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Comment by haliax | Hacker News Reader

Is there a good way to buy only products that avoid use of these chemicals?

Whole Foods. Whatever else you say about them (or their prices), they've made these issues easy to deal with as a consumer.

http://wholefoods.com/about-our-products/quality-standards/a...

Frustratingly (as a frequent Whole Foods shopper), the top of the page raises the question of "What about added hormones and antibiotics?" and then never provides an answer.

Found the answer on another section of the site though: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/whole-story/our-meat-no...

Most of them involve animal products, so eating vegan would help.

The first two would be more difficult to avoid. I think the first one can be avoided by buying organic corn. Avoiding rice fertilized with arsenic manure would be more difficult. You could try buying rice at a farmer's market and asking the seller what he fertilizes with.

FWIW, I've been trying to eat vegan for a few months now and it's surprisingly difficult at first. A surprising number of the weird ingredients in everything are derived from eggs and dairy. I was vegetarian before, and I still had to make some big changes to my diet. I like that it's made me think about what I'm eating, though.

All seven practices relate to animal foods, with the exception of a possible trickle-down effect on rice arsenic levels. Whether a vegetarian/vegan diet is a 'good way' is up to your taste.

Except that many outbreaks of salmonella occur from greens sold loose and packages in super markets. Quite a few large scale farms use animal waste in one form or another to fertilize crops.

I would prefer they settle the irradiated foods disputes and use that to clean up much that is done with chemicals. I have seem far less its unsafe than safe yet radiation is a boogeyman that is hard to beat.

Quite true, and indeed, partially-treated municipal sewage is used on crops in many places, which gives me pause. It happens to be the case that this article focuses on deficits in our meat supply, and wider reading suggests that animal food safety is in fact poorer on many spectra.

In the US, "certified" organic food can't use treated sewage as fertilizer.

Buy local.

I live in central Illinois, so it's fairly easy to find local (within 30 miles) producers of most raw foods (meat/veggies/eggs), with the exception of milk. While this may be difficult in some parts of the country, I find getting to know local farmers and buying directly from the ones that do not use these practices (farmer's markets are great for making those connections) is the easiest.

Though, as I said, I live in a farm rich region, so it may be much easier for me than others.

Hu? Why does the fact that the farmer is next to you have anything to do with his process?

So if I buy from that same farmer you go to, but I'm hundreds of miles away I suddenly get those chemicals but you don't?

> Why does the fact that the farmer is next to you have anything to do with his process?

It doesn't. It does, however, have everything to do with discovering what that process is. I walk up to a farmer at a local farmer's market and say, "Hey, do you feed your cows chicken shit?... No? Cool, can I buy some steaks from you?"

Obviously there's better ways to present the question, but you get the point. It's far easier to discover the process directly (and IMO more reliable) than to follow the supermarket->distributer->packager->slaughterhouse->farmer chain to find out what the process is.

So you don't actually mean buy local.

You mean ask the farmer.

But it's not really all that hard to find this out even for bulk packaged meat if it's branded - just call that single company and ask.

If it's unbranded from your butcher then ask him. (Although admittedly he might not know.)

In all three cases it's just: "Ask".

Live in Europe?

/me rins

I would say "buy organic", but organic farms just use "organic" versions, and I'm not 100% clear on what that means.

Anyone know the rules for "organic" foods in terms of pesticides, fertilizers, etc?

I a nutshell, the legal definition of organic (in U.S.) means that organic foods are produced using non-synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. In other words, if the FDA (EPA/USDA? Not really sure what organization handles it) classifies a pesticide as organic, then it's allowable for organic certification in the U.S.

Really? I eat lots of organic food and have previously researched this, I tried google and its very easy.

Pick up any organic product. It has a sticker "USDA Organic" with white on top and green on bottom. Wikipedia has a great article on "National Organic Program" which is run by the USDA. The NOP website is at:

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/nop

The blanket reg is CFR 205.105 which references each class of substance separately. Its like the overall flowchart. Then other regs list specific stuff. Like "205.603 Synthetic substances allowed for use in organic livestock production."

So CFR 205.603 says you can use ethanol as a disinfectant only but not in the food, so no white lightning in the food bucket. Aspirin is OK. Vaccines as a blanket order are OK.

(whoops edited to add I think you want CFR 205.601 Synthetic substances allowed for use in organic crop production. Whatever. Nothing is really unexpected in these CFRs and for a guy with a chemistry background I think some rules are a little weird (Ethanol is synthetic and allowed, but Arsenic is non-synthetic and forbidden? Really?) but the writing style should be understandable by the general public)

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