can't look it up. The other problem is milldew on Gooseberries. I thought that good pruning was going to deal with this, but have decided to get new stock with some resistant properties, as soon as this crop is in. Ahh, yes. There are some good, safe, wildewicides but varietal control is easier. If it's effective, often it's not. I fully accept that the scale of agriculture is quite different, but also think that the self certainty about the rightness of using chemical control for everything, and the general conservatism of the industry, along with the domination of agriculture by established big business stifles much more innovative approaches that could be made. You completely misread farmer usage of pesticides. They are a very major cost and a pain to apply with the heavy regulations (eg on wind). We all try and use as little as possible as a consequence. Preventative treatment allows this particularly well. If your remember my infection sequence the typically you miss the first generation (only one plant, maybe one leaf, out of millions in a field). Now if you spray then, usually with a very low dose (1/2 to 1/4 or even less) then you seriously inhibit the initial foci and protect the rest of the crop from infection. Almost all fungicides (and even some insecticides and herbicides) are FAR better at preventing incoming infection than eradicating an existing one, so even these low doses protect the unaffected plants. You thus reduce the innoculum and stop the second generation of infection in it's tracks. You can repeat this every three to six weeks depending on pest and product. An established field-wide infection is virtually unstoppable, even with full rates, and very significant damage occurs. The net result is much less spray, and much cleaner crops. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Martin Rand writes
Hear, hear to all of this. But what's this about "_if_ the flavour of organic produce degrades"? I can't detect any flavour difference in supermarket organic produce now! I go to farm outlets or local markets if I want decent veg - and it then doesn't make a lot of difference whether I buy organic or not. It's down to the varieties grown, the freshness, the practices of the growers and their competence. I would agree. Once, many decades ago, I worked on a large vegetable farm. On my way home I took veg fresh from the field (cabbage, caulifower, spring cabbage, sprouts, spuds etc). Cut to cook time was often under one hour. The produce was splendid. Exceptional flavour. Buy the same stuff, from the same field, and you are talking circa 24 hours after cutting. The effect on flavour is highly marked. In fact I wouldn't have believed it was the same produce if I hadn't seen it come out of our own sacks. I have seen several double blind trials comparing organic and conventional produce and they can never tell the difference except for (real) organic bread (which tasted 'musty'). With all due respect to our organic egg producers I couldn't tell the difference from genuine free range (produced on this farm) and battery eggs. I am pretty good at identifying things (and their absence) by taste, to the irritation of my wife when she cooks. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Tim Tyler writes
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote: :: Tough. Grow your own food. However in the long term, I'm optimistic - we will figure out how to avoid poisoning ourselves eventually. Probably about the same time people stop committing suicide, are careless at work and stop murdering each other. Don't hold your breath. :We are still in the biotech dark ages - there's very much we :don't know - and ignorance is dangerous. : Biotech? You approve of GM cultivars? : I am amazed. : But yes, they could well help. I merely mean "biological technology". Perhaps I should have used the term "biological science" instead. FWIW, I think GM cultivars will prove to be of great importance and significance. However, many of the same sorts of safety issues surrounding pesticides will apply there - a healthy level of paranoia may be beneficial there also. It keeps (so far) GM out of the EU marketplace. Except for imports of course. Some of the things I've grown (or am growing) this year: Basil, Broccoli, Cabbage (black), Cabbage (red), Celery, Chervil, Chickory, Chickpea, Chop Suey, Collard, Coriander, Corn salad, Cress (curly), Cress (land), Cress (water), Fennel, Flax, Kale (red russian), Lettuce, Mibuna, Mizuna, Mustard (red), Mustard (yellow), Mustard (spinach), Pak Choi, Spinach (perpetual), Radish, Rape, Rape (salad), Rocket (salad), Rocket (wild), Sesame, Sunflower, Texel, Turnip, Alfalfa, Aduki, Clover (red), Fenugreek, Lentils (puy), Mung, Pea, Soya, Amaranth, Buckwheat, Corn, Kamut, Quinoa, Rye, Spelt, Wheat, Raspberries, Taeberries, Loganberries, Wolfberries, Black Currants, Gooseberries, Hazel nuts, Apricots, broad beans, peas, onions, garlic, purple sprouting broccoli, swiss chard. How big is your veg plot? How big is your greenhouse? : and what percentage of your total food intake (calories) do home : grown crops amount to? Most of my calorie intake comes from fruit, nuts, oils and seeds. I hardly grow any of them. The fruit I grow are almost all berries. Given the list above, it should be much more than that unless you are growing only a few plants of each. In which case I would suggest you are playing at growing your own food. Two frames each of runner and climbing french would (even for a veggie) oversupply food for several months. Heck four of us can't begin to keep up. Courgettes (four plants) we throw out or give away probably 70+% and swiss chard similarly. I only have a tiny untended veg plot, too. I estimate I currently grow about 10% of my calories for the year - if that. Then you either have a very small plot, aren't trying or aren't growing the right things. ::: Noting the strong relationship between plant toxins and pest resistance ::: (it's why the toxins are there in the first place) it would almost ::: certainly be safer to use plants bred for low toxin production and use ::: the much safer pesticides to control the pests. : Left in case you figure out an answer. It's possible. I believe what I said on this point before was that I thought in the long term such a strategy might produce beneficial results - but that we didn't currently know enough to implement it safely. Pah! As I mentioned, the supposed plant toxins have some beneficial side effects. "Hormesis" - as it's sometimes called. Engineering or breeding them out without proper understanding of their roles may prove counter-productive. The same may well be true of pesticides of course. I'm sure that's never been tested for. ::The natural toxins have been around longer, ::our bodies have had a chance to get used to them - ::and there has been more opportunity for study. : :: 1) So what if they have been around longer. Think strychnine. :: 2) Our bodies didn't evolve to consume a small range of food plants. :: Take out the brassicae and solanum groups and there isn't much left. :: 3) There has been virtually NIL study on plant toxins. : :: So wrong on all three counts. : :We know a fair bit indirectly about plant toxins from the study of :human nutrition. : Actually we no sod all. You like leaving out qualifications, don't you? ;-) True none the less. Things can be nutritious and toxic. Many animals eat toxic plants for the nutrition, else you get to die of hunger first and so just have to tolerate the effects of the toxin. :It may not have been medicine's most explored area - but :to say we know "virtually NIL" on the subject seems like :an overstatement to me. : Give me some examples of LD50, noel and content of a few food plant : toxins then. Some other day, perhaps - since doing so would prove nothing. It proves we have NO DATA on most (if not all) food plant toxins. So we have no idea how toxic they really are, apart from the odd cases of illness and death. ::: Eating healthy meat and veg is, and pesticides help enormously here. ::: Not only that, but the abundance of food available today is DIRECTLY ::: the result of the introduction of safe effective pesticides. :: ::...amongst many other modern farming techniques - including the ::use of machinery - : :: Irrelevant. It does nothing more than could be and was done by hand :: (better). : :You're mistaken there... : Hardly, I am a farmer. Think for a moment about what you're saying, then. Machines do NOT let me grow more/ac. They let me grow more per MAN. ::and things like a global market in seeds and produce. : :: That's always been there (not that it has any relevance to your :: submission). : :...and there. : You are still wrong. Like most farmers I know a lot about seed : development and production. Perhaps read your own words again, then. You are apparently claiming that a global market in seeds and produce existed before the birth of the universe. Don't be a prat all your life. Remember seeds were brought back in the first ships that went to the new world, and in the old world many (most, all?) crop plants had spread from their original source to the furthest edges in antiquity. ::I suspect that eventually mechanical barriers to pests will eventually ::make many of today's pesticides redundant. : :: Dream on, you have no idea what you are talking about. : :Rather obviously, I'm talking about growing a greater proportion of :things "under glass" - or in controlled environments. : To feed the world? Yes. : speechless at the stunning level of ignorance Don't underestimate technological progress. I don't, I do understand economics. Just work out the energy cost of covering the UK arable area under glass. Go on, have a go. :You may have noticed that there's been something of a trend in that :direction over the last hundred years. : Not in the UK, it's almost zero now other than for cut flowers. ...and watercress, and tomatoes - and an increasing number of other things. Watercress is all grown outside hereabouts. Tomatoes are mostly, if not nowadays entirely, grown outside the UK. : Far too expensive. Expense is one of the main problems - but prices are falling. Eh? Industrial glasshouse costs are rising. I expect them to continue to do so. they will continue to rise, that's for sure. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Xref: kermit uk.environment.conservation:42966 uk.rec.birdwatching:67393 uk.rec.gardening:144878 uk.rec.natural-history:14669 uk.business.agricultu113406
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote: : Tim Tyler writes :In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote: : Lesse. : A gram of penicillin (my very first exposure to antibiotics, first : tablet, some seven years ago). : Lets take strawberries, clearly a well sprayed product, particularly the : imported stuff. Rough estimate that 5% had residues of 0.1 mg/kg. : 10kg at 0.1 mg/kg gives you 1mg but only 5% had residues so : 200kg of strawberries gives you 1mg residues : so 200,000 kg or 200 tons gives you 1 gm residues. : Assume all veg has the same level of residues as strawberries (highly : unlikely since they have been singled out as having more residues than : most stuff). : If you eat 1kg of veg/day, then 200T is 200,000 days or 550 years. : So sorry, I was wrong, it's more like ten lifetimes (even more if you : take the 5-day course!). : Hardly scary. ....but completely incorrect. I don't know where you got your figures from - but: ....looking at the (previously referenced) report: http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/committ...umtabsrev1.pdf 83 samples - out of a total of 179 (46%) were contaminated at a level of 0.1 or *greater*. You are out by a factor of 9.2 already. Taking the first page (of the 3.2) pages of results as a sample (this is mainly UK strawberries) I calculated the average contamination of the samples with more than .1mg/kg contamination to be 0.527mg/kg. That puts you out by at least a factor of 57.2 - according to my sums. Simply using the actual figures reduces your "550 years" to 9.61 years. I take exception at some of the your other estimates as well. If you want to pick representative contaminated produce for me, then spinach might be your best bet. I eat a lot more green leafy vegetables than strawberries. Strawberries were ranked high on pesticide /toxicity/ - rather than pesticide volume - and they don't have much surface area - whereas spinach does. ....and I don't eat 1Kg of veg a day - I eat more like 3Kg. For reference, my diet is broadly similar in content to the one described on http://deanpomerleau.tripod.com/Dean..._diet/meal.htm ::It seems to be contrary to the evidence suggesting pesticide residues ::are lower on organic produce. : :: It's very rarely tested, and rarely for organic pesticides. : :Doesn't it need to pass through much the same regulatory testing as :everything else intended for human consumption? : Yes, but they have been using products approved many decades ago which : very few conventional farmers use because they are typically highly : toxic, not very effective and expensive. In the last few years several : have been banned. Some examples a : derris - rotenone - estimated human lethal dose 300-500 mg/kg. : carcinogen. : nicotine - LD50 rats 50-60 mg/kg toxic by ingestion, inhalation, skin. : heavy metal compounds we already discussed. : For comparison a nasty organophosphorous dimethoate has : LD50 rats at 4000 mg/kg and you need less/ha. : Certainly if I was asked to spray a field with derris or nicotine, I : would refuse. : I doubt anyone has developed tests to look at residue levels for these : and I don't remember seeing them on the list of residue levels tested : for. It sounds to me like you're saying there are gaping holes in the regulator's nets - and that you can get away with using as many pesticides as you like - if you pick ones that are not commonly tested for. -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:
: Tim Tyler writes :In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote: :Some of the things I've grown (or am growing) this year: : :Basil, Broccoli, Cabbage (black), Cabbage (red), Celery, :Chervil, Chickory, Chickpea, Chop Suey, Collard, Coriander, :Corn salad, Cress (curly), Cress (land), Cress (water), :Fennel, Flax, Kale (red russian), Lettuce, Mibuna, Mizuna, :Mustard (red), Mustard (yellow), Mustard (spinach), Pak :Choi, Spinach (perpetual), Radish, Rape, Rape (salad), :Rocket (salad), Rocket (wild), Sesame, Sunflower, Texel, :Turnip, Alfalfa, Aduki, Clover (red), Fenugreek, Lentils :(puy), Mung, Pea, Soya, Amaranth, Buckwheat, Corn, Kamut, :Quinoa, Rye, Spelt, Wheat, Raspberries, Taeberries, :Loganberries, Wolfberries, Black Currants, Gooseberries, :Hazel nuts, Apricots, broad beans, peas, onions, garlic, :purple sprouting broccoli, swiss chard. : How big is your veg plot? : How big is your greenhouse? :: and what percentage of your total food intake (calories) do home :: grown crops amount to? : :Most of my calorie intake comes from fruit, nuts, oils and seeds. :I hardly grow any of them. The fruit I grow are almost all berries. : Given the list above, it should be much more than that unless you are : growing only a few plants of each. In which case I would suggest you are : playing at growing your own food. Two frames each of runner and climbing : french would (even for a veggie) oversupply food for several months. : Heck four of us can't begin to keep up. Courgettes (four plants) we : throw out or give away probably 70+% and swiss chard similarly. I only : have a tiny untended veg plot, too. :I estimate I currently grow about 10% of my calories for the year - :if that. : Then you either have a very small plot, aren't trying or aren't growing : the right things. Size is the main limiting factor. I estimate I have about ten square metres to work with. I'm not really trying to get my calories from my garden. Indeed, I grow almost entirely very low calorie produce. My main aim at this stage is to increase the diversity of fresh, good quality salad vegetables I have available to me - not to feed myself entirely from my garden. ::It may not have been medicine's most explored area - but ::to say we know "virtually NIL" on the subject seems like ::an overstatement to me. : :: Give me some examples of LD50, noel and content of a few food plant :: toxins then. : :Some other day, perhaps - since doing so would prove nothing. : It proves we have NO DATA on most (if not all) food plant toxins. Hardly - I think to prove something you have to make some sort of case for it - rather assert and then challenge others to disprove it. :::I suspect that eventually mechanical barriers to pests will eventually :::make many of today's pesticides redundant. :: ::: Dream on, you have no idea what you are talking about. :: ::Rather obviously, I'm talking about growing a greater proportion of ::things "under glass" - or in controlled environments. : :: To feed the world? : :Yes. : :: speechless at the stunning level of ignorance : :Don't underestimate technological progress. : I don't, I do understand economics. : Just work out the energy cost of covering the UK arable area under : glass. Go on, have a go. I am not talking about glass. And I am /certainly/ not suggesting donig this today. See where I wrote "eventually". I even did it twice - to emphasize the point. ::You may have noticed that there's been something of a trend in that ::direction over the last hundred years. : :: Not in the UK, it's almost zero now other than for cut flowers. : :...and watercress, and tomatoes - and an increasing number of other :things. : Watercress is all grown outside hereabouts. You may be right there. On further investigation I found little evidence for commercial watercress operations being undercover. : Tomatoes are mostly, if not nowadays entirely, grown outside the UK. Certainly not entirely: http://www.edie.net/news/Archive/6619.cfm :: Far too expensive. : :Expense is one of the main problems - but prices are falling. : Eh? Industrial glasshouse costs are rising. :I expect them to continue to do so. : they will continue to rise, that's for sure. In my estimation, the cost of building such things is likely to continue to fall for some time - with technological developments in materials science - and increased technological abilities in other areas. Compare the expense of completely enclosing areas with transparent weatherproof material now with the cost a hundred years ago - for example. Something similar will be true - probably throughout the construction industry - and I expect we'll see increasingly large and sophisticated constructions as a result. -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Tim Tyler writes
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote: : Tim Tyler writes :In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote: : Lesse. : A gram of penicillin (my very first exposure to antibiotics, first : tablet, some seven years ago). : Lets take strawberries, clearly a well sprayed product, particularly the : imported stuff. Rough estimate that 5% had residues of 0.1 mg/kg. : 10kg at 0.1 mg/kg gives you 1mg but only 5% had residues so : 200kg of strawberries gives you 1mg residues : so 200,000 kg or 200 tons gives you 1 gm residues. : Assume all veg has the same level of residues as strawberries (highly : unlikely since they have been singled out as having more residues than : most stuff). : If you eat 1kg of veg/day, then 200T is 200,000 days or 550 years. : So sorry, I was wrong, it's more like ten lifetimes (even more if you : take the 5-day course!). : Hardly scary. ...but completely incorrect. That's what comes of taking stuff incompletely quoted by others. Taking the first page (of the 3.2) pages of results as a sample (this is mainly UK strawberries) I calculated the average contamination of the samples with more than .1mg/kg contamination to be 0.527mg/kg. That puts you out by at least a factor of 57.2 - according to my sums. Indeed. Bit of cut & paste and reformatting gets the entire table to 61 out of 178 sampled or 0.34 mg/kg ave. So to take a diet entirely comprised of these strawberries you need: Take 3kg veg/day (!) and you are at 1mg/day Takes 1000 days to reach the 1 gm, or three years. If you want to pick representative contaminated produce for me, then spinach might be your best bet. I eat a lot more green leafy vegetables than strawberries. Unfortunately no spinach, or cabbage. I can't believe they haven't tested these but I note they are only quoting stuff found over the reporting level. It seems likely, then, that this sort of product has none so isn't in the tables. I advise you stick to cabbage and sprouts wherever possible. They do have lettuce. Again a very short growing season, much affected by the weather and liable to high pesticide usage and known to be higher in residues than most. Anyway out of 180 samples the total was 27 or 0.15 mg/kg (excluding 'inorganic bromide') which on your 3kg/day gives you .45mg/day or 2000 days/gm or 5.5 years to get your gm. Miles and miles below the allowed daily intake, which is miles below the no effect level, which is miles below the toxic level. However you may panic if you wish. : Yes, but they have been using products approved many decades ago which : very few conventional farmers use because they are typically highly : toxic, not very effective and expensive. In the last few years several : have been banned. Some examples a : derris - rotenone - estimated human lethal dose 300-500 mg/kg. : carcinogen. : nicotine - LD50 rats 50-60 mg/kg toxic by ingestion, inhalation, skin. : heavy metal compounds we already discussed. : For comparison a nasty organophosphorous dimethoate has : LD50 rats at 4000 mg/kg and you need less/ha. : Certainly if I was asked to spray a field with derris or nicotine, I : would refuse. : I doubt anyone has developed tests to look at residue levels for these : and I don't remember seeing them on the list of residue levels tested : for. It sounds to me like you're saying there are gaping holes in the regulator's nets - and that you can get away with using as many pesticides as you like - if you pick ones that are not commonly tested for. A previous poster pointed out that *detecting*, but not quantifying, is fairly easy. I would be astonished if they didn't scan generally and if anything had a big spike they would look at it. However they don't test many organic produces, so they would be lucky to pick a contaminated one up. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
Tim Tyler writes
: Then you either have a very small plot, aren't trying or aren't growing : the right things. Size is the main limiting factor. I estimate I have about ten square metres to work with. 3m x 3m! Then throw out most of it and stick to 5 sq m of swiss chard and 5 sq m in runner and climbing french beans. I'm not really trying to get my calories from my garden. Indeed, I grow almost entirely very low calorie produce. My main aim at this stage is to increase the diversity of fresh, good quality salad vegetables I have available to me - not to feed myself entirely from my garden. That can be bought cheaply in the store. :: Give me some examples of LD50, noel and content of a few food plant :: toxins then. : :Some other day, perhaps - since doing so would prove nothing. : It proves we have NO DATA on most (if not all) food plant toxins. Hardly - I think to prove something you have to make some sort of case for it - rather assert and then challenge others to disprove it. Thats precisely what you have been doing. Anyway, you can find no data, fine. You obviously didn't find the ames link, or uncle al's. :::I suspect that eventually mechanical barriers to pests will eventually :::make many of today's pesticides redundant. :: ::: Dream on, you have no idea what you are talking about. :: ::Rather obviously, I'm talking about growing a greater proportion of ::things "under glass" - or in controlled environments. : :: To feed the world? : :Yes. : :: speechless at the stunning level of ignorance : :Don't underestimate technological progress. : I don't, I do understand economics. : Just work out the energy cost of covering the UK arable area under : glass. Go on, have a go. I am not talking about glass. And I am /certainly/ not suggesting donig this today. See where I wrote "eventually". I even did it twice - to emphasize the point. So what DO you mean, if not under glass? : Watercress is all grown outside hereabouts. You may be right there. On further investigation I found little evidence for commercial watercress operations being undercover. Quite. : Tomatoes are mostly, if not nowadays entirely, grown outside the UK. Certainly not entirely: http://www.edie.net/news/Archive/6619.cfm Minute amounts. :Expense is one of the main problems - but prices are falling. : Eh? Industrial glasshouse costs are rising. :I expect them to continue to do so. : they will continue to rise, that's for sure. In my estimation, the cost of building such things is likely to continue to fall for some time - with technological developments in materials science - and increased technological abilities in other areas. Energy and raw material costs have started to rise. Building costs follow it, even excluding the 80% cost that is labour. Compare the expense of completely enclosing areas with transparent weatherproof material now with the cost a hundred years ago - for example. 100 years ago! Compare the real cost of food 100 years ago. Heck it's under 1/10 the real price it was 30 years ago (farmgate). To buy stuff you must be able to sell your food at a profit. Something similar will be true - probably throughout the construction industry - and I expect we'll see increasingly large and sophisticated constructions as a result. Building costs are steadily rising in real terms, and can be expected to continue to rise, particularly given the extraction taxes. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
"Jim Webster" wrote in message
... "Oz" wrote in message ... Absolutely true, but it's possible to have poor quality mass-produced organic produce (which is increasingly happening) and high quality non- organic produce. This is particularly true of small producers who cannot bear the regulatory costs of organic production and are doing it as much for love as money. While politicians may be raving about the increase in organic, I have talked to a couple of organic dairy farmers who would go back to conventional but cannot afford to because this would mean paying back the conversion grant. The economics of organic production are getting rough, the supermarkets have started winding down the price of organic milk and other organic produce will follow. As anyone who has eaten stubbsy's (non-organic but utterly superb) smoked salmon can attest. It's not whether it has an organic label stuck on it or not, it's more how it was produced in the first place. When I did the first ring round to get people on Farmdirect that was an interesting experience. I came across a lot of people who were passionate about the value of organic production, but their passion was only matched for their contempt for the soil association. If someone is willing to set to and produce decent food to the best of their ability, and do this to a set of standards they believe in, then I have nothing but respect for them. But I am afraid that if something has to be flown into the country, it isn't organic any more, no matter what some certifying authority says. The idea that food miles are more virtuous than roundup is one for the logic choppers and 'how many angels dance on the head of a pin' brigade Jim Webster I would agree wholeheartedly with this. For a small scale producer, it is very time consuming keeping upto date with all the regulations, and filling in all the paperwork, and ticking all the boxes. However, the "organic" branding serves as a guide for those consumers who want to control their intake of chemicals, for whatever reason. The fact that organic does allow some chemicals passes the by. The fact that imported organic may not actually be so they conveniently forget (some I think believe that only UK farmers cheat - which in organic I do not think any do, processors, on the other hand .... :( ) When I was looking at certification bodies, I found the SA position to be far too rigid. For instance, goats do not like getting wet (well, mine do not). But the SA said that the goats had to be shut OUT all throughout the grazing season, I also objected to the percentage levy on sales (as a farm based processor), and their policy on vaccination. I in the end registered with the Organic Food Federation. On food miles, the shorter the time between production and consumption, the better the quality of food. -- George Dawson Goat farmer |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
As I suspected, strawberries tend to higher residues, lettuce is above average and 'commodity' UK-produced veg is lowest of all. For info: http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/committ...l_rep_2000.pdf Commodity quarter Number Total Number Number analysed with multiple above residues residues MRL rice* Q2 96 61 (64%) 12 (13%) 1 (1%) carrots Q4 71 46 (65%) 13 (18%) 1 (1.4%) lett: growers Q3 44 4 (9%) none 1 (2%) yam Q4 42 11 (26%) 2 (5%) 11 (26%) broccoli 1 Q1 28 4 (14%) none 2 (7%) lettuce 1 Q1 35 24 (69%) 14 (40%) 3 (9%) lettuce 2 Q3 36 20 (56%) 15 (42%) 6 (17%) plums Q3 44 10 (23%) 2 (5%) none cucumber 1* Q3 23 6 (26%) 2 (9%) none pears 2 Q4 52 42 (81%) 25 (48%) none head cabbage* Q4 72 11 (15%) 3 (4%) none pears 1 Q3 84 52 (62%) 31 (37%) none cucumber 2* Q4 36 10 (28%) 4 (11%) none apples Q4 144 104 (72%) 50 (35%) none broccoli 2 Q4 38 1 (3%) none none peas (fresh)* Q4 27 3 (11%) none none parsnips Q4 36 4 (11%) none none peppers, sweet Q3 24 none none none peas (frozen)* Q2 35 none none none * EU Survey ** MRLs may be extended to composite and processed products but levels are not specifically laid down in legislation. They are derived by calculation on an individual product basis. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
GeorgeDawson writes
However, the "organic" branding serves as a guide for those consumers who want to control their intake of chemicals, for whatever reason. The fact that organic does allow some chemicals passes the by. The fact that imported organic may not actually be so they conveniently forget (some I think believe that only UK farmers cheat - which in organic I do not think any do, processors, on the other hand .... :( ) I do not think UK organic growers cheat either. However there are now some very large commercial organic growers with associated conventional farms alongside. I have two next to me for example. One day, if margins get tight and 50ac of highly valuable produce is destined for ploughing under at a huge loss, I would be less than certain. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
"GeorgeDawson" wrote in message ... When I was looking at certification bodies, I found the SA position to be far too rigid. For instance, goats do not like getting wet (well, mine do not). But the SA said that the goats had to be shut OUT all throughout the grazing season, I also objected to the percentage levy on sales (as a farm based processor), and their policy on vaccination. I in the end registered with the Organic Food Federation. I must confess that the animal welfare thing is the main axe I have to grind with the Soil Association, (SA is such an appropriate acronym). Refusal to allow vaccines (other than for fmd which they enthusiastically advocated) has struck me as just plain cruel. Disease does not give a stuff about the arbitrary whims of a certifying body. On food miles, the shorter the time between production and consumption, the better the quality of food. I cannot see how you can justify organic certification for something that has been flown in. When you look at the environmental damage caused as opposed to some of the things the certifying bodies get upset about in the UK you do begin to wonder if they are for real Jim Webster George Dawson Goat farmer |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:
: Tim Tyler writes :: Then you either have a very small plot, aren't trying or aren't growing :: the right things. : :Size is the main limiting factor. I estimate I have about ten square :metres to work with. : 3m x 3m! More like 10m x 1m ;-) : Then throw out most of it and stick to 5 sq m of swiss chard and 5 sq m : in runner and climbing french beans. That would be contrary to my stated aim of getting more diversity - and would massively up my bean consumption (I go pretty easy on most legumes). :I'm not really trying to get my calories from my garden. Indeed, I :grow almost entirely very low calorie produce. My main aim at this stage :is to increase the diversity of fresh, good quality salad vegetables I :have available to me - not to feed myself entirely from my garden. : That can be bought cheaply in the store. I'm /trying/ to grow things I can't easily get in store. My best source for all my chinese salad veggies - for example - is miles away - and their produce is apparently imported - and freshness leaves something to be desired. I can't buy russian kale, american cress - or indeed most of my sprouts at all. : You obviously didn't find the ames link, or uncle al's. You're right there - the only "uncle al" I am familiar with is unlikely to be the one you are referring to. ::::I suspect that eventually mechanical barriers to pests will eventually ::::make many of today's pesticides redundant. ::: :::: Dream on, you have no idea what you are talking about. ::: :::Rather obviously, I'm talking about growing a greater proportion of :::things "under glass" - or in controlled environments. :: ::: To feed the world? :: ::Yes. :: ::: speechless at the stunning level of ignorance :: ::Don't underestimate technological progress. : :: I don't, I do understand economics. :: Just work out the energy cost of covering the UK arable area under :: glass. Go on, have a go. : :I am not talking about glass. [....] Not /just/ glass, anyway. :And I am /certainly/ not suggesting do[ing] this today. See where I :wrote "eventually". I even did it twice - to emphasize the point. : So what DO you mean, if not under glass? Well, it doesn't /have/ to be glass. For example, some of the operations I know of use polytunnels instead. The original idea of using mechanical - rather than chemical - barriers to pests doesn't necessarily require completely enclosing the plants at all - although enclosure is probably the most effective approach. The scarecrow is a form of non-chemical pest control agent - as are slug-moats, fences, and nets. These are all things that attempt to prevent the pests and produce being in the same place at the same time - rather than poisoning them once they arrive. -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ |
The dangers of weed killers - Glyphostae aka Roundup, the hidden killer.
"Oz" wrote in message ... GeorgeDawson writes However, the "organic" branding serves as a guide for those consumers who want to control their intake of chemicals, for whatever reason. The fact that organic does allow some chemicals passes the by. The fact that imported organic may not actually be so they conveniently forget (some I think believe that only UK farmers cheat - which in organic I do not think any do, processors, on the other hand .... :( ) I do not think UK organic growers cheat either. However there are now some very large commercial organic growers with associated conventional farms alongside. I have two next to me for example. One day, if margins get tight and 50ac of highly valuable produce is destined for ploughing under at a huge loss, I would be less than certain. good of you to help control their pest problems then isn't it :-) Jim Webster -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
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