Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

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Crude oil is [primarily] organic if your context is [petro]chemistry. It's not an organic foodstuff however.

Shock, horror, words have contexts which cause them to mean different things.

Why is it that you don't wish people to know where their food has come from and how it has been produced. What is the problem with that for you? If you don't care that your children's food is saturated with growth hormones, fungicides, hormones and pesticides or that the farmers you buy from use so much Tramadol that the environment tests positively for it [as in the current case], fine, but why does it matter so much if other people want to know the conditions their food has been grown in? Say, by looking for organic food certifications. [There see I included "food" in case it confused you, words can be so hard, huh.]

There's no great logic to the insistence that words can't be used for multiple well defined meanings - yes even in associated fields like chemistry and food science/agriculture - and AFAICT there's no detriment to you in others choosing to care more about the rearing or growing conditions of their food (which you don't have to eat).

So what is your problem?

"Shock, horror, words have contexts which cause them to mean different things."

Dunno what his problem is, but my problem is the context in which "organic" gets used with respect to foods: a massively expensive, misleading, anti-science marketing campaign by huge corporations intent on profiting from people's mistaken belief that "organic" products are--by virtue of being "organic"--healthier or better for the environment.

Since the people behind this huge corporate marketing campaign are also promulgating lies about GMOs in an attempt to force labeling on them and prevent their development, your claim "there's no detriment" to others from those who support them is false.

>an attempt to force labeling on them and prevent their development //

Labelling only provides people with the ability to chose. Against choice? Consumers can make uninformed choices, sure, but that choice is central to a democratic system.

Who are the corporations that you're referring to? The majority of organic stuff we get in the UK is from small corporations or local farms, it is the bigger corps that stand to lose most from a desire from the public to have organic (and similar ethos) production of food. For example factory farming chicken relies on being able to pump them full of antibiotics.

You say it's a mistaken belief that organic food is better - the meta-studies I've seen seem to flip between the two positions pretty rapidly. Can you cite maybe one or two studies that you would say show incontrovertibly that organic production is no better for people, animal welfare and/or the environment? Thanks.

I'm not the parent (I'm GP), but my position is that organic certification is good, but the universal association of "natural = good, synthetic = bad" is only harmful.

Yes, farmers pump animals full of chemicals and this should be documented and, if you are concerned about this, it's a good thing that there are organic food certs out there. However, whole industries fuelled by bullshit have sprung up off the back of this very common fallacy. There are people out there who don't take scientifically-proven medicine because it's "not natural" and lean towards quackery like homeopathy, and this is what I'm opposed to.

To reiterate, IMO organic or free-range farm produce is a good thing and I'm sure most people would agree with that. That's not what I was talking about so don't get rude with people based on a misinterpretation of the subject, it's unnecessarily disruptive.

I think you're casting me as a proxy in a larger argument.

You're also being pretty insulting about it.

Life's too short. I've no time for people like that.

Can't speak for the GP, but in my case, I object to laws requiring labels on GMO, etc. foodstuffs simply because I don't want to live in California, where literally everything has one or more dire warning labels attached to it. When everything is dangerous, nothing is. The labels end up not being taken seriously, and the consumer ends up less-informed than they otherwise would have been.

"Literally" applies, by the way, when the whole building you're in has a sign in the lobby that reads "This building contains substances known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, and itchy rashes."

I'm worried that this is where the slippery slope of GMO labeling will lead.

So the solution is to label nothing, and actively mislabel everything? That doesn't sound right.

https://www.google.com/search?q=john+oliver+food+labels

No, you label things when there is scientific evidence, of the peer-reviewed and -reproduced kind, that there is a non-obvious risk associated with a given foodstuff or other item. GMO labeling falls well short of that standard.

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