Best quality ingredients, RBD, organic... questions.

[sassanellat]

As a retired organic farmer, I avoid GMOs and anything related to Monsanto simply because I ~know~ how much and how often poisons are sprayed on the fields to grow GMOs because I see all of my farming neighbors spraying. Most people do not have a clue as to amounts of toxins sprayed on their food that does not wash off... these are very sound reasons to buy organic as much as possible. {...}

Maybe the toxins don't come through in the soaping oils, that's not the issue. The issue is, by buying GMO oils, we continue to support the poisonings of fields and food across the world. It's not just in the USA... the Amazon forests and grassland pampas of Argentina are being torn up at a frightening rate, just to grow soy and other GMO crops.

I'll just point out that the GMOs that you are describing are only a TINY handful of all GMOs, most of which are totally brilliant (and a vast majority have nothing to do with Monsanto), so it's really misleading to paint ALL GMOs as bad because a few actually are. I agree completely that the ones you describe have to be removed from use, though.

Most of the time, yes, the chemicals can be found in the oils in trace amounts, and there is absolutely no required testing for this (which is a no-brainer, but Monsanto, for one, prevents that legislation from happening). The deforestation really has nothing to do with GMOs, but human overpopulation.

 

[sassanellat]

Back in the old days hospitals used bleach to clean and disinfect. Now they use other chemicals for the most part. We would be better off using bleach again as the new disinfectants are causing lots of problems. But people's clothes were getting bleached and other complaints saw to the removal of bleach

I actually teach pathogenic micro/microbial control to medical professionals (and nutrition some semesters). Bleach is still in the rotation because it's cheap and very, very effective on the scariest bacteria. But, they cut back on the use during the last couple decades because it needs to be washed off, and it produces noxious fumes. It's coming back strong, though, because most of the alternatives are actually even worse for the environment. The oxyclean type (for heavy cleaning) and the citrus oils (for lighter cleaning) are excellent alternatives at home and in the hospitals, and they don't leave anything toxic to humans behind on surfaces.

 

[pamielynn]

Burt's Bees products used to be a bit better, but now they mass market, they did compromise here and there. Mostly, I'm extremely jealous they they have access to quite a few natural preservatives/antibiotics/antivirals that are native to human skin that we can't get for home use.

Just this week, I saw that BB has licensed their name to BABY CLOTHES. Yep. Crushingly disappointed in the direction they have taken with their products and name. And poor Burt doesn't even spend the money they gave him to get gone.

 

[Susie]

I actually teach pathogenic micro/microbial control to medical professionals (and nutrition some semesters). Bleach is still in the rotation because it's cheap and very, very effective on the scariest bacteria. But, they cut back on the use during the last couple decades because it needs to be washed off, and it produces noxious fumes. It's coming back strong, though, because most of the alternatives are actually even worse for the environment. The oxyclean type (for heavy cleaning) and the citrus oils (for lighter cleaning) are excellent alternatives at home and in the hospitals, and they don't leave anything toxic to humans behind on surfaces.

I hope so, it seems like more pathogens are becoming resistant to the newer stuff every day. And I am having a more difficult time going to the hospital for labwork and such due to allergies to that stuff. It is why I had to leave hospital nursing. I am allergic to Oxyclean, but I use my own soaps to clean, with bleach to follow and sanitize when needed(like toilets and kitchen counters after handling raw meats). I can tolerate bleach fumes with no problem with a vent fan running.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

........Burt's Bees products used to be a bit better, but now they mass market, they did compromise here and there. Mostly, I'm extremely jealous they they have access to quite a few natural preservatives/antibiotics/antivirals that are native to human skin that we can't get for home use.

Can you expand on the natural preservatives/antibiotics/antivirals bit? Would be an interesting read

 

[sagehill]

... yes, the chemicals can be found in the oils in trace amounts, and there is absolutely no required testing for this ... The deforestation really has nothing to do with GMOs, but human overpopulation.

As a farmer, I have been intensively reading/learning/researching GMOs, their related toxins, and Monsanto et al for many years. I'm very familiar with all ramifications pro and con.

What led me to organics 15 years ago was waste of feed, oddly enough: I noticed that NONE of my livestock, from chickens to cows, would willingly eat GMOs unless the feed was ground and pelletized. Before that, I didn't know or care about GMOs either way... but as a small farmer, I did care about wasted feed, so for one year I tested my observation and noticed, given the choice, all animals avoid GMO feed. Hmmmmm... so I began researching GMOs.

Deforestation is not due to overpopulation... that's a Monsanto line. Deforestation is due to GMOs, both directly and indirectly:

Biotech promoters always claim the expansion of soybean cultivation as a measure of the successful adoption of the transgenic technology by farmers. But these data conceal the fact that soybean expansion leads to extreme land and income concentration. In Brazil, soybean cultivation displaces 11 agricultural workers for every one who finds employment in the sector. In the 1970s, 2.5 million people were displaced by soybean production in Parana, and 0.3 million in Rio Grande do Sul. Many of these now landless people moved to the Amazon where they cleared pristine forests.

... Large-scale soybean monocultures have rendered Amazonian soils unusable.... In Bolivia, soybean production is expanding towards the east, and in many areas soils are already compacted and suffering severe soil degradation. One hundred thousand hectares of land with soils exhausted due to soybean were abandoned for cattle-grazing, which in turn further degrades the land. As land is abandoned, farmers move to other areas where they again plant soybeans and repeat the vicious cycle of soil degradation.

Read more: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SDILA.php

Again, the important issue of GMOs is poisoning of land and people.

Visiting these farm villages, the AP found chemicals in places where they were never intended to be.

Claudia Sariski, whose home has no running water, says she doesn't let her twin toddlers drink from the discarded poison containers she keeps in her dusty backyard. But her chickens do, and she uses it to wash the family's clothes.

"They prepare the seeds and the poison in their houses. And it's very common, not only in Avia Terai but in nearby towns, for people to keep water for their houses in empty agrochemical containers," explained surveyor Katherina Pardo. "Since there's no treated drinking water here, the people use these containers anyway. They are a very practical people."

The survey found diseases Seveso said were uncommon before -- birth defects including malformed brains, exposed spinal cords, blindness and deafness, neurological damage, infertility, and strange skin problems.

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/birth-...cals-ap-investigation-1.1505096#ixzz3FkOVT8ZR

In 2002, two years after the first big harvests of RR soy in the country, residents and doctors in soy producing areas began reporting serious health effects from glyphosate spraying, including high rates of birth defects as well as infertility, stillbirths, miscarriages, and cancers [2]. Environmental effects include killed food crops and livestock and streams strewn with dead fish [2, 3].

Read more: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/argentinasRoundupHumanTragedy.php

... some inert ingredients have been found to potentially affect human health. Many amplify the effects of active ingredients by helping them penetrate clothing, protective equipment and cell membranes, or by increasing their toxicity.

... POEA was recognized as a common inert ingredient in herbicides in the 1980s, when researchers linked it to a group of poisonings in Japan. Doctors there examined patients who drank Roundup, either intentionally or accidentally, and determined that their sicknesses and deaths were due to POEA, not glyphosate.

... In the French study, researchers tested four different Roundup formulations, all containing POEA and glyphosate at concentrations below the recommended lawn and agricultural dose. They also tested POEA and glyphosate separately to determine which caused more damage to embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells.

Glyphosate, POEA and all four Roundup formulations damaged all three cell types. Umbilical cord cells were especially sensitive to POEA. Glyphosate became more harmful when combined with POEA, and POEA alone was more deadly to cells than glyphosate. The research appears in the January issue of the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.

... The groups claim that the laws allowing manufacturers to keep inert ingredients secret from competitors are essentially unnecessary. Companies can determine a competitor’s inert ingredients through routine lab analyses, said Cox.

“The proprietary protection laws really only keep information from the public,” she said.

Read more: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weed-whacking-herbicide-p/

I can go all day providing solid scientific support that GMOs are wrong on very many levels, against your unsupported protestations that GMOs are good.

Again, I apologize for sidetracking the thread, but simply could not avoid responding to claims that GMO aren't dangerous. Everyone must decide for themselves, but at least decide on the basis of solid evidence, either way.

Jenny

 

[sassanellat]

I hope so, it seems like more pathogens are becoming resistant to the newer stuff every day. And I am having a more difficult time going to the hospital for labwork and such due to allergies to that stuff. It is why I had to leave hospital nursing. I am allergic to Oxyclean, but I use my own soaps to clean, with bleach to follow and sanitize when needed(like toilets and kitchen counters after handling raw meats). I can tolerate bleach fumes with no problem with a vent fan running.

Check out the citrus cleaners (there are several brands in stores now). They are 99.8% effective, rather than 99.9%, but they are non-toxic to humans (we have rare citrus detox genes) and they don't need to be washed off. They are pretty much solublized citrus EOs, so they smell nice, too.

 

[sassanellat]

Can you expand on the natural preservatives/antibiotics/antivirals bit? Would be an interesting read

I could only find some of my Burt's Bees notes (I only have a few minutes before I have to run), but the now add lactoperoxidase and glucose+glucose peroxidase as preservatives in their Peppermint foot cream and their Almond Milk Hand Creme. Both are enzymes humans produce and excrete on their skins as part of our innate immune system (thus perfectly human safe), and they are effective against a lot of bacteria and viruses because they slowly produce oxygen radicals tha indiscriminately harm microbes. I think they also use one or two others like lysozyme. We use these things in lab, but not certified for human use, and I can't find any information about their use and effectiveness in water based products (nor a source). The foo cream doesn't actually have any other preservative and it's water inclusive, so it must work!

 

[sassanellat]

What led me to organics 15 years ago was waste of feed, oddly enough: I noticed that NONE of my livestock, from chickens to cows, would willingly eat GMOs unless the feed was ground and pelletized. {...}

Deforestation is not due to overpopulation... that's a Monsanto line. {..}

Again, I apologize for sidetracking the thread, but simply could not avoid responding to claims that GMO aren't dangerous. Everyone must decide for themselves, but at least decide on the basis of solid evidence, either way.

1) Because they don't taste the same as they are used to (or the added hormones were more prevalent, or the binder was different, or the antibiotics were different - who knows?). That doesn't mean anything, and to be honest: they shouldn't be eating most 'feed' in the first place, which is an unnatural way to feed livestock. They've been trained to eat the usual feed, and don't like change. Dogs and cats display the same behavior despite the fact that the food is basically equivalent. Without significant testing, you really can't say more than 'you noticed' (and I'm a big fan of people that notice things, because it's shockingly uncommon).

2) It's not Monsanto's line - it's the reality of the situation. If you can't sell the food, no one will grow it. It's not the GMO, it's the fact that people buy the food (and Monsanto (ugh) provides the seed to maximize profit, which does not have to be chosen). Both reports commissioned by the EU (which politically bans GMO importation) also say just what I said. Close to nine billion people have to be fed, and they population is exploding at a rate most people can't conceive. If you'd like to place blame, I'd squarely place that on Monsanto's predatory business practices, not a world-wide category of excellent products that don't deserve the blame.

(I don't quote individual sources because the internet is filled with all kinds of nonsense. I can find a citation from a PhD that says the moon is made of green cheese (seriously, look - you can! LOL!). It's a complex issue, so looking at many references from reputable sources is the way I always go, and with Google, you can always be sure you get good links and you're not sidetracked into propaganda. And I'm saying that you are doing that; I'm just stating my policy on citations and why.)

3) A vast percentage of GMOs are perfectly safe (a statement that has all kinds of scientific backing, and the citations are available online in the scientific literature and from the approval committees). Nature makes trillions of GMOs every day (even wildly cross-species), and humans have been deliberately making the old-school, slower, more random, less safe versions of GMOs for about a hundred thousand years. The place we have to be careful (and the place relevant here in soapworld) isn't the GMO, but the trace chemicals applied in the fields that are more prevalent in some of them.

 

[sagehill]

We can debate this in the Off-Topics section if you'd like, but I don't care to disrupt this thread any further.

 

[MrDurden]

Yep, thought so. Thanks for confirming... Classy.

I said people care about ingredients. A great deal of people care in my part of the world of what's in their products. What they use matters to them. There's nothing elite or wrong with that. Yeah, I yawned at your pointless question. Are you here to help provide input on my question or troll?

 

[MrDurden]

When choosing oils for soaping purposes in the US, you don't really need to have organic since most of our GM crops aren't that great for soap, like corn and wheat - but many people like to use soy and canola and for those, you need to buy organic, or you'll probably get GMO crops in your products. I guess I'm just not a Roundup Ready kinda girl, but organic doesn't really seem to add anything much to the QUALITY of a soap - it's just personal preference or label appeal.

Yeah, that's why the Non-GMO Verified label will be easier and cheaper than it would be with other products.

I'm a firm believer in voting with your dollars.

I still haven't done the math to see what it will cost to switch over to organic ingredients. I for sure want to use organic coconut oil due to the chemicals used in the RBD processing.

 

[MrDurden]

To my knowledge, items that are kosher and halal are similar, but not exactly the same. I do not have contacts on either side to go deeper, but I rather take the safe-over-sorry road (for anyone): I'll give them the option of what type of soap to try.

I also respect your point of view for GMO oils. My belief stems from the fact that the skin can absorb a lot of things. The leftover oils from the SF would also be absorbed, depending on the oil. I want the best for myself and the people I share my soaps with. So the research begins... whenever I can stop posting on the site.

I looked into Kosher Certification. What a joke. $2,000 a year is what I was quoted. For a Rabbi to come to my soap kitchen and look around. I was told it only matters a couple days a year anyway.

 

[sagehill]

I for sure want to use organic coconut oil due to the chemicals used in the RBD processing.

Virgin coconut oil is naturally white anyway; further refining is done to remove the natural coconut scent, as with cocoa butter.

RBD is mostly for palm oils and GMO seed oils. Watch this video that shows how canola oil requires solvents, industrial steaming, dewaxing, bleaching, and deodorizing before it's ready to use... and this is for EDIBLE oils! [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=omjWmLG0EAs#t=0[/ame]

With all this processing, no wonder most seed oils go rancid so quickly. This is just one reason why I refuse to consume chemically processed industrial food... or use it for soaping.

As a farmer, what horrifies me was that they feed that sludgy, rancid leftover crap to feedlot livestock... so simple to feed, just pour it into feed bunks with massive trucks.

Well, hey... they have to get rid of that nasty stuff somehow, don't they. But what most people don't understand is... we're eating that stuff anyway, just indirectly.

 

[sagehill]

Check out how olive oil is made... I like how the processor sips the oil as soon as it's pressed: [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aieNV3V4b_s[/ame]

 

[MrDurden]

I'd rather use virgin coconut oil, but it's more expensive than organic RBD.

I've spent a fair amount of time trying to research this stuff on my own since it's hard to get the info from suppliers.

Olive oil is tricky since it's such a fancy oil for many. It'd be cool if they made a blend that was specific for soap making.

I'll never use canola oil (AKA rapeseed). I believe most all (if not all) is genetically modified. Lush (that goofy body care product store in malls) uses that stuff. I can't believe the ingredients of their soap compared to the price.

Thanks for the links!

 

[Fairy]

I'd rather use virgin coconut oil, but it's more expensive than organic RBD.

I've spent a fair amount of time trying to research this stuff on my own since it's hard to get the info from suppliers.

Olive oil is tricky since it's such a fancy oil for many. It'd be cool if they made a blend that was specific for soap making.

I'll never use canola oil (AKA rapeseed). I believe most all (if not all) is genetically modified. Lush (that goofy body care product store in malls) uses that stuff. I can't believe the ingredients of their soap compared to the price.

Thanks for the links!

Do you live near a Costco's or Sam's club by any chance? I usually buy olive oil and coconut oil in bulk a Costco for a decent price. I think I picked up a big bottle of avocado oil from there once too. I believe their coconut oil is USDA certified, and I think they sell USDA EVOO as well. Might be worth looking at.

Whole Foods also sells quite a wide variety of organic/non-GMO cooking oils as well. Their cosmetic oils are nice, but tend to be more expensive. They sell butters in small amounts as well, but I've no idea about the quality.

 

[CanaDawn]

Vegans are silly, but I still want to be able to sell to them, ya know?

You may want to consider a different public expression of that sentiment, in my opinion. I'm not a vegan, but it's a very disconcerting feeling reading some of your posts.

 

[CanaDawn]

With all this processing, no wonder most seed oils go rancid so quickly.

um....doesn't that have more to do with the specific fatty acids in the particular oil, and things like exposure to air rather than the processing? Oil kept properly stores about as long as the seeds, I find.

 

[sagehill]

Think about all the air that the seed oils are exposed to while being squeezed and tossed and rotated, etc during processing.