(NaturalNews) If the Hippocrates maxim that “food should be considered as our first medicine” is right, we are on the brink of some really bad medicine. Recently, Obama selected as his “Food Czar”, a former Monsanto executive and FDA manipulator, Michael Taylor. More recently, the Orwellian labeled Food Safety Enhancement Bill (HR 2749) was passed easily by the House of Representatives.

The bill is on a fast track for Senate and Presidential approval. If it becomes law as written, this combination of a corrupt Food Czar and misleadingly named Food Safety Bill threatens to take out the food that is medicine and leave us with the food that is poison.

The Food Safety Bill Threatens Safe Food

Before you consider most of this bill as benign or even helpful, as many main stream outlets are promoting, read on and do your own research on the ambiguity of the bill, of which interpretation and enforcement will be left to the discretion of The Food Czar.

The Food Safety Bill does next to nothing to protect consumers from the industrial foods of agribusiness giants such as Monsanto and their ilk. It has the potential to be an instrument of legal oppression for small farmers, organic farming, even farmers’ markets and food co-ops. Some indicate the Bill’s language is broad enough to even include home vegetable gardens!

Setting a uniform fee of $500 annual, regardless of company or farm size, for the privilege of being policed by the FDA is a relatively minor inequity. This bill, when passed into law, gives the FDA the power to have random inspections on any food producing or storage group without probable cause. There have already been raids on food co-ops, such as the Ohio Department of Agriculture La Grange co-op raid in December of 2008, where all the food was seized without testing.

According to Gunny G Online: “This astounding control will include the elimination of organic farming by eliminating manure, mandating GMO animal feed, imposing animal drugs, and ordering applications of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. Farmers, thus, will be locked not only into the industrialization of once normal and organic farms but into the forced purchase of industry’s products.”

HR 2749 creates severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation. Does it include judicial review, Congressional oversight, a defined and limited set of penalties and punishments for a defined set of “crimes”? Not even. The so called Food Safety Bill hands carte blanch enforcement to the whims of Obama’s Food Czar.

Introducing Obama’s Food Czar

“The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US Food Safety Czar. This is no joke”, says Jeffrey Smith about Michael Taylor’s appointment in a recent Huffington Post article. Jeffrey Smith is the author of Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette. Perhaps that is exaggerated, but Michael Taylor’s history with Monsanto and the FDA through the corporate/government revolving door is scary enough to provoke such an assertion.

In the early 1990′s, Michael Taylor was an attorney for Monsanto. He was parsing legalese and loopholes for the wonderful group that has brought the world DDT, PCB’s, Agent Orange, NutraSweet (aspartame), bovine growth hormone, GMO foods, toxic pesticides and weed killers (Round Up), and terminator seeds.

Michael passed through the revolving door connecting the corporate world and government more than once to ensure Monsanto’s unabated success with pushing profitable poisons into the world’s food supply.

After functioning as a lead attorney with Monsanto, he managed to be appointed as the FDA Policy Chief. From that position he wrote a “white paper” (an authoritative official declaration) on the safety of bovine growth hormones. He ensured that dairy farmers using Monsanto’s rbGH would not be required to label its milk products with the bovine growth hormone, which passes puss and toxins into the cow’s milk.

This white paper also gave Monsanto the ability to sue dairy farmers who labeled their products rbGH or growth hormone free, which Monsanto zealously pursued to financially destroy small dairy farmers. Monsanto Mike also oversaw the FDA ruling that dairy farmers who labeled their products as non rbGH needed to include that the FDA has determined there is no difference between milk from rbGH cows and non rbGH cows, which is a complete lie.

Author/journalist Jeffrey Smith was tipped from a former Monsanto scientist that three colleagues at Monsanto, upon discovering the hazards of milk from rbGH injected cows, switched to organic dairy products. Some FDA scientists also knew of the dangers and the improper testing by Monsanto. But they don’t make the final decisions. That’s a function of the FDA Policy Chief, and that was Michael Taylor.

The revolving door swooshed around and Michael Taylor landed back in Monsanto as vice president and chief lobbyist. Only months ago the door spun around once again and Michael Taylor became the senior advisor to the FDA commissioner. Good timing. From that position he could easily be promoted into Obama’s cabinet as the Food Safety Czar.

In case you may still doubt USA government collusion with Monsanto, here’s an interesting item from “Monsanto Buys Terminator Seeds Company” by F. William Engdahl. “In March 1998 the US Patent Office granted Patent No. 5,723,765 to Delta & Pine Land for a patent titled, Control of Plant Gene Expression. The patent is owned jointly, according to Delta & Pine’s Security & Exchange Commission 10K filing, by D&PL and the United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Agriculture.”

The title “Control of Plant Gene Expression” refers to terminator seeds. These seeds make it impossible to save seeds from a harvest for replanting the next crop, an age old tradition for most farmers. This is a nail in the coffin of independent farming world wide, as once farmers begin using GMO seeds, they have to come back to buy again and again. Monsanto bought Delta & Pine Land (D & PL) in 2008, and now the USDA shares the terminator seed patent rights for royalties with Monsanto.

When Big Business owns Government, it is called fascism. When Government owns Big Business, it is called communism. Does this mean we will now have both for our food supply?

What This Means to Consumers

It means this bill will have the FDA, along with the USDA, to act as minions directly instead of indirectly for Monsanto and other literally unhealthy corporations. The FDA would be linking up with other World Trade Organization (WTO) efforts to control farming world wide, while catering to the greedy ambitions of International Agribusiness, its related industries, and Processed Food Manufacturers. FDA, USDA, and WTO bureaucrats are sponsored and headed by the enemies of organic and wholesome food farming.

The WTO is capable of legally levying ridiculous fines or mandating trade sanctions, including food sanctions, on regions that don’t comply with WTO governed organizations, such as WHO (World Health Organization), the organization that is ushering in dangerous forced vaccinations for 195 member nations. The WTO is planning severe farming regulations that are expected to be world wide.

Setting up a Food Czar from Monsanto with FDA connections via his revolving door career means that rbGH dairy, GMO’s, terminator seeds and pesticides for crops will dominate in our food supply and prosper as “safe” while organic and wholesome foods will be declared dangerous and become a threatened species. The main stream media is already publicizing propaganda against organic food.

You may want to start your own organic garden by yourself or with others soon. This is what the Cubans did in defense of all the trade sanctions imposed on them. And most of Cuba’s crops are now organic!

Activists don’t seem to feel confident about the bill losing steam on its fast track to becoming law. They have decided the best that can be done is petitioning for rewording of key passages with the Senate to soften HR 2749 before it gets to the president for ratification.

They need your help. Perhaps you may be able to start with the first three sources in bold below.

Sources:

Organic Consumers Association action page
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18709.cfm

Communist Takeover Of All Food Production From Farm To Fork Almost Complete!
http://www.healthtruthrevealed.com/articles/10443121107/article

The Farm Blog – GMO Real Story
http://polyfaceyum.blogspot.com/2009/02/gmo-real-story.html

Monsanto Buys Terminator Seed Company by F. William Engdahl
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3082

HR 2479: Totalitarian Control of the Food Supply
http://gunnyg.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/hr-2749-totalitarian-control-of-the-food-supply/

Jeffrey Smith article on Obama’s Food Czar
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/youre-appointing-who-plea_b_243810.html
and http://www.responsibletechnology.org/

NSSM 200 “Food as a weapon”
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/food_for_peace/kiss_nssm_jb_1995.html

List of Obama Czars (before most recent selections)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_czars_of_the_Obama_administration

Ohio ODA raid on organic food co-op
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/05/02/Unconscionable-Police-Raid-on-Familys-Home-and-Organic-Food-CoOp.aspx

Reposted from NaturalNews.

(NaturalNews) The evidence is in. Eating a plant based diet is the key to health and longevity. The only question left is how to get the best value for each dollar you have to spend on fruits and vegetables. The Environmental Working Group, a non-profit organization devoted to human and environmental health, has come up with some guidelines that may help you decide. In a recently published listing, they pointed out those fruits and vegetables with the highest levels of pesticides that should be avoided unless they are available from known local growers, grown at home, or labeled as organic. They also identified which conventionally grown fruits and vegetables have low levels of pesticides and can be bought without too much compromise.

EWG, as the group is often known, analyzed results from 87,000 tests on 47 fruits and vegetables conducted by the USDA and FDA between 2000 and 2007. Nearly all the studies used to create their list tested produce after it had been rinsed or peeled. Contamination was measured in six different ways and crops were ranked based on a composite score from all categories.

Their Dirty Dozen showed the highest levels of contamination. Fruits topped this list, taking 7 of the 12 top slots in this dubious distinction. Nectarines had the highest percentage of samples testing positively for pesticides (97.3 percent), followed by peaches (96.7 percent) and apples (94.1 percent).

Peaches had the highest likelihood of multiple pesticides on a single sample, with 87.0 percent tested having two or more pesticide residues. They were followed by nectarines (85.3 percent) and apples (82.3 percent). Peaches and apples had the most pesticides detected on a single sample, with nine residues, followed by strawberries and imported grapes in which eight pesticides were found on a single sample of each. Peaches had the most pesticides overall, with some combination of up to 53 pesticides found on the samples tested, followed by apples with 50 pesticides and strawberries with 38.

Among the dishonored vegetables, sweet bell peppers, celery, kale, lettuce, and carrots topped the list for exposing consumers to pesticides. Celery had the highest percentage of samples test positively for pesticides (94.1 percent), followed by sweet bell peppers (81.5 percent) and carrots (82.3 percent). Celery was also the most likely to have multiple pesticides on a single sample (79.8 percent), followed by sweet bell peppers (62.2 percent) and kale (53.1 percent).

Sweet bell peppers had the most pesticides detected on a single sample (11 detected), followed by kale (10 detected), and lettuce and celery which both had nine detected. Sweet bell peppers had the most pesticides overall (a jaw dropping 64), followed by lettuce (57) and carrots (40).

Although they escaped classification in the Dirty Dozen, note should also be given to spinach, potatoes, and domestic grapes because of their popularity in certain segments of the population. Spinach, which ranked number 14 in highest pesticide load, is thought of as a healthy food. Health minded shoppers have loaded their carts and salad bar servings with spinach thinking they were getting a vegetable that would support their health. Yet spinach was found to have a pesticide load of 58 (with 100 being the worst). Potatoes, one of the favorites of men and children, had a pesticide load of 56 and was ranked right behind spinach at number 15. Children love to eat their way through the summer with a fist full of grapes. But domestic grapes had a pesticide load of 44. By comparison, the pesticide loads for onion, avocado and sweet corn were numbered 2 or less.

EWG also identified the Clean 15, a list of produce least likely to have pesticide residues. Vegetables on this list were onions, sweet corn, asparagus, sweet peas, cabbage, eggplant, broccoli, tomatoes and sweet potatoes.

Over half of the tomatoes (53.1 percent), broccoli (65.2 percent), eggplant (75.4 percent), sweet pea (77.1 percent), and cabbage (82.1 percent) had no detectable pesticides in the samples. Among onions, sweet corn and asparagus, there were no detectable residues on 90 percent or more of the samples.

Multiple pesticide residues were extremely rare on any of these Clean 15 vegetables. Tomatoes had the highest likelihood of having multiple pesticide residues, with a 13.5 percent chance of having more than one pesticide. None of the samples of onions or sweet corn contained more than one pesticide.

The greatest number of pesticides detected on a single sample of any of the Clean 15 was five, compared to 11 found on sweet bell peppers, the vegetable with the most residues on a single sample.

Fruits making the Clean 15 list were avocados, pineapples, mangoes, kiwi, papayas, watermelon and grapefruit. Fewer than 10 percent of pineapple, mango, and avocado samples had detectable pesticides, and fewer than one percent of samples had more than one pesticide residue. Although 54.5 percent of grapefruit had detectable pesticides, multiple residues were less common, with only 17.5 percent of samples containing more than one residue. Watermelon had residues on 28.1 percent of samples, and just 9.6 percent had multiple residues.

Pesticides are designed to kill

There is an endless parade of research demonstrating the toxicity of pesticides to human health and to the environment, even at doses considered “safe” by the industry and government. This research has linked pesticides to many toxic effects including nervous system disorders, cancer, hormone disruption, liver and thyroid dysfunction, and skin, eye and lung irritation.

According to EWG, “Even in the face of a growing body of evidence, pesticide manufacturers continue to defend their products, claiming that the amounts of pesticides on produce are not sufficient to elicit safety concerns. Yet, such statements are often made in the absence of actual data, since most safety tests done for regulatory agencies are not designed to discover whether low dose exposures to mixtures of pesticides and other toxic chemicals are safe, particularly during critical periods of development.” Most studies are done using high doses and are designed to find only the gross, obvious toxic effects. In the absence of low dose studies, pesticide and chemical manufacturers claim safety where none has been demonstrated or proven.

Children bear the highest risk

Pesticides pose a risk to vital organ systems from conception to maturity. Exposure to pesticides during critical periods of development often has lasting negative effects that manifest throughout the lifetime. Because the metabolism, physiology and biochemistry of a child differ from those of adults, a child is often less able to metabolize and inactivate toxic chemicals and can be particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects. Pesticides that may have no harmful effect on the mother can damage the nervous system, brain, reproductive organs, and endocrine system of a fetus.

Without public outcry, the government will continue to cave to big agribusiness

The fact that the government is allowing the use of pesticides on produce does not mean it is safe to eat that produce. A look back in history shows that the government once approved the use of such damaging and deadly pesticides as DDT, chordane, dursban and others. Without public outcry these chemicals might still be in use. Despite this threat to the population, the government moves very slowly, and only when the mountain of evidence against a pesticide can no longer be ignored. Pesticide manufacturers and agribusiness groups are some of the most powerful people. They have fought the government every step of the way to overrule the pesticide laws now in place.

However, the U.S. has stringent governance of pesticides and their use compared to many other countries likely to export produce. Produce from other countries often contains higher levels of pesticides, and these pesticides are more deadly. The EWG study tested only grapes from both domestic and foreign sources. Yet, the results of that testing revealed the glaring difference in magnitude. Grapes from foreign countries carried a pesticide load of 66, compared with grapes grown in the U.S. with a pesticide load of 44. This difference exists across the range of fruits and vegetables grown in foreign countries compared to those grown domestically. Included in this difference is produce that is canned and frozen as well as produce sold fresh. It also includes produce used in processed or prepared foods from foreign countries.

Pesticide is systemic

Many people are still operating under the myth that pesticide can be washed off. It is a myth that even health oriented grocers like to exploit by selling special vegetable washes for the uninformed. This research is a clear revelation that is not the case, as the studies were done after the produce was washed and in many cases peeled.

Pesticide is taken into the plant as it photosynthesizes, and it becomes contained in every cell of the plant. No amount of soaking, scrubbing, or washing with special compounds can get it out. Once pesticide is applied, the plant and the pesticide become one.

Corporate farming methods have increased the need for pesticides

Pesticide is expensive. Growers only use pesticide when they absolutely must. The need for pesticide is so great because crops produced by the large corporate farms are grown with very little regard for soil conditions, although it is the quality of the soil that determines the quality of the plant. Poor quality plants are weak and unable to fend off pests. When one pest has attacked a crop, it is weakened even further and is less able to fight off the next pest assault. This snowball effect is why some crops have so many different pesticides used on them.

A weakened plant riddled with pests is only able to produce a poor quality fruit or vegetable. This is why most conventionally grown produce is so lacking in taste and appeal compared to organically grown produce. The hidden factor is that most conventionally grown produce is lacking in nutritional quality as well.

The best choice: Say “no” to conventionally grown produce

There is much value in this research. People on budgets can look at it and tell instantly what conventional produce can be bought without taking a big chance with their health, and they can also see which produce should be bought only when it has been grown organically, by a local grower who can be trusted or grown in one’s own garden. It also underscores the need to buy only domestically grown produce or to grow your own. And it is a reminder that the consumer is ultimately king, because produce will only be grown conventionally as long as people are willing to buy it.

Yet this research is also a sad commentary on the state of the food supply. All that conventionally grown produce sitting in the stores will be eaten by someone. Out of all the produce tested, only onions and avocado showed to be truly safe. Buying any of the others when grown conventionally involves some kind of trade off between money and health, a trade off that should not have to be made.

For more information and complete list of pesticides on produce:
http://www.foodnews.org/
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/349263_pesticide30.html
http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/pesticides.htm

Reprinted from Natural News.

Researchers at the UCLA School of Public Health have found the first evidence that perfluorinated chemicals, or PFCs – chemicals that are widely used in everyday items such as food packaging, pesticides, clothing, upholstery, carpets and personal care products – may be associated with infertility in women.

Published online in Human Reproduction, Europe’s leading reproductive medicine journal, the study found that women who had higher levels of perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) in their blood took longer to become pregnant than women with lower levels.

The UCLA researchers used data from the Danish National Birth Cohort to assess whether levels of PFOS and PFOA in pregnant women’s plasma were associated with a longer time to pregnancy. A total of 1,240 women were included in their analyses.

Blood samples were first taken between 4 and 14 weeks into the pregnancy so that concentrations of PFOS and PFOA could be measured. The researchers also interviewed the women at around the 12th week of pregnancy to find out whether the pregnancy was planned or not and how long it took them to become pregnant. Infertility was defined as a time to pregnancy of longer than 12 months or a situation in which infertility treatments were used to establish the pregnancy, and the results were adjusted for potential confounding factors such as age, lifestyle and socioeconomic status.

The level of PFOS in the women’s plasma ranged from 6.4 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) to 106.7 ng/ml, and from less than 1 ng/ml to 41.5 ng/ml for PFOA.

The researchers divided the women’s levels of PFOS/PFOA into four quartiles and found that, compared with women with the lowest levels of exposure, the likelihood of infertility increased by 70 to 134 percent for women in the higher three quartiles of PFOS exposure and by 60 to 154 percent for women in the higher three quartiles of PFOA exposure.

“Perfluorooctanoate and perfluorooctane sulfonate were considered to be biologically inactive, but recently, animal studies have shown that these chemicals may have a variety of toxic effects on the liver, immune system and developmental and reproductive organs,” said UCLA researcher Chunyuan Fei, the study’s first author. “Very few human studies have been done, but one of our earlier studies showed that PFOA, although not PFOS, may impair the growth of babies in the womb, and another two epidemiological studies linked PFOA and PFOS to impaired fetal growth.”

“As far as we know, this is the first study to assess the associations between PFOA and PFOS levels in plasma with time to pregnancy in humans,” said principal investigator Jørn Olsen, chair of the department of epidemiology at the UCLA School of Public Health. “We are waiting for further studies to replicate our findings in order to discover whether the chemicals should be added to the list of risk factors for infertility.”

In addition to being found in household goods, PFCs, the class of chemicals to which PFOS and PFOA belong, are used in manufacturing processes involving industrial surfactants and emulsifiers. They persist in the environment and in the body for decades.

The researchers believe that although they measured the PFOS/PFOA levels after pregnancy was established, these levels probably did not change significantly from the time before pregnancy. Men’s sperm quality could also be affected by PFCs and might, therefore, contribute to the associations between PFC levels and time to pregnancy, since couples would tend to be sharing the same lifestyles and have similar exposures. However, the researchers did not have data on PFC levels in fathers.

“Studies on sperm quality and PFOA/PFOS are certainly warranted,” Olsen said.

The researchers say the biological mechanisms by which exposure to PFOS and PFOA might reduce fertility are unknown, but PFCs may interfere with hormones that are involved in reproduction.

“Our data showed that higher proportions of women reported irregular menstrual periods in the upper three quartiles of PFOA and PFOS, compared with the lowest, and so this could indicate a possible pathway,” Fei said.

Reprinted from University of California – Los Angeles.

Our world is awash with petro-chemicals. From plastics to pesticides they are integral to modern life. Wayne Ellwood argues that we are all paying the price for the release of these hazardous substances.

‘Every time I come here my body gets sad and angry at the same time,’ says Ron Plain. ‘You can’t put into words what it means to me.’

We’ve just tumbled out of Ron’s jeep near the end of a three-hour tour of Sarnia, Ontario’s ‘chemical valley’. Ron calls it his ‘toxic tour’. He’s done it dozens of times so the patter is easy and familiar. Sarnia is a gritty blue-collar community of 70,000 people at the top of the St Clair River, on the Canadian side, about a 100 kilometres north of Detroit. The river is wide and fast-flowing here, a natural link from Lake Huron, south to Lake Erie and east to Lake Ontario.

Ron is a member of the Chippewa First Nation of Aamjiwnaang and we’ve stopped at his community’s cemetery, a quiet patch of land ringed by a high steel fence. He’s 46 years old but tells me he doesn’t expect to make it to 60. Ron points out the graves of his parents, his grandparents and great grandparents, his aunts and uncles. Carbon dating shows his ancestors have been living in this area of southern Ontario for 6,000 years. It’s a warm day in early spring and the trees are just starting to leaf out. But nothing can hide the looming petro-chemical plant which abuts the graveyard. A tall chimney burns with an orange flame in the bright sun. To the east, a few hundred yards away, is a parking lot and another chemical complex. The cemetery is a microcosm of the whole reserve. Aamjiwnaang is literally surrounded by dozens of chemical plants. The community of 900 souls on the southern edge of Sarnia sits in the middle of the densest collection of petro-chemical industries in Canada and one of the densest in North America. There are 62 plants within a 25-kilometre radius, 40 per cent of the country’s total. The players include some of the word’s biggest and most powerful corporations – Dow, Shell, Nova, Bayer and Imperial Oil (Exxon) all operate within five kilometres of the reserve, most of them 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Gender bending

In 2005, according to a study by the environmental NGO Ecojustice, these factories released more than 131,000 tonnes of pollutants into the air – a toxic load of 1,800 kilograms for every resident of Sarnia and the Chippewa reserve.¹ There is growing evidence that both Aamjiwnaang and the local townspeople are suffering a range of serious health problems as a result of this rain of toxic chemicals. A community-wide survey carried out with the Sarnia Occupation Health Clinic in 2004-05 found widespread cancers, kidney and thyroid problems. Asthma is ubiquitous (40 per cent of Aamjiwnaang residents use an inhaler) and 23 per cent of children aged 5 to 16 had learning and behavioural problems.

But two of the survey’s findings were particularly unsettling and sparked worldwide attention. The first was an unusually high miscarriage rate – 39 per cent of women on the reserve had experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth. The second was a significant shift in the sex ratio of live births. Starting in the late 1990s the number of boys being born on the reserve began to plummet. Fewer than 35 per cent of live births were male compared to the normal average of just over 50 per cent.  No-one knows for sure what is causing this skewed birth pattern. But there is a strong suspicion that gender-bending pollutants are at the root of the problem.

Research by pioneering scientists like Dr Theo Colborn in the early 1990s showed that common synthetic chemicals introduced into the environment over the past half-century could mimic natural hormones, alter sexual and neurological development and impair reproduction. Dozens of studies have documented the impact of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) on animals, frogs, fish and birds with deformed genitals, brain damage, cancers and damaged reproductive systems. EDCs have also been linked to declining male testosterone levels and declining male birth rates in areas with concentrated chemical industries.

Many of the animal studies were in the Great Lakes bioregion where Aamjiwnaang is also situated – an area with a history of polluting heavy industries.

Jim Brophy, Director of the Occupation Health Clinic for Ontario Workers in Sarnia, knows the district well. His centre helped map the pattern of illness and disease in Aamjiwnaang. ‘Millions of tons of reproductive toxins are spewed out by these facilities year in, year out. Their effect on animal life has been well documented throughout the Great Lakes. To think these poisons would affect everything else and not the human population is bizarre.’

Rachel Carson, whose book Silent Spring launched the environmental movement nearly 50 years ago, would have been outraged but not surprised by the findings at Aamjiwnaang.

‘The chemical war is never won and all life is caught in its violent crossfire,’ she wrote. It was Carson who first promoted the notion of ecology, the complex web that binds human life to the natural world. ‘The serious student of earth history knows that neither life nor the physical world that supports it exists in little isolated compartments… harmful substances released into the environment return in time to create problems for mankind… We cannot think of the living organism alone; nor can we think of the physical environment as a separate entity. The two exist together, each acting on the other to form an ecological complex or ecosystem.’²

Carson’s warnings about the toxic nature of industrial society were prescient. Weight of evidence is building that the millions of tons of chemicals released into the environment are altering the basic foundations of life. Male fertility in the West has dropped by an estimated 50 per cent since 1940; breast cancer, testicular cancer and prostate cancer have jumped by 200 to 300 per cent. More and more male babies are being born with genital abnormalities.³

Families tested

We are living in a stew of toxic chemicals, most of which did not exist before modern synthetic chemistry was born in the crucible of World War Two. Estimates vary – there are more than 80,000 chemicals in industrial production today with hundreds added each year. Few have been tested for their effect on human health or the environment. And, critically, there is almost no knowledge of how chemicals interact with each other to affect our health or the wider environment. When the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was passed in the US in 1976, more than 62,000 chemicals were ‘grandfathered’ into the market – ie no testing, no questions asked. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) admits that 95 per cent of all chemicals in the US have not undergone even minimal testing for toxicity. In the European Union (EU) it’s estimated that two-thirds of the 30,000 most commonly used chemicals have not been vetted. The EPA has banned just five chemicals in the past quarter-century.⁴

All of us live with this toxic burden. The poor, the marginalized, people of colour, those who are cheek-by-jowl with industrial plants, suffer the most – the Chippewa of Aamjiwnaang are a case in point. But, as Rachel Carson understood, where the environment is concerned we all live downstream.

Detailed analyses across Europe, Canada and the US have found hundreds of dangerous chemicals in the blood and urine of ordinary citizens. In Europe, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) tested three generations of women and found everything from banned pesticides like DDT to deadly PCBs. When the Environmental Working Group in the US tested the umbilical cords of 10 infants in 2005 scientists discovered more than 280 chemicals. Greenpeace came up with similar numbers in Europe.⁵ In Canada, the NGO Environmental Defence tested five families from British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. Those included seven children, five parents and one grandparent. On average, 32 chemicals were in each parent and 23 in each child. Of the 46 chemicals detected in total: 38 were cancer-causing substances; 38 were chemicals that can harm reproduction and child development; 19 can harm the nervous system; 23 can disrupt the hormone system; and 12 chemicals were linked to respiratory illnesses.⁶

The Canadian study found that children were less polluted than their parents by PCBs and organochlorine pesticides, most of which were banned before the children were born – an indication that regulatory action can make a difference. But the study also found that some children were more polluted than their parents by chemicals still in use. These included PFCs (used as stain and water repellents in clothing and furniture and for non-stick cookware) and PBDE flame-retardants.

‘Safe’ household items

Many of these chemicals are linked not just to the petro-chemical industry but to the toxins that infuse our daily lives: solvents, detergents, cosmetics, herbicides, pesticides – plastics. As the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center concluded in its recent study of chemical contamination: ‘much of our exposure may be from products we have assumed to be safe for use.’⁷

Recent concern has focused on plastic, perhaps the most ubiquitous material of the modern age. The profusion of plastic has peppered the world with potentially deadly chemicals. One of the most powerful is bisphenol A (BPA), the lifeblood of the plastics industry. Nearly three million tons of the stuff is manufactured every year. It’s used to make polycarbonate plastic, a rigid hard plastic used in everything from baby bottles and sports water bottles to CDs, DVDs, dental sealants and the resin lining food and drink containers. Polycarbonate plastic can be clear or coloured and usually has the number ‘7′ marked on the bottom. The problem with BPA is that it doesn’t stay put. As plastic ages or when liquids are heated or stored in BPA containers the chemical migrates into our bodies. In 2005 the CDC in Atlanta found BPA in the urine of 95 per cent of Americans sampled. In November 2006, 38 leading scientific experts on BPA warned of ‘potential adverse health effects of exposure’ to polycarbonate plastic.

BPA was first identified as an estrogen mimic in 1936. Hundreds of animal studies have shown that low-dose exposure to BPA could lead to a range of human health problems including reproductive tract abnormalities, breast and prostate cancer, spontaneous miscarriage, type 2 diabetes and obesity.

The evidence is not conclusive. Frederick Vom Saal of the University of Missouri, a leading researcher on the health effects of BPA, admits as much. ‘We don’t know for sure,’ he says. ‘Some of these trends are so prevalent they almost seem normal: abnormal puberty changes, fertility difficulties for both men and women, breast cancer, prostate cancer. All of these trends parallel the onset of the plastics revolution… Part of this is just connecting the dots.’⁵

The tide is turning

Although the plastics industry continues to deny the risks of BPA, the tide is turning. Industry officials brushed aside critics of BPA, claiming that the amounts found in humans were so small as to be insignificant. But hormone-mimicking chemicals like BPA don’t work that way. In fact researchers have found that endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are more dangerous at lower doses, a notion which overturns the traditional pharmacological view that ‘the dose makes the poison’.  ‘At low doses hormones stimulate their own receptors,’ says Vom Saal. ‘At higher doses they inhibit their responses.’⁸

In April 2008 Canada became the first country to limit BPA exposure, labelling the chemical ‘a dangerous substance’. Polycarbonate plastic baby bottles were banned and strict targets set for BPA migration from infant formula cans. Within days major BPA manufacturers threw in the towel, including Wal-Mart, Toys R Us and Playtex.

BPA is one of hundreds of synthetic chemicals that alter gene behaviour, what writer Pete Myers calls ‘gene hijacking’.⁹  Other plastic additives with the same gender-bending properties include phthalates and brominated flame-retardants (BPDEs). Phthalates are an essential ingredient in one of the most common of all plastics, PVC. They are used to make vinyl soft and pliable. You can find them in thousands of products, from squishy children’s toys and vinyl shower curtains to medical tubing. The chemical is also found in personal care products – shampoos, soaps, fragrances, and as a coating on some pills. ‘Phthalate syndrome’ is the term scientists coined to describe the constellation of symptoms found in animal studies. These include reduced penis size, lower sperm count, incomplete male genital development, infertility and testicular cancer. The EU has banned phthalates in children’s toys and the state of California has followed suit.

The third major group of plastic toxins are BPDEs. Half of these flame-retardants are used in the casings of myriad consumer electronics – computers, cell phones, printers, TVs, you name it. BPDEs are both persistent – they don’t break down easily in the environment – and bio-accumulative. They build up in the bodies of animals and humans through the food chain.  They also pass easily across the placental barrier in the developing foetus. BPDEs can act as endocrine disruptors and they can harm the brain of developing infants, disrupting learning and memory. They’ve also been linked to thyroid malfunctioning, reproductive problems and increased risk of testicular cancer. North Americans have levels of flame-retardants in their blood up to 40 times higher than people in Europe or Japan. ‘These compounds have the same properties as PCBs and DDT,’ says Ake Bergman, head of environmental chemistry at Stockholm University. ‘It’s just a matter of time before we have a toxic effect. We knew less about PCBs when they were banned than we know about BPDEs today… Didn’t we learn from PCBs?’¹⁰  Proven carcinogens, PCBs were banned in the 1970s. But because they bio-accumulate they are still found in the environment and in the bodies of animals and people.

Tomorrow’s tobacco

Sweden has been one of the main countries pushing the ‘precautionary principle’, a common-sense notion which the chemical industry, driven by a blinkered concern with profits and growth, has fought tooth and nail. The concept is simple: if a chemical looks like it may cause problems, let’s think twice about using it. Better safe than sorry, even if the science is not 100 per cent certain. The chemical giants (in league with Big Oil) reason differently: if it kills someone then it’s time to do something.

The US EPA approves 700 new chemicals a year on the assurance of the industry that they are safe. Meanwhile, there is growing public unease about the toxic storm that engulfs us. In June 2007, the EU adopted its REACH legislation (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) despite a full-throttle attempt by corporate lobbyists (especially from the powerful German chemical industry) and the Bush Administration to derail the law. The result is a compromise: companies have 11 years to prove safety and chemicals produced in volumes of less than 10 tonnes a year are exempt. But the basic principle of producer responsibility is firmly in place.  Companies can no longer sell a chemical without first providing information about its safety – an important breakthrough which should have global repercussions. Elsewhere environmental and citizens’ groups are advocating ‘right to know’ legislation so polluters can no longer hide their actions from public scrutiny. Power is slowly shifting. There is a growing consensus that the current model is bankrupt. Critics predict that in 10 years the fallout from the petro-chemical and plastics plague will rank with tobacco and pesticides as a major global public health issue.

Back in Aamjiwnaang, Ron Plain would be the first to agree. He’s not about to give up his fight to force industry to clean up its act.

‘Every one of these people tells me to keep going,’ he says, gesturing to his ancestor’s graves. ‘I won’t allow them to be forgotten. This is our connection, this is who we are.’

1. E MacDonald, S Rang, Ecojustice, ‘Exposing Canada’s Chemical Valley’, Toronto, October 2007, www.ecojustice.ca
2. JB Foster, B Clark, ‘Rachel Carson’s Ecological Critique’, Monthly Review, New York, February 2008
3. Robert Allen, The Dioxin War, Pluto Press, London, 2004
4. Mark Schapiro, Exposed: the toxic chemistry of everyday products, Chelsea Green, White River Junction, Vermont, 2007
5. Libby McDonald, The Toxic Sandbox, Penguin, New York, 2007
6. ‘Pollution in Canadian Families’, Environmental Defence, Toronto, June 2006, www.toxicnation.ca
7. Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center, ‘Is It In Us? Chemical Contamination in Our Bodies’, Bolinas, California 2007, www.isitinus.com
8. Martin Mittelstaedt, ‘Inherently toxic chemical faces its future’, Globe & Mail, 8 April 2007
9. Pete Myers, ‘Good genes gone bad’, American Prospect, April 2006
10. Maria Cone, ‘Cause for alarm over chemicals’, Los Angeles Times, 20 April 2003.

Reprinted from New Internationalist.

But this message may be too simplistic. Over the past decade, scientists have begun conducting sophisticated comparisons of foods grown in organic and conventional farming systems. They’re finding that not all apples (or tomatoes, kiwis, or milk) are equal, especially when in comes to nutrient and pesticide levels. How farmers grow their crops affects, sometimes dramatically, not only how nutritious food is, but also how safe it is to eat. It may well be that a federal food policy that fails to acknowledge the connection between what happens on the farm and the healthfulness of foods is enough to make a nation sick.

The Results Are In

In the late 1990s, researcher Anne-Marie Mayer looked at data gathered by the British government from the 1930s to the 1980s on the mineral contents of 20 raw fruits and vegetables. She found that levels of calcium, magnesium, copper, and sodium in vegetables, and of magnesium, iron, copper, and potassium in fruit had dropped significantly.

The 50-year period of Mayer’s study coincides with the post World War II escalation of synthetic nitrogen and pesticide use on farms. These agri-chemicals allowed farmers to bypass the methods of maintaining soil fertility by replenishing soil organic matter with cover crops, manure, and compost, and of controlling pests with crop rotation and inter-cropping. Reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides became a defining characteristic of conventional farming, while farmers who eschewed the use of agri-chemicals came to be considered organic.

In 2004, Donald R. Davis, a research associate with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, published a similar analysis of data collected by the USDA in 1950 and again in 1999 on the levels of 13 nutrients in more than 40 food crops. Davis found that while seven nutrients showed no significant changes, protein declined by six percent; phosphorous, iron, and calcium declined between nine percent and 16 percent; ascorbic acid (a precursor of Vitamin C) declined 15 percent; and riboflavin declined 38 percent. Breeding for characteristics like yield, rapid growth, and storage life at the expense of taste and quality were likely contributing to the decline, Davis hypothesized. The “dilution effect,” whereby fertilization practices cause harvest weight and dry matter to increase more rapidly than nutrient accumulation can occur, probably also played a role, Davis suggested.

Meanwhile, researchers at the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania were seeing a trade-off between use of synthetic fertilizers and food nutrient values in the Institute’s Farming System Trial.

“We looked at the major and minor nutrients of oat leaves and seeds, grown after 22 years of differentiation under conventional and organic systems,” says Paul Hepperly, research and training manager at the Institute. “We found a direct correlation between the increase of organic matter and the amount of individual minerals in the oat leaves and seeds. The increase in minerals ranged from about seven percent for potassium, up to 74 percent for boron. On average, it was between 20 and 25 percent for all the elements we looked at, and we looked at nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, iron, manganese, copper, boron, and zinc. The production practices used on these oats was completely the same the year they were planted – the plots varied only by the legacy of what had happened to the soil as a result of the previous farming practices. This showed how dramatic the soil change had been and its effect on the nutrient content of the plant. We’ve done these tests not only on oats but also on wheat, corn, soybeans, tomatoes, peppers, and carrots, and we consistently find that the organic heritage improves soil and improves the mineral content of the food products.”

Probably due in part to a fertilizer effect, and partly because the use of chemical pesticides dampens the mobilization of a plant’s own defenses, conventionally grown whole foods also often have lower levels of antioxidants and other beneficial phytochemicals than the same foods grown organically.

Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at the Organic Center and former executive director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences, maintains a database of all the studies published since 1980 that compare the nutrient levels of organic and conventional foods. His analysis of food comparison studies shows that, on average, conventionally grown fruits and vegetables have 30 percent fewer antioxidants than their organically grown counterparts. This makes enough of a difference, says Benbrook, that “consumption of organic produce will increase average daily antioxidant intake by about as much as an additional serving of most fruits and vegetables.”

The public health implications of farming methods that restore food nutrient density are tantalizing. Several studies released in 2007 suggest that moving US agriculture toward organic practices could help to reduce the incidence of some of our nation’s most debilitating and costly chronic diseases.

At the University of California at Davis, researchers compared organic and conventional tomatoes. They found that 10-year mean levels of quercetin were 79 percent higher in organic tomatoes than in conventional tomatoes, and levels of kaempferol were 97 percent higher. Quercetin and kaempferol are flavonoids, which epidemiological studies suggest offer protection from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other age-related diseases.

A study led by Lukas Rist, head of research at the Paracelsus Hospital in Switzerland, demonstrated how farm practices affect health even several levels up the food chain. Rist analyzed milk samples from 312 breastfeeding mothers. He found that mothers consuming at least 90 percent of their dairy and meat from organic sources have 36 percent higher levels of rumenic acid in their breast milk than mothers eating conventional dairy and meat. Rumenic acid is one of a group of compounds that nutritional research suggests have anti-carcinogenic, anti-diabetic, and immune-modulating effects, and that favorably influence body fat composition.

Hay Belly Nation

Eager as we are to connect the dots between specific nutrients and specific health benefits, we’re still a long way from being able to understand or predict the effect of raising or lowering nutrient levels in one food or another. As Michael Pollan writes in his new book In Defense of Food, “Even the simplest food is a hopelessly complicated thing to analyze, a virtual wilderness of chemical compounds, many of which exist in intricate and dynamic relation to one another, and all of which together are in the process of changing from one state to another.”

Long-term human feeding trials are notoriously difficult to control, and, though epidemiological studies show a correlation between eating fruits and vegetables and decreased incidence of disease, these studies don’t identify which compounds in the food correspond with which health effects.

But even granting the many gaps in our knowledge of nutrient and health interactions, reducing the nutrient density of our whole foods seems a poor public health gamble. Americans already have trouble consuming the recommended daily amounts of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Diminishing the nutrient levels in the servings we do eat would seem to only compound our dietary problems.

Doctors don’t see many patients walk into their clinics with obvious deficiency-related illnesses like scurvy, says Dr. Alan Greene, attending physician at Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. But doctors are, he says, seeing a lot of suboptimal intake of nutrients. “For instance, a huge percentage of the population doesn’t get its recommended levels of calcium. Pregnant adult women should be getting 1,000 milligrams of calcium. By the time a healthy baby is born, the baby will have about 30,000 milligrams of calcium in its body, and all of that has to come from mom’s diet or mom’s body. The average mom is only getting about 700 milligrams a day during pregnancy, so that gap is mostly coming out of her bones, and is related to the osteoporosis we’re seeing later.”

Greene encourages patients to include fresh produce in their diets and to eat organic as much as possible. “I’ll talk about how fruits and vegetables are really important, and that when you choose organic you’re getting more of the great stuff, less of the bad stuff.”

Unfortunately (or fortunately for those of us who like to eat), we haven’t yet been able to design nutrient supplements that provide the same benefits as eating whole foods. “In all well-designed dietary intervention trials, where a carefully monitored amount of nutrients – vitamin C, vitamin E, antioxidants, etc. – were delivered to the animals or people in the form of fresh whole foods versus the same levels in the form of supplements, the animals or people who ate the whole foods universally responded better and were healthier,” says Benbrook of the Organic Center.

Ironically, less nutrient dense foods may be partly why we’re eating more and more. Phytochemicals contribute to the satisfaction we derive from foods. Some contribute to foods’ flavor profiles, while others, like resveratrol, help trigger satiety. It could even be that the second helping is an instinctive attempt to secure sufficient micronutrients.

“In cattle and animals, this is known as hay belly,” says Hepperly at the Rodale Institute. “If your hay gets rained on, you wind up with very low-quality hay because the water leaches out all the nutrients. You’ll see animals eating more of this hay than they normally would. They get these big bellies, and they’re unhealthy, but they’re just trying to get their nutrients. Ranchers know that if they have animals with hay belly, they have poor quality food. What we’ve done with the erosion of nutrient content in our foods – what we’ve done with additives, processing, and artificial production methods – is that we have basically produced a hay belly nation.”

Pesticides for Breakfast

The toxicity of many of the chemical pesticides used by conventional farmers is of little dispute. Indeed, the EPA’s pesticide registration process is based upon identifying a level of exposure that is acutely toxic to lab animals, then working backwards to identify an exposure level that the EPA feels poses an acceptable threat to human and environmental health.

As our understanding of the body’s biochemistry advances, however, EPA-sanctioned levels of pesticide exposure are becoming harder to swallow.

Caroline Cox is the research director for the Center for Environmental Health based in Oakland, California. One of her favorite examples of the complex interactions of pesticides comes from a study undertaken by Texas Tech University researchers.

“The researchers were looking at possible hormonal effects of the herbicide Roundup, and they looked at the production of male sex hormones,” Cox says. “Before a sex hormone can be made, cholesterol has to be carried by a special ‘dump-truck’ molecule from the blood vessel to the place in the cell where the hormone is synthesized. What the researchers found was that one of the ingredients in Roundup interferes with the production of that dump-truck carrier molecule. You’d have trouble dreaming up something so complicated. It’s no wonder that it has taken us decades to identify effects like that.”

Cox and other toxicology experts disagree that “the dose makes the poison,” the rationale underlying the EPA approach to regulating pesticides. It may be that there is no safe dose for many of the pesticides we are regularly exposed to.

“If you think of pesticide use starting right around World War II, since that time science has progressed and researchers have gotten more and more sophisticated in the kinds of science that they can do,” she says. “And what they are doing is identifying effects of pesticides at lower and lower exposure levels. For example, there are studies on amphibians that find effects from atrazine [used to control weeds in almost two-thirds of all US corn and sorghum acreage] at the tenth of a part per billion level, which is such a tiny amount that it is almost impossible to grasp just how small an amount that is. … What they found was this condition called intersex in the frogs, meaning that the frogs had both male and female sex organs.”

A glance at the data gathered for the USDA Pesticide Data Program reveals that even at breakfast we consume several servings of pesticides. In 2005, 88 percent of apples, 92 percent of milk samples, 52 percent of orange juice samples, 67 percent of wheat samples, and 75 percent of water samples were contaminated with pesticides ranging from herbicides to post-harvest fungicides. None of these pesticides we eat for breakfast gets a clean bill of health. The EPA lists some as probable carcinogens, and others as affecting reproductive and nervous systems.

Exactly how each of us tolerates daily low doses of pesticides will vary according to our genetic heritage, the other industrial toxins we’re exposed to, our health, and our age. The very youngest and oldest of us will probably suffer the most damage from pesticide exposure. “At particular moments of development, the immune and neurological systems of infants are profoundly vulnerable to exposure to chemicals,” says Benbrook at the Organic Center. “And in the case of the elderly, their livers don’t work as well at detoxifying chemicals as they did in the middle part of their lives.”

Logically, the more often we can eat food grown without pesticides, the fewer pesticides we’ll consume. The connection between food choices and pesticide consumption was demonstrated in a 2006 study led by Chensheng Lu of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Lu measured the metabolites of organophosphorus pesticides in children’s urine as the children alternated between eating conventional and organic diets for five days at a stretch. Results of the study showed that metabolites of two organophosphorus pesticides commonly used in agriculture decreased to nondetectable levels when the children’s diets were switched to organic and quickly escalated to detectable levels when the children returned to their normal conventional diets.

Daily doses of pesticides are particularly unappetizing given the existence of a highly productive model of farming that doesn’t need these toxic chemicals. “If you could give me a magic wand and I could make any changes that I want, I would have the EPA researching, developing, and helping farmers implement sustainable agricultural processes so they don’t need pesticides,” Cox says. “There are better ways to manage pests. Organic is a great example that it can be done.”

200,000 Farmers NeededCox’s wish hints at what official acknowledgement of the interaction between farming practices and the healthfulness of our food could mean. As a country, we’re stuck in the mode of regulating and mitigating the negative effects of conventional farming.We could instead be spending our time and resources expanding and improving upon the organic model of food production and removing the structural barriers that limit regular access to organic food to a geographic and economic elite.

“Organic will be five to eight percent of the US food economy in the next couple of years,” says Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF). “But to go from five percent to 40 is another story. That will involve policy work and institutional change.”

For starters, the nation’s agricultural colleges will need to develop the capacity to train more organic farmers. “Organic systems are more complex and biologically intricate compared to a conventional agri-chemical based production system,” says Hepperly of the Rodale Institute. “Right now, the official number of organic farmers is approaching 20,000 in the United States. If we were going to have 30 percent of US agriculture in organic, we’d have to have 200,000 organic farmers. We’re talking an enormous ramp-up in our education system.”

For that to happen, Congressional action is sorely needed to redirect the Farm Bill away from status quo conventional farming and toward farm and food healthfulness.

“Overall, the USDA has been spending about $2 billion per year on research, extension, education, economics and statistics. Less than one percent is specifically directed at the needs of organic production, processing, and marketing,” Mark Lipson of OFRF testified before the newly formed House Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture in April 2007.

The list of structural barriers goes on. Because there isn’t good pricing data for organic crops, organic growers pay a five percent penalty surcharge on crop insurance. When organic growers incur an insured loss, they are repaid at conventional crop prices even though conventional prices are usually far lower than organic prices.

Many regions lack the distribution infrastructure even to supply organic farmers with compost. “Organic is highly geocentric,” says Steve Diver, who worked for 18 years for the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA). “The organic infrastructure sucks to hell for most of the heartland of the country.” In California, Diver says, farmers can pick up the phone and order whatever soil amendments they need, in whatever quantities, from a local dealer who will deliver the goods right to the farm. But in many parts of the South, five to six farmers have to band together, order a 22-ton semi-truck load from out of state, then off-load the product into their own vehicles and truck it home.

Organic meat producers lack access to slaughterhouses. “You can’t sell meat unless it’s been slaughtered by USDA packing houses, and these slaughterhouses are mostly at CAFOs [concentrated animal feeding operations],” says Scowcroft. CAFO slaughterhouses generally won’t deal with the smaller numbers of animals that most organic meat producers are slaughtering at any one time. Even when they do, the CAFO slaughterhouse has to first be steam-cleaned and sterilized before animals can be slaughtered there for the meat to still qualify as certified organic. “And even then,” says Scowcroft, “there are a lot of chemicals used in the sterilization and the cleaning process, so what you really need are dedicated certified organic slaughter rooms.”

You Can Ask, But They Won’t TellTry to get guidance from the federal government on the potential health benefits of eating organic, and you’ll find your questions quickly and politely deflected. The US Department of Health and Human Services will defer to its Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA spokespeople will say that “organic” is a term used by the USDA, not the FDA, and that the FDA has no policy on organics. The USDA will say that its mandate does not extend to passing judgment on the relative safety and nutritional benefits of organic versus conventional foods, and that the USDA’s task is simply to regulate use of the “certified organic” label.With that passing of the apple, the federal government excuses itself from exploring whether conventional farming practices compromise the nutritional benefits of whole foods, and whether modern organic farming offers a model of food production that conveys significant health benefits. It’s anyone’s guess how many more studies will be needed before the relative merits of foods produced in different farming systems can become a topic of discussion among federal food and health officials. Agri-chemical companies led by Monsanto will certainly use their considerable influence to delay that day as long as possible.

In the meantime, we will keep eating – but we need to ask just how well?

Deborah Rich raises olives and two children in Monterey County, California, and frequently writes about the interaction of human nature and nature for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Reprinted from the Spring 2008 issue of Earth Island Journal available by membership.

Why Should You Care About Pesticides?

There is growing consensus in the scientific community that small doses of pesticides and other chemicals can adversely affect people, especially during vulnerable periods of fetal development and childhood when exposures can have long lasting effects. Because the toxic effects of pesticides are worrisome, not well understood, or in some cases completely unstudied, shoppers are wise to minimize exposure to pesticides whenever possible.

Will Washing and Peeling Help?

Nearly all of the data used to create these lists already considers how people typically wash and prepare produce (for example, apples are washed before testing, bananas are peeled). While washing and rinsing fresh produce may reduce levels of some pesticides, it does not eliminate them. Peeling also reduces exposures, but valuable nutrients often go down the drain with the peel. The best option is to eat a varied diet, wash all produce, and choose organic when possible to reduce exposure to potentially harmful chemicals.

How This Guide Was Developed

The produce ranking was developed by analysts at the not-for-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) based on the results of nearly 43,000 tests for pesticides on produce collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between 2000 and 2005. A detailed description of the criteria used in developing the rankings is available as well as a full list of fresh fruits and vegetables that have been tested (see below).

EWG is a not-for-profit environmental research organization dedicated to improving public health and protecting the environment by reducing pollution in air, water and food. For more information please visit http://www.ewg.org/.

The Full List: 43 Fruits & Veggies

Note: We ranked a total of 44 different fruits and vegetables but grapes are listed twice because we looked at both domestic and imported samples.

Get a copy of the guide here

View Full Data Set

Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce by Environmental Working Group is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.