A new U.S. EPA brochure, to be distributed to 100,000 supermarkets, is intended to inform people about pesticides and how to minimize their exposure to pesticides in foods.
Seven mainstream food industry groups pressured the EPA to leave out any mention of organics. As a result, the final product provides little useful information (and is a waste of a lot of trees). Conventional food groups didn’t want to “alarm” the public by recommending organic foods. An official from Grocery Foods Manufacturers, one of the groups which objected to the word ‘organic’ said, “We don’t think it’s appropriate to put a brochure like this next to the carrots and broccoli” because it promotes one food over another.
The draft version read, “some pesticides have been shown to cause health problems such as birth defects, nerve damage, cancer, and other toxic effects in laboratory animals.” It presented organics as an alternative to foods grown or processed with chemical pesticides.
The final version says, “while pesticides have important uses, studies show that some pesticides cause health problems at certain levels of exposure.” “Your grocer may be able to provide you with information about the availability of food grown using fewer or no pesticides.”
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