Post by Bonobo on Oct 15, 2016 19:47:08 GMT 1
Yes, that's very true, and it also applies to foods you eat...homegrown (or at least local) and home made are best! Processed, store-bought foods are full of things we don't need and aren't good for us!!
I just run into an article which corroborates our opinion. It is funny that people can spend so much on good wine but they drink poison instead.
That is why I seldom buy wine, only when my old supply runs out and the fresh brew isn`t ready yet.
First about Swiss wines but I checked and it practically applies to anywhere in the world. Even organic produce can be contaminated by nearby conventional fields.
Swiss wines contaminated with pest killer
A study by Greenpeace has found that vineyards in the cantons of Ticino, Graubünden and Schaffhausen produced the most contaminated wines in the country this year.
Following a bad start to the season with heavy rain in May and June, many winemakers used chemical fertilizers to prevent the spread of harmful insects and fungi, but this has left traces of chemicals in the wine.
Greenpeace took soil samples and examined grapes and wines from the famous Swiss winegrowing regions of Bündner Herrschaft, Hallau, Bieler Seeland, Lake Geneva, Valais and Ticino.
In seven out of eight samples they found traces of the controversial weed killer glyphosate, which is suspected to be carcinogenic.
They also found DDT, which has been banned in Switzerland since 1972, in samples from two vineyards.
By Virginia N. Sherry | sherry@siadvance.com
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on March 24, 2016 at 2:58 PM, updated March 24, 2016 at 9:00 PM
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- In a study released today, the group Moms Across America claimed that 10 major California wines contained the chemical glyphosate, the declared "active" ingredient in the Monsanto company's Roundup weedkiller as well as 700 other herbicides.
The 10 wines were tested by a laboratory in St. Louis, Mo., and all of them tested positive for glyphosate. The highest level of glyphosate detected -- up to 28.4 times higher than that found in the other nine wines -- was in a 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon from a conventional, chemically farmed vineyard, the group announced.
The lowest level was found in a 2013 Syrah from a biodynamic and organic vineyard that has never been sprayed, according to the owner. "Because Roundup/glyphosate is not permitted on organic or biodynamic vineyards, the results are unexpected and can only be explained by the drift of chemical sprays from neighboring vineyards," the group speculated.
"There should be zero glyphosate and related chemicals in our wine, food or personal products, said Zen Honeycutt, director of Moms Across America.
The chemicals are "endocrine hormone disruptors, which can lead to breast cancer, miscarriages, birth defects and many other health issues," she claimed.
NAPA, SONOMA AND MENDOCINO
All the wines tested were from the Napa Valley, Sonoma and Mendocino County areas of California.
"According to the California Department of Health, breast cancer rates in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties is 10 to 20 percent higher than the national average," Moms Across America said today, adding that "700 lawsuits are currently pending against Monsanto for the connection between non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and Roundup."
"By raising awareness about GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and chemical farming, we improve the health of our community, increase the prosperity of our country and support future generations," says the group, a division of the California State Grange Foundation.
Moms Across America lists these four calls to action on its website:
We want GMOs labeled now.
We want glyphosate/Roundup banned now.
We want GMO-free and organic food.
We want toxic pesticide/herbicide-free neighborhoods.
The use of pesticides has become a major issue among French vintners and drinkers. Many dismiss the sudden cascade of new wines that proclaim their environmental virtue as New Age gimmickry. Others condemn the resistance to pesticides as a potential threat to other wines — the equivalent, some say, of refusing a vaccine.
Mark Bernstein March 4, 2015
There is no more meaningless term in the world of wine than "natural" for wine is not a natural product. Wine does not occur in nature and...
“The inspectors ruled that I no longer produced a single crop and no longer could call my vines a vineyard”.
This organic idea sounds great until too many vineyards are not applying pesticides against highly contagious pathogens and France has an...
But the weekend salons I attended bore witness that these wines are more than just a splash in the glass; they attest to a movement that has been growing for years in France and elsewhere to produce quality wine that is as pure as it can be.
There is broad agreement that France, the European Union’s largest agricultural producer, uses too many pesticides on all kinds of produce. The nation is the third-largest consumer of pesticides in the world, after the United States and Japan. Apples grown in southern France, for example, are subjected to about three dozen pesticides.
The pesticide and big-agriculture lobbies are strong, resisting any initiative that could affect farm yields, so there is little political will to take risks. In late January, the French agriculture minister, Stéphane Le Foll, announced that a government pledge to cut pesticide use in half by 2018 would be delayed until 2025. “We set a goal that was too ambitious without giving the means to change the production model,” he said in a newspaper interview.
www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/dining/in-france-pesticides-get-in-way-of-natural-wines.html?_r=0
