“Organically produced food is safer than conventionally produced food”
Don’t bet on it – the odds are not in your favor. The recent, tragic outbreak of salmonella in products with peanuts was traced back to the Texas and Georgia plants of a company that had federal organic certification. As reported in the March 4, 2009 New York Times, “although the rules governing organic food require health inspections and pest-management plans, organic certification has nothing to do with food safety.”
Urvashi Rangan, a senior scientist and policy analyst with Consumers Union, is quoted in the article, stating that, “People extrapolate that organic foods are safer in terms of pathogens. I wouldn’t necessarily assume they are safer.”
People that assume – or insist – that organic food products are safer are ignorant of the fact that food processing systems (harvesting, handling, manufacturing and packaging) are the same for products made with organically grown food as with standard, commercially grown food. (NOTE: Now I’m leaving the Times article and reporting from my own research.)
The good news is that per capita, Americans eat some of the safest food on the planet, whether organic or not, and enjoy the lowest risk of illness or death caused by contaminated food.
But what about unprocessed food, those lovely organic bananas, apples, nuts, pears, and heads of lettuce that some consumers are willing to pay up to 50 percent more for, because they’ve been told organic foods are safer, more nutritious, and taste better?
Myth, myth, myth. If you want to increase you and your family’s risk of illness from E. coli contamination, for instance, switch over to organic fruits and vegetables. A University of Minnesota study published in the May, 2004 issue of Journal of Food Protection found that, “the percentages of E. coli-positive samples in conventional and organic produce were 1.6% and 9.7%, respectively. Organic lettuce had the largest prevalence of E. coli (22.4%) compared with other produce types.”
As stated by a reporter in the February 20, 2000, ABC News 20/20 television program, “The real bad news for organic buyers is that the average concentration of E. coli in the [organic] contaminated spring mix was much higher…the organics were twice as likely to have E. coli and had larger amounts.”
Sorry to pile it on, but Dr. Jim Duncan, Ph.D., senior scientist for the Scottish Crop Research Institute states in the October 21, 2003 Times Higher Education Supplement that, “By not applying normal plant protection measures, such as fungicides, organic food would appear to be more at risk from mycotoxins contamination.”
“Organic means food that is grown in animal manure,” notes Robert V. Tauxe, M.D., MPH, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) foodborne and diarrheal disease branch. Airborne contamination (wind blowing soil that has manure content) is a huge contributor to organic produce contamination.
A University of Minnesota study examined fresh fruits and vegetables from 32 organic farms and compared them to produce from eight non-organic farms in Minnesota, testing them for E. coli and Salmonella (Salmonella is estimated by the CDC to cause over 1.3 million illnesses per year). The study found that organic produce was six times more likely to be contaminated by E. coli than the conventionally grown produce. The study also found Salmonella in a small percentage of organic green peppers and lettuce, but none in peppers and lettuce from the non-organic, conventional farms.
If you still think that the obviously higher risk of illness from eating organic produce is somehow offset by the fact you are not eating produce treated with synthetic fungicides and pesticides, you’re nuts. The minute traces of these chemicals that can be found in conventionally grown produce pose zero risk to human health and longevity, a fact that has been researched and proven countless times. It’s why we grow most of our crops, fruits and vegetable this way in America. It’s safer.
And of course, consumers need to be aware that organic fungicides and pesticides approved for use in organic farming are still chemicals – and that their residue shows up in organic foods, a fact you will never hear if your only sources for news are CNN, MNBC, National Public Radio and the Colbert Report. But not to worry, they don’t hurt you, either.
“Organic can never be defined as pesticide-free.”
– British Institute for Food Science and Technology
But what about animals? Let’s take a look at poultry. Here are some findings as reported in The Truth About Organic Foods by Alex Avery, director of research and education at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Food Issues:
“Organic food consumers should also be aware of the risk of Salmonella and other illness bacteria, such as Campylobacter, from organic and free-range chickens. Campylobacter is the leading cause of foodborne bacterial illnesses. The CDC estimates it causes nearly two million cases per year. These bacteria have been found more often and at higher levels in organic and free-range birds.
A study in Denmark in 2001 found that organic chicken is three times more likely to be contaminated by Campylobacter than conventional chicken. Whereas all organic chickens tested were infected with the bacteria (100%), only 36.7% of the non-organic chickens were infected. Britain’s Food Standards Agency found nearly identical numbers when it studied the issue in 2002. Experts theorize that the higher Salmonella and Campylobacter contamination rate of organic chickens is due to more time spent outdoors where they are exposed to wild bird feces and other sources of bacteria.”
Remember, the only reason we don’t suffer huge outbreaks of illness from eating chicken is that washing and cooking chicken usually kills off the bacteria – unless you, your teenage child, or the restaurant you eat at doesn’t wash the chicken properly, and cook it to the proper temperature. Then you get sick. The risk of this happening is higher the more organic chicken you consume.
On to the claims by the organic food industry of increased nutritional levels in organically grown food: They’re groundless.
“If people want to believe that the organic food has better nutritive value, it’s up to them to make that foolish decision. But there’s absolutely no research that shows that organic foods provide better nutrition.”
– Dr. Norman Borlaug, agronomist and 1970 Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Here’s an interesting – and telling – excerpt from an interview on ABC TV’s 20/20, February 24, 2000, between reporter John Stossel and Katherine DiMatteo, director, Organic Trade Association:
John Stossel: Is organic food more nutritious?
Katherine DiMatteo: It’s as nutritious as any other product.
Stossel: Is it more nutritious?
DiMatteo: It is as nutritious as any other product on the market.
Following the ceremony for the unveiling of the USDA’s “Certified Organic” seal in 2000, USDA Secretary Dan Glickman had this to say:
“Let me be clear about one other thing. The organic label is a marketing tool. It is not a statement about food safety. Nor is ‘organic’ a value judgment about nutrition or quality. Organic is about how it is produced. Just because something is labeled as organic does not mean it is superior, safer, or more healthy than conventional food. All foods in this country must meet the same high standards of safety regardless of their classification. For nutrition information, look at the nutrition label. And, as for quality, that’s a matter of personal preference.”
Lastly, when it comes to taste, every extensive taste test comparing organic fruits and vegetables to conventionally grown fruits and vegetables has always finished in a draw. Out of hundreds of blind taste tests, a certain variety of apple or pear or sweet corn grown by a non-organic farmer might be judged as better tasting by a few votes than the same variety grown organically. Sometimes it’s the organic apple, pear or corn that wins by a couple of votes. It probably has more to do with what the tester ate for breakfast than anything else.
The researchers use exactly the same varieties of vegetables and fruits grown in the exact same conditions in matching soils in fields only a mile or so apart, and harvest produce that is exactly the same number of days old. Studies always conclude that there is no discernible difference in taste.
The myth that organic produce tastes better comes from the fact that locally grown organic produce might hit the supermarket sooner after harvesting than non-organic produce. So yes, freshness is a major contributor to how sweet, tangy, or generally flavorful an apple or cherry or potato will taste. If you can be certain that the organic apples or tomatoes at your food market are fresher than the non-organic variety, they could have better taste, so buy them, if price isn’t an issue.
Just be sure to wash the bejesus out of them.
Here’s a link to an article on this site from a Myth of the Week from five years ago with additional research findings that also relates to this topic :"Organic produce is healthier and has more vitamins and nutrients than conventionally grown produce"
“Gardening is always a peaceful, soothing pleasure.”
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| Magnolia ‘Ricki,’ Yellow Ribbon Arborvitae, Blue Chip Juniper in a front bed I’ll never finish. |
It’s early May, and I’m gardening at my house, clearing out, by hand, last fall’s leaves that are cuddled deep around the bases of my shrubs. The wet, matted leaves block the air from circulating freely around the base and block the sun’s rays from sterilizing the soil. I do it to every shrub, evergreen and deciduous. It takes time. But I love my shrubs, they are so darn healthy and pristine. They are so healthy and pristine because each spring since planting, I have cleaned out around their bases. Some of the shrubs are twenty years old.
Next I turn my attention to pruning, and work from small tree to shrub, deftly removing any dead branch or twig that gave up the ghost over winter. I gently sift through each soft branch of my dwarf, blue shag white pine. I find only two small, dead branches, deep inside. Every year I have pruned out the deadwood—seven years now? Whenever it was that I tore out, redesigned and replanted the entire front foundation bed. It may be the only blue shag white pine in Minnesota that goes about life each year without a single dead branch or needle. It was tiny when I planted it—I bought it in a number three container, the larger ones had thin and broken base branches. It was perhaps 12” x 12”. My, how you have grown..
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| Blue shag pine (foreground) at the Renegade Gardener’s front door. |
What’s also grown remarkably larger is my original dwarf blue spruce, Picea pungens ‘Globosa.’ I planted it so long ago, they weren’t common. Now one sees them everywhere, but I never tire of them. Cleaning it of the dozens of leaves, maple seeds, and acorns that lie tucked into the dozens of layers of tight branches takes a good twenty minutes, but when I’m done, it is pristine.
The ninebarks, fothergillas, pagoda dogwoods, my wonderful Chionanthus virginicus (Fringetree), my gorgeous redbuds and my handsome Arnold Sentinel pine, I deftly work on each and all. Arnold, my goodness, you appear to have grown another ten inches last year. But the tree is so stoic and slender, even at maturity the base branches will brush barely outside the Wisconsin trap rock I so carefully fitted together when creating the curving raised bed. They all get watered and clipped and cleaned. I work slowly, quietly. I haven’t been able to spend this much time working in my landscape in over three years, ever since I moved out.
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| My Fringetree. |
I’ve never published sprawling, broad pictures of my gardens and landscape on this site. I’ve used plenty of close-ups, sure, perhaps one hundred, individual plants, foliage combinations, particularly from the flower gardens. But never grand vistas of what I tried to create at my home. Because it was never finished. I never added the perennials to the shrub framework. I got divorced instead. We agreed to hold onto the house for four years until my son graduated high school, and my wife lived there. My son, Elliot, graduated two weeks ago.
And now I’m trying to make the landscape sparkle for the first open house, just one week from now. Probably a good thing I never added the perennials—300 or so—because the house wouldn’t be saleable. Not unless the prospective buyer was a helluva gardener.
So instead of planting perennials I’m spraying Roundup, gallons of it, on the thousands of weeds that have taken over since I’ve been gone. The back yard is a briar patch, skunkweed, thistle, creeping Charlie, weeds ranging from one inch to six feet tall having taken over in wave after wave. A few times a year I get pissy e-mails from Monsanto activists, irked that I have an article on the site that says it’s OK to use a little Roundup, that it isn’t the child-maiming poison the extreme environmentalists erroneously claim it to be.
Now I have to knock down sixty millions weeds growing over a half-acre yard in order to sell a house that desperately needs selling. My former spouse lost her job in January, we’re trying to send a kid to college, our financial situation is tight, the house has dropped $80,000 in value, we’ve spent two months and $15,000 getting it ready for sale … so I spray Roundup. What would you have me do, California landscape designer who scolded me for not telling people they should boycott Roundup? What would you have me do? I’m only one guy. Not even California has enough gainfully employed illegals to weed this mess by hand in a week.
Uncle Fogey looks grand. He should, I moved him three times before I got him in the right spot. In fact, all the trees and shrubs look grand. My son and I have spread 25 yards of mulch, the neighbors are relieved that the Renegade Gardener’s yard is no longer an eyesore. They tell me, in fact, how great the property looks. But I see what isn’t there, know what could have been, and understand perfectly what never will be.
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| Pinus banksiana ‘Uncle Fogey’ | Pinus nigra ‘Arnold Sentinel’ |
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| Microbiota decussata ‘Northern Pride’ | Physocarpus x ‘Center Glow’ (Ninebark) |
“Evergreens Need Sun in Winter’’
Perhaps the most obscure, least traveled myth in gardening, but I mention it only because of the conversation I had with a person this summer (and because it’s getting so damn hard to keep coming up with new myths after eleven years of writing this site).
I had just finished a tidy landscaping job for a nice client that involved a renovation of her foundation shrubs and the addition of a new garden bed that ate up some of her front lawn and curled down to the street at the corner of her driveway.
Among the shrubs I placed near the street was one of my favorites, Chamaecyparis ‘King’s Gold’, a low growing, flop-top little cutie. A neighbor came by walking her dog, and offered her assessment. In winter, she pointed out, the snowplows were going to come along and deposit quite a bank of snow onto the new roadside bed. Yes, I agreed, that’s why most of the bed along the street contained perennials, in addition to the aforementioned ‘King’s Gold’, which doesn’t mind in the least being flattened by plowed snow.
“But it will be completely covered!” she exclaimed. “It won’t get any sun all winter!”
It took me a moment to figure out what exact point she was trying to make. Then it hit me—she thought that shrubs needed sunlight in winter. When it’s twenty below, in other words, and the ground around them is filled with frost to a depth of eighteen inches.
No, they don’t. Nothing does, not mature oak trees, woody shrubs, or evergreens of any variety, shape or size. It’s winter. They are all completely dormant.
Best thing in the world is for your landscape to get so much snow in winter that your plants—particularly your evergreens—are completely covered by the stuff. I used to shovel my driveway and sidewalks and carry the snow over to my bird’s nest spruce, junipers, macrobiota, and ‘King’s Gold’ and try to bury them as best as the snow supply would allow. A dwarf Mugho pine is another good one to completely bury in snow.
All the snow does is insulate evergreens from the bitter temperatures and the winter sun that dries them out and causes their needles to burn and go brown by spring. Get a lot of snow to the point where your low evergreens are completely buried from December through March, and yippee, it means they never will look better the next spring and summer.