> I don't like use of pesticides and I think there's a reasonable controversy to be had about the dangers of Glyphosate.
There's an important economic perspective to pesticide use: farmers are going to be doing whatever they can to kill enough pests to protect their crops and get a satisfactory yield/ROI.
That means that, the more effective a pesticide is, the less of it they need to use; and the less effective a pesticide is, the more of it they need to use. Since the dangers to humans/other animals come from the amount of pesticide left on something after washing, the seemingly-equivalent "less, more-powerful" pesticide is actually much less dangerous than "more, less-powerful" pesticide, because it's more likely to be completely removed from the end product.
If we ban the most effective pesticides, the alternative is using more of the less-effective pesticides to get an equivalent effect. Which means getting food that likely has more pesticide left over on it.
This also applies to "organic" food: "organic" pesticides are less effective, so they use more of them, so "organic" food ends up having more pesticide left on it than non-"organic" food.
So, if you're not a fan of pesticide in the sense that you're not a fan of eating pesticide, then you should want farmers to be equipped with as powerful a pesticide as possible.
This assumes that all pesticides have the same effects at the same dosages in humans, which would be surprising if true.
Sure, the more potent the pesticide, the less growers need to use, and the less residual pesticide ends up ingested by people. But it's impossible to say anything about the relative harm of a small residual amount of potent pesticide versus a larger residual amount of less potent (and chemically different) pesticide.
> This assumes that all pesticides have the same effects at the same dosages in humans
Nah, my assumption was that the level of harm scales with the power of the pesticide in humans just as it does in, well, pests. (It's not true, but it's an interesting model to study.)
If we assume that relationship, it should imply that, if your vegetables were never washed once from the farm to your mouth, you'd be getting equivalent levels of harm from more- and less-powerful pesticides, since the amount of them sprayed on the vegetable would be in inverse proportion to their toxicity.
However, once you introduce washing, the amount of the pesticide you remove isn't constant, nor linear.
In fact, some pesticides are non-"organic" precisely because they have chemicals in them that make them more easily washed off!
So the better-engineered (less "natural") pesticides are both originally present in smaller quantities, and reduced in quantity more by washing. You might end up eating none of a synthetic pesticide, whereas an "organic" one might be all over your food even after washing. "None" is very different from even a little.
(Further, there are synthetic pesticides that are entirely safe for humans—or are even considered food by humans—but which are considered non-"organic" because we can only create them via de novo synthesis rather than in a bioreactor. Consider some artificial sugar that the human liver can process but insects cannot metabolize. If we sprayed it on plants, it'd be a "synthetic pesticide." If "synthetic pesticide" looks like that, and "organic pesticide" looks like, say, nicotine, which would you prefer to miss some residue of?)
As another example, diatomaceous earth kills pretty much anything with an exoskeleton through a physical mechanism, but is completely non-toxic to mammals (prolonged breathing is not a good idea, though). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth#Pest_contro...)
It is convenient but erroneous to assume that all pesticides affect humans and pests equally.
There's an important economic perspective to pesticide use: farmers are going to be doing whatever they can to kill enough pests to protect their crops and get a satisfactory yield/ROI.
That means that, the more effective a pesticide is, the less of it they need to use; and the less effective a pesticide is, the more of it they need to use. Since the dangers to humans/other animals come from the amount of pesticide left on something after washing, the seemingly-equivalent "less, more-powerful" pesticide is actually much less dangerous than "more, less-powerful" pesticide, because it's more likely to be completely removed from the end product.
If we ban the most effective pesticides, the alternative is using more of the less-effective pesticides to get an equivalent effect. Which means getting food that likely has more pesticide left over on it.
This also applies to "organic" food: "organic" pesticides are less effective, so they use more of them, so "organic" food ends up having more pesticide left on it than non-"organic" food.
So, if you're not a fan of pesticide in the sense that you're not a fan of eating pesticide, then you should want farmers to be equipped with as powerful a pesticide as possible.