Yes, it is. They are trying to eliminate some of the advantages of non-Monsanto agricultural production (including the marketing advantages), and confine the competition to areas in which they excel (low cost bulk production, especially) because on these other fronts (including image) they are in danger of getting their asses kicked.
I do not see how you can possibly imagine this to be a logical argument. I agree they would like to get "organic" defined in a way that pays to their strengths. I would point out that the pro-life movement would like to get "life" defined in a way that gives them the most leverage in their position and they are "pro"-life. It is a semantic debate, but semantic does not mean "unimportant" especially in the law.
That someone is doing something to confer some perceived advantage on themselves in not evidence that they oppose the system they are trying to influence. The problem here is that you do not like the changes they are proposing and you have decided a priori that their changes are bad and designed to gut some fundamental aspect of the industry. You are just not logical enough to analyze your own position properly.
Whether or not a new fertilizer counts as organic is a question of fact based n how its made. Your analysis reduced the question to one of "who is proposing it?" There is *no* objective answer to the question of whether using radiation to kill microbes is "organic." It is certainly a natural process. There is no objective answer to many of the questions they raise. You have referred to it as "traditional" farming, but are "tractors" traditional? Clearly they do not have thousands of years of pedigree, yet we all agree that the use of those tools is acceptable.
I always took you for someone who believes that even morality has a subjective aspect to it, and yet you cannot see that the word "organic" is pretty ill-defined.
There is nothing secret about the agribusiness desire - expressed in many plans, visible all over - to dominate all food markets, redefine the regulatory terms to benefit themselves, get all their innovations not only permitted but subsidized and abetted, and so forth.
I agree, they have an expressed desire to be in the organics market. But is t a semantic question what "organic" truly means, and they do seek to influence that. Guess what? Some of their small competitors oppose them not because they care about you, but because they don't want to compete with big agribusiness. Does their self-interest in opposing certain standards make them "anti-organic?"
It seems to me that your answer boils down to "No, because they agree with me and what I want, and that is the proper test of whether one's motives are pure."
They are not spending all that money and effort on "just" semantics.
Actually, when it comes to how the term organic will be defined for purposes of federal law, they literally are arguing semantics. You are unhinged if you cannot see that much.
What you won't accept that seems patently obvious to me is that most of them do not want organics to go away, they want a piece of that market.
Only in comparison with hunter-gatherer diets (which you accept, and I agree, as superior based on reasoning from evidence, rather than thorough scientific study, I notice).
No, I accept it because I have read paleo-anthropological studies that have found just that, based on analyses of hair, bones and teeth and direct comparisons of the bones and teeth of different populations. I would never accept as "true" something as obviously fact driven as that based solely on mere intuition.
There is plenty of reason to suspect that the kinds of fundamental, unstudied, and commercially overpowering innovations that have brought us mad cow and trans fats, that have no long record of human employment to look at and learn from, and whose sole justification for emplyoyment now is the enrichment of a corporate elite through lowered costs to them, are not safe.
Yes, save that scientists have not found any evidence to that effect, so you "suspect" it only. You can claim that your suspicion is evidence, but it's evidence that does not militate very strongly in favor of your conclusion. You manage to cover the distance, I note, between your suspicion and your dogged assertions in a way that makes it clear you see your conclusions not as possibilities or "best guesses," but rather that you believe these to be "facts".
I do not see any evidence of how you bridge the gap between plausible suspicion and irrefutable fact, save as a result of faith. You have certainly not made it clear.
And your continually nasty little rhetorical trick, of telling me I'm making assumptions and thinking in ways that I quite explicitly am not, is a bit strange. Why are you trying to assert that I have confused food safety with organic farming methods or certification, your latest shitfling there?
Because you are asserting that modern food is dangerous to the health without any statistical evidence to back you up. You are claiming that modern food is unsafe, and yet you offer no proof that organic food is any healthier. Indeed the evidence from the UK study is that it is not. The nutrient contents and the food safety records are nearly identical.
The argument from me is this: we have reason and evidence pointing to health benefits from adhering to organic foods in one's diet - especially, avoidance of large and specific risks, but also some others.
No we don't we have your bare assertion that we have such evidence, but the science isn't there on that point. DO moidern foods have some health risks? Yes. DO organic foods pose some health risks? YES. Which set of produce poses more health risks? No one has any data to suggest a difference, anll we have is the assertion that it is "common sense" to assume that modern foods are worse.
This really strikes me as a dodge. A apple grown in a modern orchard contains NO transfats and no corn syrup. You compare the diet of someone eating organic foods with someone who (apparently) is going out of their way to eat unhealthy modern foods, but the debate is over whether organically grown produce and meat--FARM PRODUCTS--are healthier. You would not let me get away with comparing someone who only ate organically grown potatoes and nothing else to someone who had a well-rounded diet of fruits, vegetables and meat grown using modern techniques. Obviously, the latter guy would be healthier. There are plenty of people who eat healthy foods but do not buy organic.
Please compare, so to speak, apples to apples.
There has been no suitable effort to establish the health effects of these new agribusiness methods in comparison with similarly sophisticated organic operations; no real studies, no adequate research. We reason as we can, from what we do know. Your complaint with that?
My complaint with that is, first, it's not really 100% true. There are studies that compare the health effects, you just don't like the fact that those studies suggest the net effect is that the two methods are equivalent or that the differences are negligible. The most you can say is that you prefer to believe those studies to be biased. There is no compelling evidence for that suspicion, but I think you prefer to believe it.
Second, even if I bought your premise, *if* there were no solid data and all you could do was to reason from first principles, then your conclusion should be "I cannot say for certain, but I think it
likely that
X is true, though I could be wrong."
That is not your position. Your position is that I, personally, must "choose" to ignore "reason" and good "judgment" for daring to even suggest that your conclusion may not be correct. (Once might say that you are acting as if my position were heresy.)
Meanwhile. the actual choice we're discussing, the thread topic comparison, is between eating organically produced food or conventionally produced food.
Yes, though again, apples to apples from now on, please. We are really talking about organically produced foods and their direct counterparts produced using modern methods. No one cares if an organic cucumber is healthier than a bag of cheetos. What matters is whether it is healthier than another cucumber.
The truth is that a person who never bought organics could if he or she lived by a similar diet live just as healthily as someone spending their money on organics. That is what the studies show. I know you don't believe that, but you don't have any evidence to serve as a strong basis for that belief..
It seems to me that I have given you more than enough time to convince you that your logic is impaired (as you have to me), so the best thing to do know is to give you time for what I have written to percolate. Likely this alone will not change your position, but hopefully it will lead to your being more self-critical when you form such beliefs in the future. (Who knows? Perhaps the percolation will lead me to suspect you were right and I am wrong. I doubt it, myself, but it is possible.)
It's not worth either of our times to just keep repeating ourselves though, so best that we end this discussion now and amicably, and wait for the next fight between us.
