if it's not organic, and pollutes the environment, or does the McCunts thing and destroys rainforest, then i WILL stick my political and enivironmental facism down others' throats, cos it's about not being selfish, and taking responsibility for one's actions.
I wonder what liberal narks and do-gooders would say to people who opposed gay marriage on the basis that the continuing undermining of traditional marriage is bad for society and that the people who are demanding gay rights are really more interested in fulfilling their selfish desires than in doing what's good for society.
I find that even as Britain descends into barbarism and we are almost powerless to stop it, some people still think we have the power to make life better for people on the other side of the planet.
I'm reminded of PI who tried to make me feel guilty on one thread for not boycotting Nike.
Well, maybe boycotting certain products is one of the few ways we can actually affect lives on the other side of the planet.
But is it always for the better? I'm not convinced. Take the following article for instance:
From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/03/13/do1304.xml
A little pesticide does you good but 'organic' farming harms the world
by Dick Taverne
(Filed: 13/03/2005)
Our health is threatened not by chemicals and GM crops but by the eco-fundamentalists and their crusade against intensive agriculture: in an extract from his new book, Dick Taverne demolishes the myths and pseudo science of the organic movement.
Nowadays "organic farming" commands such wide public support that to question its merits is to question the virtues of motherhood. Nearly every famous cookery expert takes it for granted that organic food tastes better and is more nutritious and healthier. Nearly every environmentalist is convinced that organic farming is better for the environment.
The British Government subsidises farmers to convert to organic farming, and in 2002 an official Commission on Farming and Food recommended that even more money should be spent to ensure that organic farming plays a larger role in agriculture.
Evidence to justify this enthusiasm has proved elusive. The Food Standards Agency (FSA), set up to examine evidence about the safety of food and to protect the interests of consumers, has persistently refused to uphold claims for the superiority of organic food, much to the chagrin of the Soil Association, the voice of organic farming in Britain. In January 2004 the FSA stated: "On the basis of current evidence, the Agency's assessment is that organic food is not significantly different in terms of food safety and nutrition from food produced conventionally." When a complaint was made to the Advertising Standards Authority that recruiting leaflets published by the Soil Association made misleading statements, claiming that organic food tastes better, is healthier, and is better for the environment, the Authority found no convincing evidence to support the claims and the leaflets had to be withdrawn.
The philosophical reasons for supporting organic farming are part of the "back-to-nature" syndrome. Like alternative medicine, they are based on the belief that "nature knows best" and that what is natural must be good. It is nostalgia for a mythical golden age of small-scale and simple farming and pure and wholesome farm produce. Such a paradise never existed. In the days before intensive farming, when farmers did not use pesticides or artificial fertilisers, food supplies were constantly endangered through climatic and environmental fluctuations and crops were frequently lost to pests and diseases. Agriculture was associated with grinding poverty, intensive labour, and low yield.
In the last 50 years, since synthetic chemicals came to be widely used, our life expectancy has increased by seven years or more. Healthier and safer food, together with better health provision, has improved our physical well-being and increased longevity, and modern agriculture deserves much of the credit.
Since the main reason given for buying organic food is to avoid pesticide residues, the question has to be asked: Is organic food safer? The Soil Association plays on the public's concern, as do a number of other campaigning organisations that have helped to create a food-scare industry. In November 1998 the Consumers' Association magazine Which? under the heading "Pesticide Concerns", carried a story that test results from animal studies linked high doses of pesticides with cancers, hormone disturbances, and birth defects. It did not mention that high doses of anything cause harm, or that official reports on the concentrations of pesticide residues in food found that the amounts present were so low as not to be a hazard to health.
There is evidence that low concentrations of many toxic chemicals may actually have a beneficial effect. Examples are, of course, familiar. A small dose of aspirin mitigates a headache and can help prevent heart attacks, but a larger dose can kill. It is not generally realised that this dose-related effect is also known to apply to many supposedly toxic chemicals, including arsenic, dioxins, some pesticides and fungicides. In fact, a little bit of poison or pollution can do you good, and serves to reduce the incidence of cancer. More than 30 separate investigations of about 500,000 people have shown that farmers, millers, pesticide-users, and foresters, occupationally exposed to much higher levels of pesticide than the general public, have much lower rates of cancer overall.
By demanding total elimination of all pesticide residues from our foodstuffs, the organic movement promotes an unreasonable fear of chemicals and scares us about non-existent dangers. The public is not made aware of their beneficial effect on our general health.
DDT is another good example of a chemical that saved millions of lives by eliminating malarial mosquitoes yet was banned after environmentalists - including Rachel Carson, author of The Silent Spring - accused it of causing cancers. Yet not a single study shows that exposure to DDT damages the health of human beings. In Sri Lanka alone, the reported number of malaria cases rose from just 17 in 1963 to more than a million in 1968 after DDT was banned.
Possibly the most telling indictment of organic farming is its inefficiency, its high cost and its wasteful use of land. The facts cannot be seriously disputed: yields of most crops from organic farms are about 20-50 per cent lower than from conventional farming. That is why organic food costs more.
Efficiency matters. It affects the health of low-income families. Even in a prosperous society like Britain we should not ignore the importance of cheaper ways of producing food, provided they are not based on intolerable breeding conditions for animals. Prosperous middle-class consumers may not care about price, but the poorer you are, the more the price of food matters. Pesticides keep down the cost of fruit and vegetables and if the organic lobby prevails they will become more expensive. People in the lower-income groups will buy less; this is all the more important since they are now exhorted to eat more of them to help control obesity. Moreover, the more pervasive the propaganda that more expensive organic food is "safer and healthier", the greater the pressures on poorer families to buy food they can ill afford. Their diet will suffer and they will lose the protection against cancer that a healthy diet provides. More will die younger.
The environment also suffers if farming is inefficient. Organic farming wastes farmland. Since Europe produces an excess of food as a result of efficient farming, farmers can be encouraged to set aside half their land for environmental purposes.
However, all these considerations are minor compared with the world as a whole. Farmers in Africa and Asia are already organic: they do not use pesticides or artificial fertilisers because they cannot afford them. The Green Revolution passed them by, which was one of its failures. The organic movement seeks to go back to the days before the Green Revolution. Unlike GM crops it cannot help eliminate the pests and diseases that destroy nearly half the crops in Africa, or the development of drought-resistant crops that can grow on arid or semi-arid land. It cannot even match the yields which conventional farming already achieves.
Organic farming may satisfy the whim of the rich European or American consumer; its extension to the developing world would be a disaster. As the Indian biotechnologist, C S Prakash, has correctly observed: "The only thing sustainable about organic farming in the developing world is that it sustains poverty and malnutrition."
• Taken from The March of Unreason: Science Democracy and the New Fundamentalism by Dick Taverne, published by OUP, £18.99.
