I have just returned from my first visit to Canada. As I'm sure many Americans
do, I kept an internal tally: This is like the United States, this is not. I was
pleasantly surprised by all the ways Montreal differed from cities to the south:
the open-air markets, the jazz festival, the street festivals, the feeling of
community, and the valuing of public spaces. So I was unnerved after glancing
at The Globe and Mail to see something upsettingly familiar. "It's pesticide-free,
but is it better?" the headline asked. I had a weird sense of déjà
vu.
In the book I just wrote with my mother, Frances Moore Lappé, we talk
about a February, 2000, episode of 20/20 that declared organic food no
better nutritionally than conventional foods; besides, one might bite into nasty
parasites. The news show added that there seemed to be no difference in pesticide
residue levels between organic and conventional. The segment ended with Barbara
Walters asking aloud: "I've been paying more for organics, but is it worth
it?"
Two years later, the Canadian newspaper stories seem remarkably similar: There's
no nutritional difference between conventional and organic, so why bother paying
more?
Well, shortly after the 20/20 episode aired, a flurry of complaints
forced the station to re-evaluate the evidence. Their new conclusion? Whoops.
It turns out that an "objective expert" they cited, Dennis Avery, works
for the Hudson Institute, a think tank financed by chemical giants such as Dow,
Monsanto and Novartis, and that he's penned such books as Saving the Planet
Through Pesticides and Plastics.
It also turns out that, though the scientists' comparative "studies"
apparently proved there was no pesticide residue on either organic or conventional
foods, they never tested for pesticides. John Stossel, the 20/20 reporter
responsible for the segment, made a public apology (in August of 2000, during
summer reruns). Millions of people had watched the program, few heard the apology.
Recent Canadian news stories may similarly mislead the public. The Globe and
Mail article cited a study on organic foods by the University of Guelph. It acknowledged
(in a parenthetical note) that the Guelph researchers stressed that their research
was "done with a very small sample and was not peer-reviewed." The story
mentioned that the researchers were contracted to do this study, but didn't say
by whom. (Guelph counts drug multinationals such as Novartis and Pharmacia among
its major funders.)
The jury may still be out on this business of nutrient-content comparisons.
But there is no debate about the value of organics. The United States is one of
the world's leading users of agricultural chemicals. Now we're paying the price.
Our soils have been so contaminated and nutrient-bled that we're seriously degrading
the nutrient content of all the food we're growing. Our farmers and farmworkers
are daily exposed to dangerous pesticides.
As for the question of pesticide residue, countless studies have shown more
than trace levels of pesticides in a variety of chemically grown produce. And
agricultural chemical runoff has helped create an 18,000-square-kilometre dead
zone in the Gulf of Mexico (ranked by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
as America's most polluted coastal water).
Enormous strides have been made in sustainable agriculture. We can produce
the abundance we need without squandering our resources. I thought our enlightened
northern neighbors wouldn't buy the chemical industry spin that we need their
products to produce enough food to feed the world. But the reports I read while
in Montreal left most readers scratching their heads, asking, "Tell me again
why organics are so important?"
Let's take a little visit to the Gulf of Mexico, shall we?
Anna Lappé is co-author of Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet.
© 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc
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