Tim Worstall

Can You Say Corporate Welfare?

A quite naked plea for corporate welfare here:

Campaigners for organic food said it showed that
children were being given cheaper, lower-quality produce but the
Department of Health insisted yesterday that the pesticide residues
were below the safety threshold and not dangerous.

This
month an evaluation of the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme (SFVS)
reported that it had encouraged children aged four to six to eat
"significantly more" fruit, especially those living in deprived areas
and that it had helped them to identify healthy eating options.

However,
a report today by the Soil Association, the body that campaigns for
organic farming, suggests that the scheme, which was partly funded by
the National Lottery, has also increased the children’s intake of
pesticides.

"We strongly support the scheme but it
is wrong for a scheme that provides fruit and vegetables to the most
vulnerable in society to source lower quality produce, apparently
containing a higher proportion of pesticides than the fruit and
vegetables available in the shops," said Lord Melchett, its policy
director.

In short, the Government must be forced to buy our higher priced produce.

In

5 responses

  1. Chris harper Avatar
    Chris harper

    And this is all based on the questionable assumption that ‘organic’ has any meaning at all.
    Wasn’t the concept completely destroyed when ‘organic’ pesticides were deemed necessary?

    Reply
  2. Ian Avatar
    Ian

    As most organic farmers are opposed to irradiation and use natural fertilizers, it would be fair to say that feeding schoolchildren organic fruit is also feeding them more shit.

    Reply
  3. Contradictory Ben Avatar
    Contradictory Ben

    Chris Harper:
    While I enjoy organic food and agree with the Soil Association’s policy recommendation, I’m not a fan of the term organic. Mind you, I can’t think of anything suitably short that implies produce is non-toxic, sustainable, and free-range (where applicable) all at once (and those are only the connotations of organic that I personally hold most important).
    When complex terms such as organic or conservative become culturally and politically loaded, they often buckle under the sheer weight of being a semantic battleground. But having meanings that are contested and even arguably inconsistent is not the same as having no ‘meaning at all’.
    In the case of such words, it is often helpful to centre the ground the debate by referring to a standards body. As you know, the Soil Association is one of the most important such bodies in the case of the term organic. Their set of rules is tangible, regardless of whether you think it deserves the label organic or not. (Other standards bodies have slightly different rules. Compare this situation to religious rulesets. Different Churches advocate different rules, but we cannot infer that the term Christian has no meaning at all. Even if you think they’ve all betrayed the true teaching of Christ, you cannot say that the term Christian is meaningless.)
    Since this report was by the Social Association, it’s safe to assume that by organic they mean their ruleset. Against this ruleset you make the following charge: ‘Wasn’t the concept completely destroyed when ‘organic’ pesticides were deemed necessary?’ Well, that’s one view. But if you can rise above the terminology for a moment, you might consider whether you’d rather your kids (real or hypothetical) ate food treated with some of the four Soil Association approved pesticides or laced with any of the 350+ pesticides registered for use in British farming generally. Note that two of the the SA-approved pesticides, namely copper salts (copper ammonium carbonate, copper sulphate and copper oxychloride) and rotenone, can only be used after approval by the SA on a case-by-case basis; in any case, their use is under review and may be phased out. The other two pesticides cannot be used preventatively, but only to fight an existing infestation: sulphur for certain fungal diseases and soft soaps for aphids. Now there may (very hypothetically) be a scientific case to be made that non-SA produce is as non-toxic as SA produce, or even as produce where no pesticides have been used at all. But that’s not the case you’re actually making. Getting hung up on the problems of the term ‘organic’ rather than the issues at stake is an even greater intellectual error than the rhetorical subterfuge of using the term in the first place.
    Tim adds: One problem. Somewhere between 99% and 99.9% of pesticides that appear in our diets are naturally produced by the plants themselves. Worrying about the last 1% or 0.1% of something rather than the first 99% is not sensible.

    Reply
  4. Contradictory Ben Avatar
    Contradictory Ben

    Hi Tim,
    Thanks for providing an argument to the facts, which is exactly where the debate should be.
    Your statistic is of course derived from B. N. Ames, M. Profet, and L. S. Gold, (1990) ‘Dietary Pesticides (99.99% All Natural), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 87: 7777-81. Ames et al. observe that not enough natural pesticides have been tested for rodent carcinogenicity (I agree with this at least), and half of those that have been tested have been shown to be carcinogenic. They estimate (minimal empiricism seems to be involved) that the average American consumes 1.5 g of natural pesticides each day, and accept the estimate of the FDA (for which I can’t say I have much faith) that the average American consumes 0.09 mg of synthetic pesticides per day (the quoted 99.99% is by weight). It’s worth noting that Ames et al.’s conclusions are not uncontested (here’s an example critique I haven’t read). For my part, I would observe that:

    1. It is entirely possible for synthetic pesticides to be more carcinogenic at a lower dose.
    2. Rodent carcinogenicity is not necessarily a good guide to human carcinogenicity (especially if humans are likely to have evolved resistance to carcinogens in staple foods).
    3. Caffeine, which probably deserves to be called a drug as much as a food, seems to be a major source of the natural pesticides discussed by Ames et al. (I don’t advise addicting school-kids to coffee, tea, and soft drinks either.)
    4. Doses of synthetic toxins in any given batch of produce may well vary more from the estimated average than doses of natural toxins, so that people receive substantially higher than the recommended maximum dose (see F. R. Pennycook, E. M. Diamond, A. Watterson, and C. V. Howard (2004), ‘Modeling the Dietary Pesticide Exposures of Young Children’ International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 10 (3): 304-9 [PDF here] ).
    5. There are other possible issues than carcinogenicity, including toxins as a possible cause of behavioural disorders, which are not broached in Ames et al.’s paper.

    (And following those observations, I would add the important disclaimer that I am not a scientist.)

    Reply
  5. Contradictory Ben Avatar
    Contradictory Ben

    FYI Tim: Your blogads seem to be making your blog-pages load really slowly.

    Reply

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