[Ramius]

Okey dokey. :-)

Better living through chemistry... that's my motto.

As an aside... I happen to work for a company that has done a great deal of research in various environmental and food issues up to and including the latest mess on endocrine disruptors. The long and short of it is that the dosage of chemicals from pesticides over a lifetime is a risk so small as to not even be on the radar. The risk from "natural" toxins in the "natural" pests that inhabit foods is actually about the same or higher.

I'm not saying that organic is somehow wrong. It's fine, but it carries statistically similar risks to any other form of agriculture.

The real winner in agriculture science is genetic engineering. It has gotten a completely mistaken rap. These are foods that need orders of magnitude lower levels of pesticide to remain pest-free and yet still yield high crop levels per-acre. It is an absolute win-win that is completely misunderstood by the popular press.

[Sam Cree]

Aren't you freezing to death, now that you are back in Washington?

[2Jedismom]

The main reason we're organic (which mainly means for us that we grow things in the season that they are supposed to grow, which cuts down a lot on it's problems, amazingly) is that Joshua "grazes" through the garden. The most I worry about (and I do worry) is him eating a spider, or forgeting to wipe off any bird poop. But we have him pretty well trained now.

Then again, we do it just as a hobby. If it don't grow, we're not out anything. Last year was horrible...this year fantastic (so far).

[Overtaxed]

I'm not saying that organic is somehow wrong. It's fine, but it carries statistically similar risks to any other form of agriculture.

Of course if they're fertilizing with animal manure that hasn't been composted properly there's the risk of E. coli contamination. I'd rather deal with hazards that don't grow on their own.