To attain organic certification, crops must be grown to strict standards set out by the USDA’s National Organic Program. Many consumers are reassured that plants, meat, dairy and eggs that are raised organically are grown without the use of synthetic fertilizers or genetically modified ingredients. Another requirement of the organic standard is that crops may not be fertilized with sewage sludge, the solid waste byproduct of water treatment, which includes industrial waste. The absence of sewage sludge (euphemistically termed “biosolids”) isn’t the first reason most people cite for choosing organic, but it is an important one.
A recent court ruling awarded compensation to two dairy farmers in Georgia whose herds of dairy cows died as a result of eating hay treated with sewage sludge. The sludge, and consequently the cows’ milk, contained dangerous levels of cadmium, molybdenum, chlordane, PCBs, thallium, and arsenic. Thallium can cause digestive irritation and nerve damage, and the Agriculture Department considers it a potential weapon of bioterrorists wishing to contaminate our food supply—but no agency regulates how much thallium is acceptable in milk. Certified organic dairy is more than just rBGH-free, and certified organic crops are safer in more ways than you may have realized. Sarah Aubry
The full Associated Press story covering the sewage sludge ruling is available on the Yahoo! News website: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080307/ap_on_re_us/sludge_poisoned_land_5
