It's strange to me that this isn't the emphasis of the article.

I assume the MRL the lowest amount which could possibly cause harm? If so then why does it matter for the rest of the products where the levels are below that?

It could be for potential environmental harm, but then the fact that these are being exported at all should tell you that they're being used, you don't have to test consumer goods.

Their recommendations include this:

>2. Automatically lower all maximum residue levels (MRLs) of non-approved pesticides to the limit of detection to prevent these substances from making their way back onto European plates via a dangerous ‘boomerang effect

But is this scientifically supported?

The worrying part is not just that banned substances show up at trace levels, but that a non-trivial number of products were apparently over the legal limit

No well was built since there was no permit. That's it, end of the story.

Because it's fields+trees that have been there for decades, and even if there's no profit few years, it still pays for the salaries of the workers and expenses of maintaining the fields. If you stop it, things die and then it's more expensive to restart.

There is a hint of that it’s not just you but you get used to it and don’t notice it anymore. It’s kind of how most cheese has a persistent vomit smell.

> cumin smells like disgusting body odour

You're not wrong. If you smell pure cumin (without any other spices or herbs), particularly if you grind and mix it with yogurt to make a salty lassi, you get a whiff of body odor. My kids called it "the BO drink".

It's a weird thing, but the smell becomes quite different in combination with other smells. It's an ingredient in many expensive perfumes, believe it or not! [1]

[1] https://www.fragrantica.com/news/CUMIN-Polarizing-Note-of-Sw...

the famed triple negative (also tofu is healthy and delicious)

The one you are currently browsing

Not all, if they use stitch method with cotton it's okay - many use PLA though

https://www.hampsteadtea.com/blogs/news/is-pla-plastic-free-...

Source?

Only an idiot would drink when they are not thirsty. Nothing to do with his job being to lie and manipulate opinion.

Which might or might not be safer than synthetic ones. Fundamental job of pesticides and herbicides is to kill stuff. Just because it appears in nature does not mean it is safe.

The way I understand it, at least here in France, the complaint isn't exactly that some other random EU country has lax enforcement of the EU laws. Rather, it's about the various trade agreements with non-EU countries not known for their strict rules. The latest one being with Mercosur, and the main gripe being with Brazil (presumably because of their huge output, not sure if they're considered worse than the others by whatever metric). Another usual suspect is "ukrainian chicken".

Sure, the agreements say that whatever is imported needs to comply with this or that standard, but customs rarely inspect these. So you end up importing produce which is much cheaper than the local-grown one and which also doesn't comply with the strict local laws. That's where the "unfair competition" happens.

Sure, I bet French farmers aren't too happy to see tomatoes or whatever grown in other EU countries with cheaper labor flood the local market. However, anecdotally, I never see produce from eastern Europe here in Paris. Non-French usually means Spanish or Netherlands if it's EU, or northern Africa if not. You can mayyybe find son specialty cheese or meat from abroad, but outside the very common Italian varieties and Gouda, it's really not easy to find in regular supermarkets.

However, for some reason, apples from freaking Chile and South Africa seem very common, even in season, although apples grow fine here, including that specific variety (pink lady). And when I do find locally-grown ones, they're usually at the same price.

Sorry if it was not clear, this is about Spain/EU enforcement in Spain vs EU enforcement in Morocco, where we import tons of fruits from. I think it's plenty obvious that the enforcement level will be different at the source.

Edit: I've asked that myself multiple times. There's also some stubbornness there as well TBF.

No, pesticide are volatile and can poison water deep in earth no matter which thing was the initial target.

The problem with lead (and presumably other heavy metals) is that exposure is cumulative as it gets accumulated in your body so there really isn't a safe amount.

Agreed. Nobody really talks about most other countries, while the US is pretty much top of the list of nearly every topic. So we're constantly a target.

> But if you see it as a complicated tradeoff where whats right for one country can be wrong for another then it's unproblematic.

How can anyone entertain that belief unless:

a) they think people in other countries have a different biology

b) profits matter more than the health of people in other countries (mostly former colonies of Europe)

In other words, “yes, definitely”. But they won’t because €€€€€.

Yep but that's just always been the case: it's a world of difference between spraying the latest Monsanto v7 KillEmAll upgraded formula or supporting biodiversity such that for every major pest there is also something which eats it and gets rid of it.

Many a health or ethics rabbit hole can be bypassed with simple abstention. However, this is not good for 'content creators'. They need the controversy and rage bait for engagement.

With saturated fat the health authorities that have science but industry lobbying to content with, have told us to avoid the stuff because it clogs the arteries and invariably comes with cholesterol because animals. Arguably Ebola and AIDS are worse than a bit of saturated fat, however, it is a clear message, up there with 'smoking is bad'. Yet a vocal minority will spin this yarn about how wonderful saturated fat is. They are for real and tell the gym-going public all kinds of nonsense.

Yet a diet from before farmers started using copious amounts of synthetic chemicals placed saturated fat as very hard to get. There is no fat on wild animals, only on fattened up farm animals (and humans).

In these former times, meat of any kind was hard to come by. Chicken was saved up for, paying in installments for that special birthday treat. Meat such as rabbit was far more prevalent, the chicken was there for the eggs, not to be eaten as a snack in a lunchtime sandwich.

Hence, scale back all the modern day junk to the idealised peasant diet and there is no need to know anything about any modern day diet or nutrition talking points.

Where in Australia grows Sichuan peppercorns? They're almost exclusively grown in China and the general regions nearby to my knowledge.

More banana varieties. The reason Panama Disease was so successful is because of the practice of cloning. Every single crop is the same genetics. Researchers warned that starting over with the Cavendish would result in the exact same thing again and the clear solution was to stop cloning the exact same plant and grow more types of bananas (there are more than 1,000 species of banana and tens of thousands of varieties around the world).

Now we're dealing with TR4 because of the Cavendish being grown in the exact same way but with an even heavier reliance on pesticides, slavery, and violent control over local power.

Its up to individual countries to do it no? They've been testing honey here recently and several brands got removed from stores.

You are both correct. Organic means something specific. However what it means is not what most people think it means. People want healthy and good for the earth - that is not what organic gives you. Sometimes it does, but sometimes conventional ag (with all those scary chemicals) is better.

There is an official eu organic label. It’s not compulsory of course, but it’s the baseline for organic food production in and for Europe. Other (private) labels have stricter rules and are usually certified in addition to the EU label.

"IMHO organic labels optimize for the wrong things."

What do you mean?

I only know of "Demeter", that also has some very esoteric requirements (homeopathy, cosmic energy flow rituals) - but otherwise organic label optimize for:

- no or little pesticides and herbicides

- more space and better condition for the animals

My only other grievance is that they also all ban GMO

But it is controlled for the wrong criterias. "Natural" doesn't mean healthy or good for the environment. It is only greenwashing and "appeal to nature" fallacy

"Exotic countries" lol. There's at least a few species in the banana genus that grow in almost every single country in the global south

Then where does the real stuff go? The arabs, indians?? Tea bags are the mass market in Europe for example. Hardly anyone uses tea leaves (are they different?).

I know an Iranian in the Netherlands who says the tea there is mostly coloring.

To me, sounds like it's a great thing that we waste less agricultural output and have goods available at different price points.

Most tea bags aren't trying to be tea as in camellia sinensis but rather herbal infusions. Nothing wrong with that.

If we really want to be precise, we should talk about parts per million (PPM). Scientific research establishes a safe level of consumption in terms of PPM, below which there are no detectable health effects. Generally when you see alarmism about "pesticides found in food" they're orders of magnitude below the PPM that would have any effect on human health.

All but 2 countries in South America have had the experience of democratically electing a leader only to have them overthrown in a US-backed coup. The US/CIA started with this obsession with the 1954 Guatemalan Coup specifically to maintain Guatemala as a banana republic. Chiquita owned most land in Guatemala and left is uncultivated to stifle competition. Jacobo Árbenz wanted to (slightly) tax this land to reduce poverty. Chiquita hired Edward Bernays (yes, that guy. The father of modern public relations, nephew of Freud, etc) for an influence campaign and eventually got CIA to launch Operation PBSuccess in 1953. The CIA/Chiquita gave very extensive lists of political opponents to murder during the coup.

So what's really the difference?

care to cite any decent research proving you point?

there's an extensive body of research on synthetics having no effect on human health, from goverment funded, private and independent research... if you access your country's official institution you'll see there's plenty of synthetics allowed in organic agriculture just because they mimic perfectly "organic" substances

interesting point too, is the lack of any extensive meta-analysis/studies on organic pesticide impact on health and plus the fact organic farm is rather poor (produce less than 2% of the global food) and usually if not always lack good machinery to spread pesticides on the recommended quantities science points out (which organic agriculture also has less literature on that too)

> There are still organic ones available, which are less dangerous.

You’re gunna want to look at the later half of that.

> There are still organic ones available, which are less dangerous.

"Organic" as in certified 'Organic' or as in the class of molecules?

If the former then I'd love to see the classification requirements that make a qualifying chemical safer all the ones that aren't.

If the later, that's blatantly untrue

Speaking for myself, yes, I am sure. See previous comments for explanation.

2 months ago there was a story about a huge family mansion in Meath being demolished after a court found they did not have the proper planning permissions, and the council was unwilling to grant the permissions after the fact. Also just last week a judge ordered the demolition/removal of 26 mobile homes from a site in Dublin set up without permissions.

Friends of mine recently got planning permission for a house they've been living in for about 3 years already.

So you can def roll the dice on such things, maybe you get away with it for decades, maybe your house gets flattened.

My (also an immigrant like you) take on Ireland is that many of these systems are run and controlled by humans, and you can get pretty far by trying to make that human connection with the people controlling your fate. My wife was initially refused maternity benefit, because she did not have enough social security contributions. She works part-time, and she was missing 1 contribution (about €120) out of something like 38 for the year. After friends (the same from above) suggested we phone them and talk to the people, the maternity benefit application was approved. I find that there is a lot less "sorry can't help you, computer says no" here.

I jokingly refer to this as the Catholic principle: "sin first - confess and repent later" as it's a common theme in countries that are/were traditionally Catholic, including my own.

It's really just places culturally untouched by Calvinism, Puritanism and the like, all of which put emphasis on order.

The last thing to attempt bringing order to them were various forms of authoritarianism and they didn't last. I think we can agree this is not the right approach.

OMG the planning system is definitely an issue in this country. I did try to wing it but had to demolish a small structure, retention was not approved. Their letters are insanely threatening, like you can go to jail or pay a fine in millions. But then another time I just did the planning permission in my own name, drawings and all and it was approved fairly quickly despite me not being an eng or arch. It depends on the town/city you are in and the planning department. I used to deal with planning in other European countries and Ireland just lacks technical supervision step, hence the dependence on neighbours notifying the council and on the front loading of the initial application process.

We’ve had a warmer than average year worldwide every year since 1976. I suppose it’s just coincidence that exactly what climate scientists said would happen keeps happening and keeps getting worse.

There is a lot of truth to this but things are changing e.g. those houses without planning permission getting torn down. That simply would not have happened two decades ago.

Sure, but you have to move to Ireland. That's a deal-breaker for most folks.

It's always worth understanding the consequences of non compliance before you'd decide to comply (and vice versa.)

Precaution principle exists, and in the case of food safety, "getting new data" make take years or be very costly.

For instance, bisphenols in plastics baby bottles were proved problematic after decades of use. Precaution principle would have recommended to avoid them (especially since they weren't necessary).

It's not trivial, and many businesses would rather see their consumers die than cut their margins. I remember buying some custom furniture; when it arrived it reeked of varnish smell. I called the factory, told them they didn't cure it correctly. Manager said "yeah we know, we know it's dangerous but people get cancers years later and you can't identify the source anyway" (true story).

There is certainly more that we can do. Ie being more careful with introducing new chemicals with largely unknown long term effects.

The burden of proof shouldn't be decades of research seeing thousands of people developing serious health issues and/or dying, and then reacting. It should be on companies, having lengthy and expensive process for approval and then continue reviewing. This is not some app release ffs, we talk about lives and health of billions, how much more we can fail our children if we fail this.

Or you know what, you can do that with you and your kids, but please allow me and my family to use more conservative approach, I am happy to pay a bit extra.

In the case of pesticides, lower doses may show increased effects, what you say is false.

https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article-abstract/33/3/378/2354...

I’ll never miss an opportunity to plug a very relevant Behind the Bastards - at this point it feels like an Xkcd for Very Bad Things, but I digress - [Part One: The Deadliest School in History](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2N77mwUI0pDOBOP6gIknkU) does a pretty good job of covering the School of the Americas

They also have a few on Bernays because of course they do

Why are synthetics regularly banned if they are safe then? Is every farm high-tech, with million dollars tractors and big, flat fields? How about crops where pesticides have to be applied manually? How about communities near the fields, which breathe those products?[0]

Why are you trying to slide the discussion with GMOs, which aren't relevant since we talk about pesticides?

Saying that "organic has 2% of the world crop" is not true : certified organic crops, yes. Most of the earth's biomass grows without synthetic pesticides, and many farms in the world have the same practices without the labels.

In general, organic farming is a reference, of course that it doesn't have to be a religion. It is also a great source of scientific experimentation, especially for soil regeneration and biodiversity (which alas, I know, isn't profitable for Monsanto&co... yet!)

Using less pesticides in general is something that is proven better[1], and doesn't necessarily reduces yields[2]. Organic farming is part of the global effort for the reduction in pesticide usage, and doesn't have to be hegemonic. Having "organic farming only" areas are for instance great to create havens for biodiversity, while agricorps are allowed to run wild elsewhere.

Overall it's great for consumer choice, and reducing to the maximum pesticides intake for children should be a goal, given their sensitivity to endocrine disruptors.

[0] https://oem.bmj.com/content/68/9/694.short

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42452-019-1485-1

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nplants20178

Corruption like Orbán stealing my taxes to fund a palace for himself? This is the most smug, privileged thing I've read in a while. If you're fine with corruption, say it loud and proud.

It does have a food safety agency, but this is a classic international trade problem that is solved at the border since the EU is a trade union.

The United States has far stricter labeling standards than the EU. That's why US products appear to have more ingredients, they are required to say what their ingredients are mad from, even on identical products.

Many things that are well known memes are completely false. Not everything in the EU is better regulated. Everyone always complains about chlorinated chicken, not realizing that <5% of US chicken is washed that way as chicken now uses vinegar washes, and those that did were at concentrations deemed safe by the FDA.

   The European approach to food additives is visible. The EFSA assigns a 3- or 4-digit code to every food additive, and that number must be included on food labels if it’s used in a product. The EFSA believes this system makes it easier for consumers to look up and memorize specific additives.

   In the US, those same additives are required to be printed out in full.

> but for Food related stuff, EU standards and regulation are truly superior for consumers, relative to US and other countries

That is mostly a myth. EU and US take different approaches to setting food safety regulations, which means they have different lists of banned substances. The EU bans a lot of substances that have no evidence of actual adverse effects just out of an abundance of caution or sometimes even because of uninformed public perception, which is why their regulations seem more comprehensive, but the vast majority of that has no real positive effect on consumers.

https://blog.ansi.org/ansi/differences-between-eu-and-us-foo...

In terms of actual food safety, the US is basically the same as the EU (it technically ranks even higher than most EU countries on the "Quality and Safety" criterion of the Global Food Security Index, but the top countries are all very close)

https://insights.economistenterprise.com/sustainability/proj...

(Before anyone accuses me of something, I live in the EU and generally prefer EU in terms of lawmaking and regulations. It's just that food safety specifically is a point of comparison which is much less true than people usually think)

The guy who carries a pistol and shoots the neighbor's dogs in self defense, I would expect that guy to face some social consequences and he'd be lucky if it was just the police.

Hobbes. we create the Leviathan so we don't have to constantly act in self defense. The alternative was cold, brutish, and short.

Europeans largely do not believe in the right to self defense

I'm talking mainly about taste not making people sick. No idea about the rest of the EU but in Germany tap water never tastes like chlorine while in the US it does everywhere I have been.

Ah, I see.

> primarily peracetic, or peroxyacetic acid, which is essentially a mixture of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide

The NPR should possibly hire a science editor. Peracetic acid is not a _mixture_ of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide, any more than water is a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. It can be, though in practice is not, made by _combining_ them.

Anyway, same concern as chlorine from the EC’s point of view; it’s an attempt to clean up the problem after it is created, of dubious efficacy, whereas EC policy is to attempt to avoid creating it in the first place.

That's great until the retaliation.

The reason is roughly that there were devastating food shortages in the world wars, and avoiding that happening again has been an important force in Dutch politics since.

The neighbour screamed at me never to talk to her or her kids.

It's funny you say this because, at least from what I've seen, groups that are historically discriminated against seem to be receiving more latitude in skirting the law.

What did I miss in the GP comment that points to the decisions being made on class, accent, or skin color?

No, it's just good old corruption and/or nepotism.

Yeah, the US FDA allows artificial growth hormones in dairy so let's drop this comical charade that US dairy is good.

Yes, but we understand modern science as it pertains to both... which is why lead is controlled for both organic and non-organic farming.

Honestly curious, which of these is more harmful than the non-organic alternatives?

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-I/su...

Modern science can only "prove" that something is not harmful on a timescale of a year or perhaps a decade, not a generation or more. If the precautionary principle had been applied in Roman times, lead would not have been considered safe. Nor asbestos, nor thalidomide, nor microplastics, nor a bunch of synthetic molecules - "proven safe" - that are routinely added to non-organic food in order to improve its yield or its cosmetic aspect or whatever. That was my point.

Family next door had 17 kids (yes, from one mother), 5 dangerous dogs, and absolutely despised us (somehow we thought having a few acres of land would make worrying about neighbours less necessary). There was an ongoing decades-old land feud with the farmer behind both of our homes. The aforementioned dangerous dogs killed several of the farmer's sheep, so the farmer finally shot and killed one of the dogs during an attack on said sheep, which escalated tensions. We had 2 and 4 year old kids who, it's worth noting, were roughly the size of sheep and about as tempting for the dogs to kill, so we were basically terrified to let our kids outside. Neighbours routinely insulted us, yelled at us, and threw garbage (including old chemical containers, sharp metal, etc.) on to our land.

They also routinely trespassed and shot fireworks over our thatch roof (the roof was part thatch, part modern) - very concerning when your roof is more flammable than kindling. Finally they left a dead crow in a bag by our door which felt like a threat, so we sold the place at a €100k loss and moved to the Netherlands.

Gardai were absolutely lazy, uncaring, and useless, and did absolutely nothing.

Now I encourage everyone I can to stay as far away from rural Ireland as possible.

That's not stricter, it's just different names.

   EU labels are not required to list as much information about nutrients in a product as compared to US food labels. Plus, they often omit such items as saturated fat, fiber, and sugar.

Thats some mighty hyperbole, not everybody is breaking some minor (or not so minor) laws 50x a day. Or a year.

Societies where there is high amount of respect towards each other and rules tend to perform much better over long time, ie Switzerland. Its a pleasure to live in such society especially when coming from more messy ones, triple that with small kids.

I’ve never let dogs with a history of killing livestock on to my neighbours’ land where kids are playing.

But regardless, I’m much happier since leaving.

The dog thing specifically was very heavily policed in the part of Spain I used to live in. It being unenforced would be unheard of.

Why are you allowing chemicals with proven toxicity then?

So Europeans have Kryptonite biology where nutrient content doesn't matter for their health?

> what you say seems to just be a meme

The biggest meme now is hating the US while glorifying EU despite in-your-face evidence that justifies a contrary attitude.

what happens if you criticise the government in these safe countries?

Agricultural use is a lot more concentrated though, which is important. In the case of vinegar this is about safety.

Though I don't know how much vinegar is used in ag - my facebook feed is full of people who don't need roundup because some concoction of vinegar, salt, and dish soap works - they never point out that you need PPE to work with this stuff that isn't required for roundup.

Thanks for citation and logical discussion. Always good to engage in such discussions.

I think some folks are full of shit so that nutritional content of the food itself, like mentioned, in a parallel comment doesn't matter much for them, but for rest of us with normal biology it does matter unfortunately.

  Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 requires the vast majority of pre-packed foods to bear a nutrition declaration. It must provide the energy value and the amounts of fat, saturates, carbohydrate, sugars, protein and salt of the food.

Racist ones? I only skimmed the article.

there was a recent case of a kid who was literally stabbed by a sihk guy and got arrested because the sihk guy said the guy said something racist.

Now before you say that I need to check my white privilege, I am brown. everytime one of these people commit these crimes and the police look the other way in the name of political correctness, it gives legitimacy to the racists who want to cast all of us in a bad light. Law and order needs to be a applied equally and its very strange to me how people are getting arrested for speech when they are a direct consequence of government policies. don't make teh speech illegal, correct the issues the=is speech is surfacing.

If it doesn't support GP's position, it doesn't count.