The Truth About Organic Foods

Key reference links from The Truth About Organic Foods, by Alex Avery.

CORRECTION of math error in “Acute Toxicity” sidebar, page 99

The calculations outlined in the “Acute Toxicity” sidebar contained an error in presenting LD50 doses as body weight, thereby overestimating the equivalent human body weight doses. Below is the corrected text. I apologize for this error and have brought it to your attention as quickly and transparently as possible.

Alex 

Corrected text:

There are two types of toxicity: chronic and acute. Chronic toxicity refers to health problems caused by long-term exposures to low doses of a substance. Acute toxicity is the immediate impact of a high dose of a chemical or substance.

One way that acute toxicity is measured is the Lethal Dose 50% (LD50), the dose that kills half of the population of a test organism. The lower the LD50, the more toxic the substance.

Thiabendazole has an oral LD50 (if ingested by mouth) in rats of 3,100 to 3,600 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg). There are 1,000,000 milligrams in a kilogram, so this is a 0.3 to 0.36 percent of body weight dose. In mice, the LD50 is 1,400 to 3,800 mg/kg, or 0.14 to 0.38 percent of body weight. Using the conservative 0.14 percent LD50 from mice, this works out to nearly a quarter pound (0.217 lbs) of pure thiabendazole for a 155 lb human male (equivalent to 100 grams in a 70 kilogram adult). Even if thiabendazole were toxic at half that dose, the 0.4 mg of thiabendazole in the pessimistically contaminated theoretical pound of apples is still less than 0.01 percent of an acutely toxic dose (1/11,250^th). And even at high doses there aren’t any long-term (chronic) toxicity concerns with thiabendazole, such as cancer.

For comparison, the organic insecticide pyrethrum has a mammalian LD50 ranging from 200 to 2,600 mg/kg. The minimum lethal dose in humans (yes, it has killed humans) is 750 mg/kg in children. Thus, organic pyrethrum is over twice as acutely toxic as thiabendazole.

The organic fungicide copper sulfate has a mammalian LD50 of 30 mg/kg, making copper sulfate at least 45 times more acutely toxic than thiabendazole.

Chapter 2

1. Quote from Nobel Peace Prize winning agronomist Dr. Norman Borlaug on organic having
no greater nutrition: http://reason.com/0004/fe.rb.billions.shtml

2. The link listed in the book to the British Food Standards Agency Position Paper explaining
that organic foods have no greater nutritional value is no longer active. Therefore, we are providing a copy of the FSA’s original document here.

A related press release from August of 2001 can be found on the Food Standards Agency website here: http://www.food.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/2001/aug/soilreport

Chapter 3

1. The ruling against the Soil Association’s false advertising claims has been changed to: http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/non_broadcast/Adjudication+Details.htm?Adjudication_id=39414

2. An article describing the death of American organic food pioneer Jerome Rodale during a taping of the Dick Cavett TV show can be found at: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060505/news_lz1c05cavett.html

Chapter 4

1. Results of Food Standards Agency testing that showed organic corn meal was contaminated with high levels of birth-defects-causing fungal toxins can be found at: http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2003/sep/moremaize

Chapter 5

1. The quote from the head of the Food Standards Agency that a cup of coffee contains more cancer-causing natural chemicals than a year’s worth of synthetic pesticide residues from page 89 can be found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/lastword/story/0,13228,1438870,00.html

2. The Environmental Protection Agency’s fact sheet on pesticide residues (reference 11 on page 97) is available here: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/protect.htm

3. The Human Exposure/Rodent Potency (HERP) index can be found here: http://potency.berkeley.edu/pdfs/herp.pdf

Chapter 6

1. The US Department of Agriculture’s “National List” of approved synthetic inputs/pesticides and non-allowed natural inputs/pesticides can be found here: http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/NationalList/ListHome.html

2. The discussion of natural plant pesticides (reference 8 on page 113) can be found here: http://www.ciesin.org/docs/002-266/002-266.html

3. The National Pesticide Use Database compiled by the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy can be found here: http://www.ncfap.org/database/default.htm

Chapter 7

1. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Milk Drug Residue Database can be found here: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~ear/p-mis.html

2. The US FDA’s response to the petition to ban the milk production hormone rbST, where the agency’s scientists explain the unquestionable safety of this practice, can be found here: http://www.fda.gov/cvm/CVM_Updates/cpetup.html

3. A copy of a University of Minnesota paper explaining how beef hormone supplements contribute to a safe food supply and conservation of scarce natural resources (via improved productivity with fewer inputs) can be found at: http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/nutrition/DJ5513.html

4. A discussion of the benefits and safety of beef hormones by the US Department of Agriculture can be found at: http://stockholm.usembassy.gov/Agriculture/hormone.html

Chapter 8

1. The link in the book for the Australian Consumers’ Association test where organic food products came out essentially no better than conventional foods is no longer active. However, a more recent article from the ACA’s magazine CHOICE in which consumers couldn’t tell any taste or quality benefits from organic food can be found here: http://www.choice.com.au/viewArticle.aspx?id=104458&catId=100406&tid=100008&p=6&title=Organic+goes+mainstream+
(archived) 

Chapter 9

1. The British Department of Environment, Farming, and Rural Affairs study showing organic farming gets substantially lower yields can be found here: http://www.defra.gov.uk/science/project_data/DocumentLibrary/OF0405/OF0405_909_TRP.doc

Chapter 11

1. The article from Time Asia on the horrific results of the Khmer Rouge’s organic commune experiment can be found here: http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990823/pol_pot1.html

Chapter 12

1. The Danish government technical report that calculated Danish food production would plummet 47% if the country converted entirely to organic farming methods (the “Bichel Committee Report”) can be found in an English-language version here: http://mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2001/87-7944-622-1/pdf/87-7944-624-8.pdf

2. The web link to the Reuters’ report on Chinese export-oriented organic farms encroaching on wildlife habitat is no longer active. However, a copy of the report can be found on Forbes.com here (http://www.forbes.com/business/newswire/2003/10/18/rtr1114261.html), where one insider complains, “It’s a pity forests in Heilongjiang are being cut down in the name of organic projects,” said an industry source, who preferred to stay anonymous. “If you compare the landscape now with that 10 years ago, it is completely different.”