Believe nothing

I’d like to object to two htnigs:=========== In Europe, it is mandatory to label anything that is genetically modified as such. There are intense restrictions on imports that are genetically modified. Result: no one eats genetically modified foods. They simply don’t exist because there is no market for them. All foods in Europe are “real” (excluding processing and I’m sure chemicals, but to a lesser extent than here in the US). ===========1. I live in a European _developing_ country which kind of has GMO regulations, but, as of summer 2010 when I researched the topic,a) the imported products weren’t checked for GMO (the government had no money for this), so for the htnigs which are frequently imported in wholesale (like, rice from India and you might know that a lot of rice there is GMO), there was a chance that we actually were getting GMO-containing products which were just marked as no GMO.b) the organization which had to do random test checks of the products hadn’t been getting any money for this from the government for several years, and then finally got some last year, but SOME.You might say come on, people are mostly honest, but the trick is that test checks for other htnigs (sausages on how much soy they actually contain, milk products on bad bacterias and % of vegetable oils, blueberry-containing vitamins, etc.,) always give surprising results regarding at least some of the manufacturers in our local market.2. We have quite a lot of local farmers markets. There are 3 types of sellers:* those that just sell the products (they buy them wholesale from the farmers)* farmers or their employees* old ladies with low pensions who keep a near-city for-rent garden or live in a small farm house which always have gardens (it’s happened that pensions in my country are low for most old people, so the way these people are able to support themselves is either by taking money from their well-adjusted grownup kids, or by keeping a garden. Or having a job, if they have the opportunity to.)The products are sold* on official food markets (in theory, the product there are tested by the local laboratory, but bribing is still quite popular in the country, so there is no 100% guarantee in this case)* in vegetable/fruit kiosks* in high-trafficked places, on ad-hoc basis (old ladies, some farmers growing/selling short-seasoned products) obviously their product isn’t tested by laboratories.=== But the trick is:* the farmers (amateur and professional) aren’t educated about safe farming and also don’t test the soil before renting/buying the garden/farm.Example on substance misuse: the local news mentioned a farmer whose produce was rejected (several tons of melons containing 10 times more nitrates than allowed) from the official food market. But our legislation doesn’t force the laboratory to destroy the produce in such cases, so obviously the farmer, to avoid going bankrupt, sold his produce on more friendly’ markets after this.* some territories in the city and near-city have above-the-norm radioactive soil contamination because of the specifics of our local manufacturing company (which actually feeds a big part of the city, so nobody will go against this company ever), and the people aren’t educated on where these spots are.* near-city for-rent gardens are just several big fields divided in patches, so if one of the farmers is using something bad, their neighbouring gardens get contaminated too (via the soil+water cycle or via the air).What I’m saying is each country and maybe even city has its specific local issues Naturally, this doesn’t mean they don’t have to be managed.============ I just bought these two peaches from a supermarket. The small one is organic, while the large one is a conventional peach. I wonder…. how do they make it so large? Chemical pesticides and fertilizers? Probably. ============I don’t really want to object here, I’ll just elaborate on the Probably part, just in case:First, there are different sorts of peaches and because of this and also different climate+soil richness conditions, their sizes can vary. Very basic example: look at the open-air cactuses in Mexico and at the cactus which is a houseplant.Second, there is an artifical selection/selective breeding thing, which is a non-GMO way to get better (bigger, stronger, etc.) animals and vegetables/fruits.Which means that big peaches don’t necessarily contain bad htnigs.