President’s Cancer Panel: Organic foods reduce environmental risks

The President�s Cancer Panel Report released in May exhorts consumers to choose food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers, antibiotics, and growth hormones to help decrease their exposure to environmental chemicals that can increase their risk of contracting cancer. Organic products avoid the use of these chemicals.

�Exposure to pesticides can be decreased by choosing, to the extent possible, food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers�Similarly, exposure to antibiotics, growth hormones, and toxic run-off from livestock feed lots can be minimized by eating free-range meat raised without these medications,� according to the landmark report, �Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now,� submitted to President Obama by Dr. LaSalle Leffall, Jr., an oncologist and professor of surgery at Howard University, and Dr. Margaret L. Kripke, an immunologist at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

�Organic production and processing is the only system that uses certification and inspection to verify that these chemicals are not used on the farm all the way to our dinner tables,� said Christine Bushway, Executive Director of the Organic Trade Association.

(Copyright The Organic & Non-GMO Report, June 2010)