Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
bluGill | on: EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
You are both correct. Organic means something specific. However what it means is not what most people think it means. People want healthy and good for the earth - that is not what organic gives you. Sometimes it does, but sometimes conventional ag (with all those scary chemicals) is better.
bluebarbet | parent
Yes, I get this argument. But everybody intuitively understands the basic proposition of organic. Namely: "We have not added anything to your food for which you don't have many thousands of years of evolutionary preparation." That is not pseudoscience, it's rational circumspection. Or, as the European Commission calls it, the "precautionary principle". Speaking for myself, I find it convincing.
bluGill | root | parent | next
Problem is we have modern science which in same cases has proven that the modern chemicals are less harmful. Remember lead was considered normal for many thousands of years
kube-system | root | parent | next
Yes, but we understand modern science as it pertains to both... which is why lead is controlled for both organic and non-organic farming.

Honestly curious, which of these is more harmful than the non-organic alternatives?

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-I/su...

bluGill | root | parent
I used lead as an example only because everyone actually understands why it's harmful. There are a number of chemicals that are more harmful, common vinegar for example in the concentrations that are useful, but nobody understands it because nobody has actually read the safety information on such chemicals.
kube-system | root | parent
I would imagine any agricultural use of vinegar as an organic chemical pales in comparison to it’s culinary use.
bluGill | root | parent
Agricultural use is a lot more concentrated though, which is important. In the case of vinegar this is about safety.

Though I don't know how much vinegar is used in ag - my facebook feed is full of people who don't need roundup because some concoction of vinegar, salt, and dish soap works - they never point out that you need PPE to work with this stuff that isn't required for roundup.

kube-system | root | parent
Agricultural use is not more concentrated than culinary use by the time it goes into my mouth. I've never tasted any vegetable off the shelf that was more sour than a pickle.

Occupational exposure is certainly a totally different story but the context of the story and root of this thread was about the consumer safety of the end product.

bluebarbet | root | parent
Modern science can only "prove" that something is not harmful on a timescale of a year or perhaps a decade, not a generation or more. If the precautionary principle had been applied in Roman times, lead would not have been considered safe. Nor asbestos, nor thalidomide, nor microplastics, nor a bunch of synthetic molecules - "proven safe" - that are routinely added to non-organic food in order to improve its yield or its cosmetic aspect or whatever. That was my point.
bluGill | root | parent
That is still better than organic, which doesn't even ask what science can show about chemicals. The obvious example is organic doesn't have GMOs, even though GMOs are the only foods we even try and prove safe. Everything else, what we just assumed, but nobody has ever actually checked.
bluebarbet | root | parent
The argument we are having here is essentially a classic of philosophy: empiricism versus rationalism. You keep arguing for the former; I am arguing for the latter. It is true that molecule X may not present an observable danger to health; it is also true that it may be reasonable to believe it does present one (most obviously because we do not have thousands of generations of evolutionary adaptation to it, as is the case with both lead and GMOs).

This dichotomy underpins a difference in regulation between the USA and Europe. As mentioned already, the EU Commission applies the "precautionary principle" in its legal regime for food and chemicals. This is not "unscientific". Empiricism has been more popular in the Anglophone world, but rationalism was one of the pillars of the scientific Enlightenment.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/precauti...

bluGill | root | parent
Why are you allowing chemicals with proven toxicity then?
account42 | root | parent
Are you sure the basic proposition of organic isn't "we can get people to pay more if we put on this label".
bluebarbet | root | parent
Speaking for myself, yes, I am sure. See previous comments for explanation.