Study Questions Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce - NYTimes.com
Christina Wodtke stashed this in food
Stashed in: Science!, Stanford, Bugs!, Meat!
unfortunately very few will ready all the way down to this part:
"The study’s conclusions about pesticides did seem likely to please organic food customers. Over all, the Stanford researchers concluded that 38 percent of conventional produce tested in the studies contained detectable residues, compared with 7 percent for the organic produce. (Even produce grown organically can be tainted by pesticides wafting over from a neighboring field or during processing and transport.) They also noted a couple of studies that showed that children who ate organic produce had fewer pesticide traces in their urine.
The scientists sidestepped the debate over whether the current limits are too high. “Some of my patients take solace in knowing that the pesticide levels are below safety thresholds,” Dr. Bravata said. “Others have questioned whether these standards are sufficiently rigorous.”
Similarly, organic meat contained considerably lower levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria than conventionally raised animals did, but bacteria, antibiotic-resistant or otherwise, would be killed during cooking.
Dr. Bravata agreed that people bought organic food for a variety of reasons — concerns about the effects of pesticides on young children, the environmental impact of large-scale conventional farming and the potential public health threat if antibiotic-resistant bacterial genes jumped to human pathogens. “Those are perfectly valid,” she said.
The analysis also did not take factors like taste into account."
8:15 AM Sep 04 2012