So what was that last post about?
As typical spotted, the Government standards allow a number of insecticides including pyrethrins and rotenone. Pyrethrins come from chrysanthemums and rotenone from certain other plants.
Pyrethrins aren't particularly nasty to mammals but obviously kill insects, and kill fish quite well too as I understand it. Rotenone's also fairly safe as toxic substances go (it kills fish as well, and is used as a piscicide too), but the peculiar thing is that the logic for allowing them is apparently that they're natural substances. You'd never see a synthetic insecticide being allowed on organic farms even if it were considerably safer.
What I think might be really interesting is that a large proportion of people buying organic food probably don't know what organic farmers can and can't do.
To be fair though, the Soil Association doesn't allow pyrethrins, and only rotenone on special application from the farmer. On the downside it's actually annoyingly difficult to get far enough through the Soil Association's website to figure that out, and the average organic-buying consumer is not likely to have much idea about that.
Pyrethrins aren't particularly nasty to mammals but obviously kill insects, and kill fish quite well too as I understand it. Rotenone's also fairly safe as toxic substances go (it kills fish as well, and is used as a piscicide too), but the peculiar thing is that the logic for allowing them is apparently that they're natural substances. You'd never see a synthetic insecticide being allowed on organic farms even if it were considerably safer.
What I think might be really interesting is that a large proportion of people buying organic food probably don't know what organic farmers can and can't do.
To be fair though, the Soil Association doesn't allow pyrethrins, and only rotenone on special application from the farmer. On the downside it's actually annoyingly difficult to get far enough through the Soil Association's website to figure that out, and the average organic-buying consumer is not likely to have much idea about that.