EDITORIAL
'Safe' greens let us down
- Published: 10 Aug 2012 at 00.00
- Newspaper section: News
When the government kowtows to agrochemical giants and fails to curb excessive use of toxic pesticides, consumers have to protect themselves. Many think they can avoid health hazards from pesticide-doused vegetables by no longer buying their greens at local wet markets, believing that the expensive, so-called "organic" greens in up-scale supermarkets are safer. They'd better think again.
The customers of modern-trade supermarkets were given a rude awakening this week when laboratory tests revealed that the certified "organic" vegetables at supermarkets and those ordinary greens in wet markets are more or less the same in terms of their potential for endangering consumers' health.
In fact, the findings show that the more hazardous category are the expensive, "organic" vegetables with safety standard certification issued by the government, not the ordinary greens in wet markets for the masses.
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