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http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Trashing_organic_foods

Trashing organic foods

From Disinfopedia, the encyclopedia of propaganda.

Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute is the source of a misleading claim that

organic food is more dangerous to eat than food produced using chemical

pesticides.

" According to recent data compiled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control

(CDC), people who eat organic and 'natural' foods are eight times as likely as

the rest of the population to be attacked by a deadly new strain of E. coli

bacteria (0157:H7), " Avery wrote in the Fall 1998 issue of American Outlook, a

Hudson Institute publication. This happens, he said, because organic food is

grown in animal manure, a known carrier of this nasty microbe. He said his data

came from Dr. Paul Mead, an epidemiologist at the CDC.

Avery delivered this message with op-eds that bore titles such as " The Silent

Killer in Organic Foods " that were disseminated by Bridge News to between 300

and 400 newspapers throughout the country and approximately 500,000 other

rs including government departments, central banks and businesses. This

claim seems to have taken on a life of its own. On August 25, 1999, for example,

the USDA's National Food Safety Database carried a story titled " Organic Food

Creates Higher Risk for Food Poisoning. " The story originated with US Newswire,

a service that electronically disseminates news releases. It quoted Dr. Robert

Tauxe, chief of the CDC's Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch, saying,

" Organic food means a food was grown in animal manure. "

Tauxe denies ever making that statement and says he believes the rumor

originated with Dennis Avery. After fielding numerous media queries on the

subject, CDC took the unusual step on January 14, 1999 of issuing a press

release stating, " The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not

conducted any study that compares or quantitates the specific risk for infection

with E. coli 0157:H7 and eating either conventionally grown or organic/natural

foods. " In addition, Tauxe says he called Avery to tell him to stop claiming

that the CDC was the source of this allegation. Avery responded by telling

Tauxe, " That's your interpretation, and I have mine. "

Avery claims his information came from Dr. Paul Mead, an epidemiologist who

works in Tauxe's division. Absolute bunk, says Mead. " What happened is that he

called me up and announced that eight percent of the outbreaks of foodborne

illness were from organic food. I took some exception to that and said I didn't

know him and what his purpose was, but our data don't support that. " Mead was

chagrined to hear that a year after this conversation took place, Avery is still

sourcing this phantom data back to him.

Contrary to Avery's claim, E. coli 0157:H7 contamination from manure is less

likely to occur on organic farms than in the factory farming system that Avery

supports. Fred Kirschenmann is an organic farmer and board chairman of the

private organic certification company Farm Verified Organic. He points out that

a single cow produces approximately 10 times as much fecal matter as a human

being. This means that a feedlot of 5,000 head of cattle would produce the same

amount of manure as 50,000 people. Yet modern conventional agriculture does not

regulate the use of raw manure in food crops, Kirschenmann says, and farmers are

spreading increasing amounts of it on their fields because it is too expensive

to truck away and they don't have anywhere else to put it.

Kirschenmann serves on the National Organic Standards Board which was charged by

Congress to advise the USDA in formulating its legal standards defining organic

food. " In organic systems, most animals have to have access to pasture, so they

can't be concentrated in huge feedlots, " he says, adding that Avery's charge

that organic food is grown in manure is misleading, at best. " Organic farmers

use manure, but virtually every certification organization I know of doesn't

allow raw manure. Raw manure must either be composted or applied long enough in

advance that the bacteria is no longer active, " he said, adding that this

requirement is being written into USDA's proposed rules.

Dr. Robert Elder, a research microbiologist at the USDA's Meat Animal Research

Center in Clay Center, Nebraska, specializes in measuring E. coli 0157:H7 in

cattle. He says this deadly bacteria could be prevented from contaminating meat

carcasses before they are ground into hamburger. " If you took meticulous time

with every single carcass to vigorously clean it, scrub it, and wash it down,

you could probably eliminate it, " he said. But, Elder added, considering that

the bigger plants are processing 3,000 to 4,000 animals a day--about 300 an

hour--adequate cleaning is impossible. And that is a huge problem for the

public. Elder's soon-to-be published research shows that in the summertime, when

E. coli 0157:H7 levels peak, 80 to 100 percent of the feedlot cattle he tested

carried the deadly 0157:H7 strain.

Despite a public debunking of Avery's statements in the New York Times in

February 1999, his bogus claims continue to spread and appear to be gaining

momentum. U.S. newspapers like the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Investor's Business

Daily, and the Journal of Commerce have run stories about killer organic food.

The story has also made its way to Canada and Europe, under headlines such as,

" Organic just means it's dirtier, more expensive, " " Organic food--'It's eight

times more likely to kill you' " and " Organic food link to E. coli deaths. "

External links

 

Karen Charman, " Saving the Planet with Pestilent Statistics, " PR Watch, 4th

Quarter 1999.

 

 

 

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