Sewage from farms????
Animal waste could be coming from some farms but sewage comes from towns and cities which means from people! Chemicals on farms in North America are managed quite well today and are safer than they used to be. Any sewage or chemical residue most likely was washed into the rivers due to the extreme weather we have been having. That includes plant food too!
Not too long ago it was only possible to look at contaminants like in water down to parts per million (PPM) and now technology allows us to go parts per billion (PPB). It must of been close to 20 years ago a water pollution study (DER,EPA) was done and it included the most agriculturely contaminated water wells in the US. According to the study the worst water actually was found in small towns where the sewers overflowed during storms and people over apply chemicals on their lawns and gardens which ends up in the water. The first time that I saw these study results on TV was in the last few years but for some reason it did not make the news too quickly. I heard about the results shortly after the study was completed at a chemical application safety meeting. I think the study was on a news segment blasting agriculture practices in the wake of recent food recalls. If you check into it, most recalls on veggies were on organic farms and not from "toxic chemical" farms.
When I was a kid I enjoyed swimming in Lake Erie and it had this neat goo on the bottom that was fun to play with. Wearing an old pair of sneakers made walking in the goo more bearable. I found out later that that goo was sewage washed our way from the Cleveland area! Today you can see the lake bottom but back then the water was "cloudy"!! There also used to be a big scare on mercury levels in the fish from Lake Erie. Now they say just to eat it in moderation instead of do not eat the fish at all. I saw a show on The History Channel talking about mercury levels in fish that was entombed with the pharaohs in ancient Egypt. The mercury level is much higher than in todays fish! So was the mercury always in the fish or did the ancients do something to put mercury in their catch???
My dad raised the best tasting potatoes on his farm! I do not like the russet type or as most people call them "Idaho potatoes". In the eighties the chemical bug control on potatoes pretty much quit working due to over application. They had to be sprayed every week for bugs pretty much up until up to harvest. Due to "evil" companies like Monsanto new safer chemicals with a different mode of action have been developed. The hero for the potatoes is Bayer - yes the aspirin people. The Bayer product is much safer and is applied at planting and further application of insecticide needed is minimal. Safer weaker products can be used instead of double and triple combinations of highly toxic chemicals which were applied more often years ago.
Monsanto's biggest advance in GM (Genectically modified) crops is Roundup Ready corn and soybeans. Roundup is a safe herbicide (Available at Walmart too!) which normally kills any small green plants like weeds and tomatoes or whatever. It is safe and does not build up in the soil like other chemicals. Basically the lab places or breeds (Like a test tube baby!) a natural gene into the plants so Roundup will not kill the corn or soybeans. Again less toxic chemicals in the enviroment. Another great advance is BT corn. BT has a fancy name but basically it is a natural bacteria that keeps bugs off of crops so again less chemicals are applied to the corn crops. Our ancestors bred better plants too by selecting the healthy plants (Better genes) and planted them along with other plants which created even better plants over time.
The technology is available today (In the labs) to stack (Bandstacked???) more genes onto plants for growing affordable medicine ingredients which would make them safer than most todays pills. They could get only what is needed instead of a general ingredient that covers a wide spectrum and causes side effects. Who would want that??? Not too long ago there was a stink about people going into Canada and buying affordable medicines which "could possibly not be $afe". The medicines all came from the same factories so why would affordable not be $afe???
The thing that bothers me about a lot of people who complain the most about food safety is their lack of morals. What do they do on the weekends or whenever. They go around screwing (Can I say that here??) anybody and sometimes anything! They pierce and tattoo every area of their their bodies to the extreme! Their bodies consume things that are drank or smoked or inhaled or injected or applied or whatever! Cosmetic surgery, botox (Which is highly toxic and used to kill rats too!) injections, hair colorings, pills to get you up or down are taken daily, energy drinks, etc., etc.. So is it really something in the water??? Is it the chemicals in food production??? I do not like seeing all that imported food either whether it be from places we never heard of or just are not friendly nations.
I guess that I said a mouthful!
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