I held my breath when I heard the story that the FDA was going to force “pasteurization” of organic vegetables. Of course, I was frightened, because of the forced pasteurization of California almonds, which has raised the price of raw almonds through the roof, but I still held off…. I held my breath…. good thing…
Today, I received an email from Dave Klein, the publisher of Living Nutrition Magazine:
“I was wrong about the pasteurization of greens; the FDA
is not, in fact, proposing to pasteurize greens at all! What happened was someone on the rawfoods board posted a thread that read like there was a proposal to pasteurize greens, telling us to protest on the FDA comment line, with a link to the original article. I didn’t read the article.
In fact, the FDA is proposing regulating growers’ practices, which is probably a good thing.
They’re proposing making growers test their produce at certain intervals for contamination. Also they are looking to make certain regulations about soil conditions, which some groups feel will negatively impact organic growers. I would tend to disagree, as I think a lot of ‘organic’ growers today are faking it and need to be regulated. The real organic growers probably have little to hide.”
I have sat out of this scary notification loop because I wanted to see what would really come around. I understand the panic based on California almonds (what were they thinking of… do they really think that pasteurizing almonds will increase almond consumption, as the world continues to go organic and raw????? They just make us go to outside (foreign) sources, which do not have such ignorant laws (unfortunately, almond prices for raw foodists have just gone through the ceiling, as (sensible) foreign sources have realized that they have a limitless market) The main problem for us here (in the US) is that we must trust foreign sources, which are not necessarily under the same regulations as our local regulations.
Perhaps, our “formerly” raw almond growers/producers in California will be able to organize (oh, but it is California!!! they couldn’t organize when the threat was imminent! )
Meanwhile, it looks like we are safe… stay awake… stay aware!!!
PRETTY SMART RAW FOOD IDEAS 