Sludge Watch ==> Don't blame organic - They HAVE standards

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

Well,  Canada still refuses to allow some California spinach into the
country.  If the US inspectors don't know what California farming or
processing practices killed and sickened people then the spinach from the
implicated Salinas area counties cannot be considered 'safe'.

But spin doctors at the sewage treatment plants and the EPA are desperate to
associate animal manure and not sewage sludge with food safety problems.  In
particular some former EPA official who is desperate to get contracts to
help continue land application of sewage wastes onto farmland has been
buzzing around trying to bash manure.

It seems that all the documents showing pathogen regrowth in so called
treated sewage sludge are making regulators and the public uneasy.   And of
course pathogens aren't the only problem with sewage sludge. There are all
those chemicals and hormones, drugs, sanitizers, heavy metals, and PCBs,
dioxins.

And bashing organic growers as manure users is showing up in the press.
This is the kind of story that the sludge slingers pray for and pay for....

But not only is the letter writer below weak in English, Mr or Ms Ryan is
also unfamiliar with organic standards.  The organic standards require soil
incorporation and a waiting period for produce production or the use of
properly composted manure.   In addition there are standards imposed by the
huge grocery stores, who have signed contracts with farmers setting out
additional standards and requirements for any produce purchased by the food
store.

Allowing California sewage treatment effluent to irrigate  Salinas area
spinach is an issue...whether the spinach is organic or not.   But since non
of the contaminated spinach has so far been associated with organic
spinach - just conventional spinach is implicated to date - this organic
bashing is unwarranted and misleading.

Misery loves company.  By making manure look bad, sewage polluters hope to
avoid public scrutiny.


Read the Organic Standards in the USA and Canada :
http://www.ams.usda.gov/NOP/indexIE.htmSludgewatch Word of the Day:

 Satirize:
To ridicule or attack by means of satire











............................................................................................................
Don't blame organic food
Mark Alan Kastel
Kastel is senior farm policy analyst at The Cornucopia Institute in 
Cornucopia, Wis.
I am writing in response to the blatantly inaccurate and intentionally 
misleading commentary that The Roanoke Times published on Oct. 18, submitted 
by the father and son team of Dennis and Alex Avery, "Organic food isn't 
necessarily safe."
The Averys, who work for the ultraconservative Hudson Institute, funded in 
part by generous contributions from corporate agro-chemical giants like 
Monsanto and DuPont, have made careers of bashing and attempting to 
discredit the hope that organic food has brought to farmers and consumers 
alike.
Their accusation that the recent deadly E. coli epidemic was "from one of 
the biggest organic farms in America" is blatantly false. What we know to 
date is that the only confirmed contamination has occurred in conventional 
spinach marketed under the Dole brand. Regulators have isolated the same 
strain of E. coli -- O157: H7 -- on two conventional, not organic, farms in 
California.
Furthermore, the Averys described a potential contamination problem on a 
farm that sells raw, unpasteurized organic milk in California. News reports 
indicated that no contamination was found at the farm. But the Averys know 
very well that if contamination had been found it would almost assuredly 
have been because the milk was unpasteurized not because it was organic.
These corporate-backed spin-masters are protecting the interests of large 
factory farms and toxic chemical manufacturers, who are threatened by the 
marketplace shift to organic food.
Consumers are looking for more meaning in their food. They're willing to 
spend a premium over conventional prices for food that is produced with a 
different environmental ethic and a more humane animal husbandry standard 
and that provides economic-justice respecting and fairly compensating 
family-scale farmers.
The Hudson Institute's attack on organic food and farming is shameful. And 
the large corporate agribusinesses hiding behind the cloak of this 
right-wing think tank are cowardly.
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-91931
............................................................................................................

http://www.niagarathisweek.com/na/edit/letter/story/3777968p-4369795c.html

Vegetable disease inevitable


Nov 17, 2006

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. E. coli/botulism on our
vegetables.
It's funny how people blame the Americans for this when, in fact, our own
farmers all around this Niagara region spray their land with cow, pig and
chicken manure.
Travel down Hwy. 20 in the summertime around 7 p.m.
The smell is so horrid every day. All the farms from Wainfleet/Wellandport
and Pelham all do it -- they satirize their land with the excrement and the
rain comes to soak it in. It is called "organic" and it should be a wake up
call to all those farmers who use the poop for fertilizer.
E. Ryan, Wellandport
...............................................

Sludgewatch PS: Maybe  E. Ryan is smelling the huge Abitibi paper sludge
berm in Pelham and mistaking it for farming. The sludge mountain is a
20,000 tonne pile leaking a stinking river of leachate.  The sludge contains
hundreds of thousands of E.coli per gram.  Yes, the mill must have put fecal
waste, likely sewage sludge, in their digesters