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OK....since I have been researching WMD's for the past year...and studying organophosphates and phosgenes...brought a question to my mind about organic foods....
Say Farmer 1 has an organic orchard and Farmer 2 sprays his orchard with phosgenes for pest control....what is to keep the birds and bees from traveling back and forth from one orchard to another...would Farmer 1 still be organic?....what about rain wash off.....if Farmer 1 lives downward from 2...
Cyndie who has had too much WFTU coffee...thanks to Tina..

crossposted from Tooville Chat

Well.....@#$#$ Cyndie lol!

I'd have to refresh my memory but I think that may be one of the differences between organic and *certified* organic. but is *ALL* organic always absolutely clear of chemicals? probably not as long as those birdie and bee trouble makers are out there..and oh those streams... But organic for the most part is pretty darn synthetic chemical free.

Go hug a birdie for me

hugs, Shauna

Shauna wrote:Well.....@#$#$ Cyndie lol!

I'd have to refresh my memory but I think that may be one of the differences between organic and *certified* organic. but is *ALL* organic always absolutely clear of chemicals? probably not as long as those birdie and bee trouble makers are out there..and oh those streams... But organic for the most part is pretty darn synthetic chemical free.

Go hug a birdie for me

hugs, Shauna

Cyndie mentioned this to me and I told her she made my brain hurt.

I said I had way too much coffee this morning..but I was reading somewhere that someone only eats organic....or something like that...and all I could think was....ya wanna bet??? so there you go....
Love,
The Grim Reaper...(or is it the Grin Keeper) LOL

Man!!! ........lol! No more coffee for you! Was it organic?

The organic stuff is pretty strick and even.....even if some other synthetic stuff blows into an organic field or what not it would be so minute. I'd have to look it all up but it may even be (can't clearly recall) that organic farms to be certified anyway have to be X miles away from conventional farms to avoid that spray and everything else you thought of

hugs,

Shauna

If I recall correctly, USDA organic foods (like chocolate for humans) only have to be 95% organic, so what little possible trasfer there might be (like Shauna said) from other places probably would not effect it too much.

So only eating 5% organophosphates and phogenes...makes me feel so much better..LOL
How do they test for the 95%? Are wind speeds and variations taken into these factors...how about acid rain, flooding etc...Just trying to make a point that a lot of people think they are eating certified organic...where there are still contaminates present....besides paying out the ying for them also...
I say Wash Wash Wash....then wash some more....

I have no idea how they test for it..
With foods made from organic ingredients, like chocolate, 95% of the ingredients have to be purely organic.
A lot of people like organic foods because they are not putting chemicals and whatnot into their bodies, the earth, or creating a market for it.
Organic food production has been increasing as the demand for it has. In my opinion, it's nice to know that more harmful things are being kept out of the ground, groundwater, animals, etc.

Wash wash wash no matter what Cyndie. Just dirt alone could be a potential problem with bacteria.

hugs,

Shauna

What does it mean to have something without chemicals? All physical things in this universe are made up of chemicals. A large fraction of all chemical structures are toxic. Because something occurs naturally certainly does NOT mean that it is harmless. Because it is synthetic does not necessarily mean that it is harmfull either. There are hundreds of different natural chemicals in everything we eat.

One of the examples of true chemical foolishness come from so called "organic ascorbic acid" This material is obtained from rose hipps and is refined to a pure chemical compound. Similar material produced from sugar is refined to the same purity and is absolutely identical in every respect and is considered somehow to be different!

What we are really talking about of course, is something very different--allowing toxic synthetic compounds that do not easily undergo biodegradation to be used in the production of food that remain in the food afterward. I fed some lettuce to a green cheeked conure one day, and he immediately became very ill, and nearly died.

We need to recognise that Mother Nature herself can be a real nasty girl. Some plants contain fluoroacetate--far more toxic than cyanide--and yet they contain no synthetic toxins. At least 20% of all plants produce alkaloids for protection against hungry animals. Most are toxic to a wide spectrum of animals including us and our birds.

Moulds often produce aflatoxins. There are certainly huge numbers of human deaths each year from cancers that result from this material getting into the human food chain. These materials again are NOT human produced.

Almost all foods contain natural toxins, some are far worse than others. Even common foods can contain substantial quantites of them. Parsnips contain furanocoumarins that are insecticides. Some lentils contain aminopropionitrile that causes an ailiment called lathrism. Cruciform vegetables contain isocyanate and several other toxic compounds, horse radish contains allyl isocyate that has been proposed as a war gas.

One should not be deceived into believing that because something is referred to as "certified organic food" that it necessarily is healthful. Certified organic cauliflower still contains thiocyanate, and parsnips will still contain furanocoumarins.

Cucumbers produced with high levels of synthetic fertiliser have very high levels of nitrate, but high levels of natural nitrogen fertiliser are just as high.

Note what I am saying here--calling something "organic" does not make it necessarily a wonderful healthy food.

I am also saying that when purified materials are involved it is truly idiotic to think that ones produced by living processes are at all different from synthetic ones. (Except that ones produced by living processes are always slightly radioactive from atmospheric Carbon 14, which is not present in petroleum and coal chemical feed stocks.)

Note I am call calling for MORE vigilence in what is fed rather than less! This also goes from what we eat ourselves!

Thanks Robert...I know you had posted a long time ago about Vitamins...Natural versus synthetic and the mirror image. I think we said that Vitamin E was one that was best to use the natural.
Cyndie...off on a different subject..Thanks.

Another problem that presents a risk for both us and our birds is the fact that toxicity tests are generally made using rats. There are many examples of things that are toxic to rats and not us or birds and vice versa.

Coumarin is really rather toxic to rats. The FDA tried for many years to keep coumarin out of the US food chain, and forbad using such things as tonka beans in foods. This concern was ill founded, the compound is NOT toxic to us, because we metabolise it differently than rates. It may even be beneficial. Coumarin is a very pleasant smelling and tasting material. It is the odour of sweet clover or tonka beans.

Another example is carvone from caraway plants. Carvone is the compound that gives caraway its flavour. Caraway is a poisonous plant for rats. In fact, if it were as toxic to us as rats, our lives would be at risk on eating a couple of rye bread sandwiches!

The practice of using rats to determine toxicity for other creatures can provide indications of toxicity, but often is wrong. One wonders what substances there are that are not toxic to rats but are to us and/or birds!

Avocados are said to be much more toxic to birds than mammals. The seeds are the most toxic part.

Stereoisomers are almost always different in their toxicity, sometimes one stereoisomer is toxic and another is not. Synthetic mixtures of stereoisomers are NOT the same as the materials that result from separation of them. (These are molecules that are mirror images of one another.)

I do not like feeding large amounts of any one thing to birds because of the possibility that the food could be toxic to them.

I discovered a wonderful web page that describes the chemical structures of a very large number of plants of various sorts. It describes the compounds in a large fraction of common plants and a few animals too.

It is a very interesting list. http://www.bojensen.net