SC - lavendar

[Tara Sersen]

> In general any flower that you pick up from a florist is a REALLY bad idea
> to use in cooking.  There are little to no regulations on pesticide use in
> greenhouses if the food was not intended for consumption.  This goes along
> with the theory that you don't want florist roses for making rosewater
> unless you know that they are organic, or that the grower uses biological
> control agents and not chemical control agents.

It gets even worse than that.  An awful lot of flowers these days,
especially roses, are imported from South America.  I read an article
recently about how the S.A. rose trade is driving US rose producers out
of business, and it's actually difficult to find domestic roses
anymore.  Anyway, in S.A., they not only use pesticides - they use
pesticides that are highly illegal in the US because of their toxicity. 
I don't mean illegal to sell over the counter to Joe Suburban Gardener,
I mean entirely, 100% illegal to own, use, manufacture or import.  If
these same South American producers were exporting foodstuff, it would
never make it through our ports.  The only reason the flowers make it in
is because they are not foodstuff, and the risk is less than having it
actually on our fields, water supply, and tables.  After all, a) you're
touching it, not eating it, and b) how often do most of us get roses
anyway?

I always wondered about pesticides in comercial flowers, and therefore
never dared to eat them.  But, learning about this made me wary even to
TOUCH them.

Magdalena vander Brugghe

<OT rant> If you're interested in the plight of foreign workers, the
poor scrubs who are stuck working with this crap are sent out in the
fields with no protection, handling these pesticides with bare hands and
no gas masks.  The death and disease rates are amazing.  The workers are
made to dip each rose in a vat of these pesticides before they're
packaged for export so they'll last longer.  With bare arms.  All this
so we can have huge American Beauty Roses.  Bah.  Gimme a beautiful
antique rose from somebody's garden. </OT rant>