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I was on Michael Olson’s Food Chain radio program with Kelly Damewood, policy director at California Certified Organic Farmers to talk about Campbell Soup Co. and their desire to put GMO labels on their cans (I wrote about that here) and about the organic process versus the conventional process in general.
Things generally went fine…The only real panic moment for her was when I said food transparency, labeling, should include everything, like pesticides, and she immediately objected and said the organic label already assumed organic pesticides so no mention of that was necessary. Now, she had just said companies were afraid to put GMOs on their labels, but they should have to do it, and suddenly she was afraid that her customers might have to list pesticides.
Ironically, this was right after she extolled organic food as being a superior ‘whole system approach’ – and she was suddenly contradicting herself and saying customers didn’t need to have transparency about that part of the system, because a trade group certifying people who pay them was going to be enough…
The science literate community knows why an organic industry rep would panic over pesticides on labels – they promote the notion that their clients use “no chemicals”, when they simply use toxic pesticides that have an organic seal of approval. Organic or synthetic is irrelevant when it comes to toxicity. LD50 (the dose needed to kill 50 percent of test animals) used to establish acute toxicity, is still LD50, be it from a chemical that is an organic toxic pesticide or a synthetic one.
Read full, original post: Real Truth In Labeling: Why Organic Groups Object
