EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices

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.)

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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...

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

"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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The one you are currently browsing

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

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

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.

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.

> 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)