{"id":32458,"date":"2015-08-20T04:00:24","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T08:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32458"},"modified":"2015-08-19T21:13:57","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T01:13:57","slug":"one-of-the-slickest-marketing-campaigns-of-our-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/08\/20\/one-of-the-slickest-marketing-campaigns-of-our-time\/","title":{"rendered":"One of the slickest marketing campaigns of our time"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Forbes<\/em>, Henry I. Miller and Drew L. Kershen<\/a> explain why they think organic farming is, as they term it, a “colossal hoax” that promises far more than it can possibly deliver:<\/p>\n

Consumers of organic foods are getting both more and less than they bargained for. On both counts, it\u2019s not good.<\/p>\n

Many people who pay the huge premium \u2014 often more than 100% \u2014 for organic foods do so because they\u2019re afraid of pesticides. If that\u2019s their rationale, they misunderstand the nuances of organic agriculture. Although it\u2019s true that synthetic chemical pesticides are generally prohibited, there is a lengthy list of exceptions listed in the Organic Foods Production Act, while most \u201cnatural\u201d ones are permitted. However, \u201corganic\u201d pesticides can be toxic. As evolutionary biologist Christie Wilcox explained in a 2012 Scientific American<\/em> article (\u201cAre lower pesticide residues a good reason to buy organic? Probably not.\u201d): \u201cOrganic pesticides pose the same health risks as non-organic ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another poorly recognized aspect of this issue is that the vast majority of pesticidal substances that we consume are in our diets \u201cnaturally\u201d and are present in organic foods as well as non-organic ones. In a classic study, UC Berkeley biochemist Bruce Ames and his colleagues found that \u201c99.99 percent (by weight) of the pesticides in the American diet are chemicals that plants produce to defend themselves.\u201d Moreover, \u201cnatural and synthetic chemicals are equally likely to be positive in animal cancer tests.\u201d Thus, consumers who buy organic to avoid pesticide exposure are focusing their attention on just one-hundredth of 1% of the pesticides they consume.<\/p>\n

Some consumers think that the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) requires certified organic products to be free of ingredients from \u201cGMOs,\u201d organisms crafted with molecular techniques of genetic engineering. Wrong again. USDA does not require organic products to be GMO-free. (In any case, the methods used to create so-called GMOs are an extension, or refinement, of older techniques for genetic modification that have been used for a century or more.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Forbes, Henry I. Miller and Drew L. Kershen explain why they think organic farming is, as they term it, a “colossal hoax” that promises far more than it can possibly deliver: Consumers of organic foods are getting both more and less than they bargained for. On both counts, it\u2019s not good. Many people who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,62,74,66,13],"tags":[872,924,827,39,428],"class_list":["post-32458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-europe","category-food","category-health-science","category-usa","tag-chemistry","tag-farming","tag-genetics","tag-junkscience","tag-marketing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8rw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32459,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32458\/revisions\/32459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}