Green Options

This post is going to be another struggle for balance.  The threat from this particular mycotoxin in the food supply is a so large that it makes the risks that worry most people look tame.  It makes the subject of one of my previous posts about another mycotoxin, vomitoxin, look like a virtual non-issue. Aflatoxin is one of the most potent acute toxins known and one of the most carcinogenic.  Because of this the average international tolerance for aflatoxin B1 in food is 4 parts per billion (PPB).  The average tolerance for food for children is 0.2 PPB and for milk 0.05 PPB (USDA ERS publication source for this data).  These are seriously low numbers.  I want to accurately represent the seriousness of this risk.  

At the same time I also want to accurately represent the extent to which the commercial food supply is now protected from that risk.  The same ERS document above reported US crop losses in 2003 from mycotoxins in corn, wheat and peanuts of $932 million and another $466 million for testing.  That is all for preventing this toxin from getting to us. There is a lot going on in the background that few people recognize.

Folks in the food industry may well ask “why even bring it up!?”  First of all, this is no secret.  My Google Alert for “Aflatoxin” sends me articles nearly every day.  Also I raise this issue to try to “calibrate risk.”  I saw an entry in a comment string on another blog the other day where someone wrote, “I hope this is a move towards chemical-free food.”  I’ll give that person the benefit of the doubt that they know that all food is made of chemicals (proteins, fats, carbs…).  Their concern was about synthetic pesticide residues.  I doubt that they know about “chemicals” like aflatoxin.  They should.  It is thousands of times more toxic than a typical pesticide residue.

If you go to the Organic Consumers Association website you will see that they are upset about the way that stores like Whole Foods market products as “natural.”  They believe (and they are probably right) that consumers will confuse this with “Organic.”  In fact there are no real rules about what can be called “natural” and savvy marketers have realized that almost everyone likes the concept of “natural” and they have tapped into that for selling power.

The problem for the Organic community is that their own, highly regulated farming system is also built on the concept of “natural.”  I have a good friend who was on the board of CCOF (California’s organic certification leader) back in the days when the definition of “USDA Organic” was being hammered out (1990-2002).  He explained that one reason it took so long was that there was a philosophical struggle between the Organic stalwarts who wanted it to be driven by what was “natural” and by the USDA that wanted to bring some science into what was safest and best for the environment.  The “natural” voices prevailed.