Research: The case against Organics

Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist View of Genetically Modified Foods, Nina Fedoroff and Nancy Marie Brown, Joseph Henry Press, Washington D.C. 2004

“Suggestions that organic farming is appropriate for countries with high population pressures and limited arable land and water supplies sound suspiciously like Marie Antoinette’s ”Let them eat cake.” Or, as Peter Raven has noted, “organic agriculture is essentially what is practiced in sub-Saharan Africa today, and half of the people are starving; so it is clear that more is needed.” (p. 261)

“Bruce Ames, developer of the Ames test for carcinogens, doesn’t mince words in… what actually does cause cancer. He says, “The major causes of cancer are: (1) smoking…; (2) dietary imbalances: lack of sufficient amounts of dietary fruits and vegetables. The quarter of the population eating the fewest fruits and vegetables has double the cancer rate for most types of cancer than the quarter eating the most; (3) chronic infections; and (4) hormonal factors.” P. 254
“99 percent of the chemicals people ear are natural. Coffee, for example, contains more than a thousand different chemicals: 28 have been tested, and 19 turned out to be carcinogens in rats and mice. Plants produce many natural pesticides: 71 have been tested, and 37 are carcinogens in rats and mice.” P. 254

“He (Ames) states emphatically that “if reducing synthetic pesticides makes fruits and vegetables more expensive, thereby decreasing consumption, then the cancer rates will increase, especially for the poor.” P.254

“In the words of Paracelsus, the sixteenth-century Swiss physician considered to be the father of modern toxicology, “The dose makes the poison.” P. 252

Pandora’s Picnic Basket: The Potential and Hazards of Genetically Modified Foods, Alan McHughen, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000

“Genetic modification (GM)… is actually a collection of many technologies… They could include transferring or inserting the DNA into the cell of a higher plant or animal, then recovering a complete new organism.. …. The application of GM techniques results in a genetically modified organism (GMO).” P. 9

“According to Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute the highly respected US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta noted 2471 cases, including 250 deaths, of infection by the unpleasant E. Coli strain O157:H7 in 1996 alone. These bacteria live in manure. Manure is used as a fertilizer in organic farming systems. Organic foods were implicated in about a third of the confirmed O157:H7 cases despite the fact that organic food constitutes only about 1% of food consumed in the US.” P.233

“I (McHughen) prefer to consume the small quantities of regulated and approved pesticides in conventional foods than the unknown quantities of ‘natural’ toxins, manure, bacteria, fungi, and whatever else.” P.233

“Will it be able to provide enough food to meet the demand of a burgeoning world population, estimated to increase 20% over the next twenty years in the face of rapidly diminishing farmland?” p.234

“There is no question, however, organic systems simply do not provide the same volume of food as conventional farming systems.” 234