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Companies that poison the people like this should be sanctioned, along with their owners. Greed and profiteering
They don't "poison the people" unless the pesticides are found in a toxic dose (they are not).

Of course, the legal limits are purposefully designed to be well below the LOAEL, and those companies that were found to contain levels above them should face consequences. But to claim they "poison the people" isn't true.

The toxic dose is a vague term. You may not die from exposure, but you can still have effects, such as infertility, cancers or endocrine disruption.
If we really want to be precise, we should talk about parts per million (PPM). Scientific research establishes a safe level of consumption in terms of PPM, below which there are no detectable health effects. Generally when you see alarmism about "pesticides found in food" they're orders of magnitude below the PPM that would have any effect on human health.
Exactly, scientific research established that DDT was perfectly safe, too! Scientists even used to eat it to "prove" that it was safe.

In reality it depends, being biology, "safe level" is also very relative since you don't know every effect the substance has on the body.

That's why pesticides and other chemicals such as bisphenols are regularly phased out, since effects can appear long after "scientific research" established it was "safe". Or it can affect certain populations, such as farmers, who get a high dose, or children, who are more sensitive than adults.

Others, such DDT, lead or cadmium, are accumulated in the body over a long period, and then start to show effects, even when the person has stopped eating it. Or can find their way later the food chain: Inuits would get poisoned when eating polar bear's meat, that was full of DDT from fields on the other side of the globe.

We update our beliefs as we get new data. There's not much else we can do.

There's a common thought pattern among conspiracy theorists. "Some conspiracies turn out to be real" so that justifies their belief in their very specific conspiracy theory. The same pattern occurs when we talk about chemicals in our diet or the environment. "Some chemicals turn out to be dangerous" but that doesn't prove that a specific concentration of a specific chemical is doing anything, unless we have data to support the claim.

Precaution principle exists, and in the case of food safety, "getting new data" make take years or be very costly.

For instance, bisphenols in plastics baby bottles were proved problematic after decades of use. Precaution principle would have recommended to avoid them (especially since they weren't necessary).

It's not trivial, and many businesses would rather see their consumers die than cut their margins. I remember buying some custom furniture; when it arrived it reeked of varnish smell. I called the factory, told them they didn't cure it correctly. Manager said "yeah we know, we know it's dangerous but people get cancers years later and you can't identify the source anyway" (true story).

There is certainly more that we can do. Ie being more careful with introducing new chemicals with largely unknown long term effects.

The burden of proof shouldn't be decades of research seeing thousands of people developing serious health issues and/or dying, and then reacting. It should be on companies, having lengthy and expensive process for approval and then continue reviewing. This is not some app release ffs, we talk about lives and health of billions, how much more we can fail our children if we fail this.

Or you know what, you can do that with you and your kids, but please allow me and my family to use more conservative approach, I am happy to pay a bit extra.

We have seen over and over again chemicals which are "safe to consume" or "not that bad" actually do have very severe effects. It's just very hard to link cause and effect. When someone dies of cancer we can't pinpoint it to coming from the pesticide on the blueberries they ate a few months ago.

We have all these terrible illnesses that we ascribe to bad luck, and then all of these new chemicals we haven't fully studied yet being sprayed on everything.

Even things we know for certain aren't "safe to consume" are harmless at small enough doses. If I drink chlorine at 1000 PPM it's going to kill me, but drinking it at 1 PPM (roughly the amount added to drinking water in many places, and well below the level in swimming pools) is considered harmless to humans and kills pathogens, so it's a net positive. It's possible that chlorine at 1 PPM causes cancer, but that's a claim that would require evidence.

The same argument applies to pesticide or any other substance. Without talking about specific numbers, it's just speculation.

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There's always a tradeoff between eating crops that will make you sick and kill you when you are 60 vs not eating enough nutritious food that will kill you when you are 40.
Wasn't the EU fresh from a scandal that they voted all sorts of laws, sued lots of EU companies, and then allowed Chinese companies to import lots of stuff that obviously violated all those laws for 20+ years?

From safety regulations to baby toys with lead paint.

The EU will probably do nothing again.

When it comes to safety regulations as with everything else, some countries do not succeed, others do not try
The EU has allowed large scale imports of chinese fake honey for the last 20 years.

All of the beekeeper associations complain about it, regularly conduct lab tests with honeys from supermarkets, most of them being not honey, or mixed with fake honey.

The EU of course has done nothing : the beekeepers aren't powerful enough to distribute the right bribes to the right people. Meanwhile the consumers buy glucose syrup at 15€/kg.

But hey, we have USB-C! It evenS out, right?

Its up to individual countries to do it no? They've been testing honey here recently and several brands got removed from stores.
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+1

The downvotes aren't surprising, people who have spent enough time on this orange site tend to lose the plot

What's an orange site?
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