Organic food? No thanks!

Dennis T. Avery in American Outlook, Fall 1998
Copyright 1998 Wall Street Journal
December 8, 1998


According to recent data compiled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), people who eat organic and "natural" foods are eight times as likely as the rest of the population to be attacked by a deadly new strain of E.coli bacteria (O157:H7). This new E.coli is attacking tens of thousands of people per year, all over the world. It is causing permanent liver and kidney damage in many of its victims. . . .

Consumers of organic foods are also more likely to be attacked by a relatively new, more virulent strain of the infamous salmonella bacteria. Salmonella was America's biggest foodborne death risk until the new E.coli O157 came along.

Organic food is more dangerous than conventionally grown produce because organic farmers use manure as the major source of fertilizer for their food crops. Animal manure is the biggest reservoir of these nasty bacteria that are afflicting and killing so many people.

Organic farmers compound the contamination problem through their reluctance to use antimicrobial preservatives, chemical washes, pasteurization, or even chlorinated water to rid their products of dangerous bacteria. One organic grower summed up the community's attitudes as follows: "Pasteurization has only been around a hundred years or so; what do you think people did before that?"

The answer is simple. They died young.

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