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Comment by Xylakant | Hacker News Reader

I only have a German reference. There’s multiple brands of bio products that are Demeter certified, milk, meat, cheese, …

The Demeter Bio Label requires “Hornmist” and “Hornkiesel” as fertilizer as per their guidelines, see Section 7.3 (1) and (2) https://www.demeter.de/sites/default/files/richtlinien/richt...

Hornmist is dung-filled cow horns that get buried at full moon preferably, later dig out and spread: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornmist

Hornkiesel is similar, cow horns filled with ground up crystal: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornkiesel

It’s really vexing, because for animal welfare and general biodiversity requirements, they’re the toughest standards, but they have those magic cult-like rituals buried in there.

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I believe the English term for this may be “bio-dynamic”, which is a movement similar to the organic movement but with stricter standards, and more emphasis on what farming techniques you should use (crop rotation, etc), rather than just what you shouldn’t do (e.g. use pesticides). From what I’ve seen, there seem to be a bunch of good ideas in there, along with a lot of ritual rubbish.

I buy one of the Demeter-certified brands of milk. It’s just the best you can buy, taste wise if you ask me. It still irks me that I have to choose between good milk from ethically raised cows and not supporting belief in magic.

What if I told you people are lying pieces of shit, say that they care about animal welfare in surveys and then in the supermarket buy the cheapest brand anyway?

I'd call you an unproductive cynic, point to the rise in eco and vegan labels that empirically provides counter evidence and move on.

This perspective adds nothing but a feeling of superiority, I'd rather think about how to replace the culty brand with a secular one and figure out how to work on climate change and corporate misconduct in my small capacity

Honest question: who does it harm? These aspects that you mention may not be to your (or to my) taste, but if they are relatively harmless and the other stuff is overwhelmingly good, why not let it go?

Fundamentally, the ritualistic behavior harms belief in science. Doing things because we believe in magic of any kind is fostering belief in other magic - for example healing by similar magic, the roots for both go back to Rudolf Steiner.

Is this like Van Halen's Brown M&Ms thing?

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