Lies about organic food

I smell a rat here Telling lies about organic food: vested interests
If you believed some of the stuff you read, you might even think that organic food could 'seriously damage your health'. In 1999, just such claims were made in the USA. Organic food, they said, was '30 times more likely to poison you' than ordinary food. It could even kill you!
Almost immediately, these claims were stamped on by the US Government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from which the evidence was supposed to have come. Robert Tauxe, head of the CDC's food-borne diseases branch, simply pointed out that no such information exists and that the claims were 'absolutely not true'. So that, you'd think, would be the end of that. Not so. The claims continued to be reported in the press in both the US and Britain despite the CDC's trashing of them.
Why, you might ask? Well it just happens that the original claims were made by a US 'think tank ' called the Hudson Institute whose director is 'a vitriolic opponent of organic agriculture'. This 'think tank' supports industrial agriculture - the system which has caused so much pollution.[1]
I always check out the truth of any claim The message is clear, don't you think? Question everything you read or see or hear. Some information may be lies but is presented as the truth. Most of the Media are owned and controlled by giant corporations whose main interest is in making money. And the people who continued to report this organic food scare nonsense obviously had not checked their facts. Or maybe they, or their media's owners, had reasons for hating organic agriculture too. I could guess at some but why not think about that yourself?
Other claims have been made that organic produce is more likely to be contaminated by fungal poisons called mycotoxins. Again, there is no evidence for these claims.[2] For full details about this, visit the ISIS website.

Anyway, I'm sure you're sensible enough not to believe all the claims made by advertisers that you see on TV. Likewise with the 'media', seeing should not be believing. Beware! Always ask questions.

Imagine a 'scientific' report which claims that eating junk food is good for you. You question it and find out who wrote it and whoops it turns out to have been written by a junk food manufacturer. Well they would say that wouldn't they?

This questioning approach - not believing anything until you have good reason - is called 'being sceptical'. It's a fine basis for life in this polluted industrial world you humans have made for yourselves in which money is king. In my world, we're all kings - king penguins that is... !
And, if you're at school, why not make gullibility (how people get taken in by half-truths and false information) a topic to discuss in your class?

A lot of 'educational material' (books, leaflets and stuff) you find in junior schools also turns out to have been produced by companies who want you to buy their product. They tell you how healthy it is to eat or drink something which they happen to sell. They might be right but it is really clever (subtle) advertising dressed up as learning.

For some brilliant joke ads, visit Adbusters.

1. Information from a report by Lawrence Woodward, director of Elm Farm Research Centre, UK (from The Organic Way[(Henry Doubleday Research Association magazine], Winter 1999, 35).
2. "Corporate propaganda against organic produce", Institute for Science and Society, 23/11/04.