Originally Posted by
Joe
I'd be curious to ask an insider in organic food production, about the use of pesticides: everyone I meet seems to think that "organic" food is produced without pesticides and are shocked when I tell them that this is not so - organic producers are allowed to use many pesticides, some of which (based on heavy metals) are considered by WHO to be significantly more dangerous to health than "non-organic" alternatives.
The same type of television show portrays "free-range" chickens as happy individuals pecking and scratching as god (or Darwin) intended rather than the reality of animals in flocks of thousands with their beaks cut-off, no longer able to peck at anything!
Just as "free-range" and "organic" persuade millions of people that they are buying some sort of olde-worlde country ideal when the reality is as grim and profit conscious as the factory alternative, "fair-trade" hides in the folds of the term layers of corruption and exploitation that would make those same purchasers blanch.
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