If you read our previous post regarding California Certified Organic Farmers’ position supporting the aerial spraying of the light brown apple moth in California, we know you will be as happy as we are to discover that this crucial organization has modified their stance.

Please read the March 10, 2008 press release from CCOF revoking support of the aerial spraying of California. This press release states:

As we have learned more about the ecology, chemistry, policies and politics surrounding the eradication program for the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM), we question whether an eradication program can be successful, and we acknowledge that the repeated spraying of an untested material and its inert ingredients on a large populated area is not desirable. We also believe that the health impact on people, pets, and wildlife, as well as the ecological impacts on our ecosystems and watersheds, need further evaluation.

Organic consumers strongly support California’s organic farmers on this new and far more environmentally conscious and humane position on the violation of our environment and our bodies via aerial spraying of particulate plastic, toxic chemicals, synthetics, and mystery ingredients.

We applaud CCOF for making the right choice.

Do you pay extra for organic?

So do I.

Do you avoid conventional stores and make your way to the nearest Whole Foods or small organic grocery store when it’s time to stock your kitchen pantry?

So do I.

Have you given your loyalty to the California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) and USDA Organic brand labels?

So have I.

If California is aerially sprayed with the LBAM spray, there will be no more organic food in California.

This spray is made up of a combination of synthetics, carcinogens, surfactants, and mystery ingredients which will be sprayed all over the San Francisco Bay Area, just as it has been in the Monterey and Santa Cruz region of California.

After the spraying in southern California, rivers were covered with surfactant foam and the ocean experienced the largest red tide in recent history. This is the water that is being used to irrigate any crops grown in that vicinity. It is poisonous.

The same thing will happen to our water if the aerial spraying of the Bay Area is not halted.

The spray will come down like rain on our soil, filling it indiscriminately with toxins and particulate plastic.

No farm, no backyard garden, will be organic after we are sprayed.

Attention Whole Foods and all California grocery stores trading on the organic label:

• If California is sprayed, there will no longer be a reason for us to spend extra for organic produce or products.
• We do not support the cowardly stance being taken by the NOP that declares carcinogenic, sprayed produce can be sold as organic.
• We all may as well go back to shopping at Safeway if California organic grocery stores can no longer offer us genuinely organic food.

Farming organically is not supposed to hinge on profit. Leave that to the conventional growers. Organic farmers must place priority concern on the health of the growing environment and on the health of human consumers.

We urge the Whole Foods Market chain, its California stores, and all Californian organic grocery stores and farmers to take a firm and humane stance against the spraying of California. Please, protect the soil. Protect the water. Protect the plants, animals, and human beings of California. Show us where you stand. Please act to stop the spraying. Please save the organic industry.

In an attempt to reach out to America’s most compassionate and aware minds, I have written the following letter to John Robbins, author of the landmark books Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution.

Dear John,
I went vegan some 18 years ago after reading Diet for a New America. It is hard to think of another book that has had such a profound effect on my life. I hold you as a friend, in the very highest esteem.

I am writing to you now of an urgent matter, knowing the concern you feel not only for animals, but for people and their total environment.

The USDA and the CDFA is about to begin aerially spraying the SF Bay Area with a combination of particulate plastic (as in biochemical warfare), carcinogenic pesticide and mystery ingredients, the nature of which are being kept secret under US patent laws.

San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and the surrounding cities will be aerially sprayed beginning in summer every 30 days for an unspecified number of years.

The government has declared California to be in a state of emergency so that it was possible for them to begin spraying the Monterey area without first conducting a Environmental Impact Report on this never-before-tested spray. More than 600 people fell ill there, in what is a relatively rural area. We can expect thousands of terrible illnesses once they begin spraying the Bay Area metropolis.

The USDA and CDFA are breaking two laws - one which forbids the testing of chemicals on pregnant women and children, and the other which prohibits the flying of airplanes at low altitudes over urban areas.

In addition to the illegal aspects of this horrible undertaking, the unethical practice of filling the lungs of humans and animals with particulate plastic which then slowly breaks down to time-release pesticides, once inhaled, is so ghastly, it’s almost hard to believe this can be happening.

People have fled the Monterey area after their protests were overruled by the government agencies and panic has begun in the Bay Area now that we know we are the next to be sprayed. I have never been so frightened in my life.

Our bodies, our water and our land will be filled with plastic forever.

The cause of all of this assault on the people of California? The supposed agricultural threat of a tiny brown moth called the Light Brown Apple Moth which has done 0 damage in California and has already been 99% eradicated, according to officials, by sticky traps. Yet, CDFA insists they must spray us over and over again. Zero damage has been done here and in Hawaii, this moth as seen as a harmless, and even beneficial insect.

The apparent actual cause of what they are doing is to prevent corporate traders from having restrictions put on international trade because of the presence of the moth.

So, like everything else, it comes down to money.

People here are going nuts, John, screaming that they remember DDT. I even listened to an ex-Marine talk about how he was told Agent Orange was harmless. People are remembering that the government who is telling us we’ll all be fine inhaling plastic and toxins for the rest of our lives is the same government that told people that exposure to nuclear testing was just like ’standing in sunshine.’

If the government is allowed to aerially spray the Bay Area, I believe this will be the beginning of a new nationwide policy of spraying chemicals on urban port cities to protect corporate profits and I am feeling helpless and hopeless to stop it.

Do you know about what is happening to us in California? Who can I write to, who can I contact to help us counteract our own government? Even the National Organic Program (NOP) and the California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) are supporting the spraying because they have been promised that they can still sell their sprayed products as organic.

After years of struggling with auto-immune illness, after 18 years of eating organic (soon to become a thing of the past in California) I do not want to be sprayed. I do not want my family to be abused in this way.

Can you suggest anything to me, John? I am longing for voices of reason, for wisdom, for the power to stop this from happening to the people of our land.

I thank you for taking the time to read my email.

———–

Update March 16th 2008:
Reply received from John Robbins:

I totally share your concerns.

You can go to the LBAMSPRAY.COM and CASSONLINE.ORG sites to get more informed and to pursue and share relevant links and downloads. People waking up is the bottom line, so any amount of sharing the info is key.

And I think this report is extremely important:

Harder New Zealand Report.
All the best,

John

California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) is supporting the illegal spraying of chemicals on mixed human populations in California. The National Organic Program (NOP) has been given assurances that crops sprayed with toxins, plastics, carcinogenic pesticides and synthetics can still be sold as organic. Organic consumers do not agree!

CCOF has shown its readiness to go along with the LBAM spraying so long as their status as organic is protected. This is not right. What follows is our letter to Peggy Miars, Executive Director of CCOF, sent March 12, 2008.

Dear Peggy Miars,

I am a resident of California. I have been a devoted purchaser of organic products for 18 years. I am writing to express my grave concern and disappointment over learning that CCOF is supporting the aerial spraying of plastic, toxins, and synthetics on the state of California.

I would like to share three thoughts with you about this, and appreciate you taking the time to consider them.

1) Though many of the ingredients in the product that will be aerially sprayed on human beings are not being revealed in order to protect corporate profits, the ingredients we do know about include Butylated Hydroxytoluene, Polyvinyl Alcohol, Tricaprylyl Methyl, Ammonium Chloride, Tetradecen-1-yl Acetate, and 1,2-Benzisothiozoli-3-one.

Produce that has been sprayed with the above in addition to the synthetic pheromone does not look any different to me than the ‘conventional’ produce I might as well be buying at Safeway. I pay extra for organic because I do not want to eat sprayed food, and everyone I speak to agrees that no California produce will be considered organic by consumers if it has been aerially sprayed with a secret chemical formula that includes not only the above unhealthy ingredients, but also includes whatever hidden pesticides the manufacturer has incorporated into the spray. There will no longer be a point in buying food labeled as ‘organic’ if organic no longer means not sprayed with toxins.

Though we understand that NOP has declared that sprayed food will still be legally called ‘organic’, organic shoppers do not agree. We will not consider sprayed food organic, and will have no reason to purchase it instead of so-called ‘conventional’ food.

2) Organic consumers understand that the farmers you represent may be threatened with closure if they do not comply with government policies. We understand what you are up against. If you do not speak up for the welfare of human beings, if you do not make a bold stance of non-compliance with inhumane policies, the CCOF is putting itself in the same untrustworthy and hated company as corporations like Monsanto. We know that Monsanto does not care about the damage it is doing to world food supplies and to the genetics of plants and people. By approving spraying on human beings in California, CCOF is sending a very clear message that it also has no care for the health of people, the environment, or the future of the human race. It is very clear from the pro-spray stance of CCOF that fear and profits are driving out ethical concerns and it is difficult to describe the pain and disappointment I feel in discovering CCOF to be guilty of this after the years I have given them my support with my dollar. Organic consumers are savvy people, and your brand is going to suffer greatly in regards to the once-strongly held loyalty of your consumers.

We understand that CCOF enjoys non-profit status, and is meant to represent the stance of organic farmers. Any organization or farmer who holds that produce aerially sprayed with pesticide is organic has lost the basic sense of what organic means, and has lost all credibility in the eyes of committed organic consumers.

3) In supporting the CDFA’s determination to test chemicals on human beings, CCOF is supporting illegal activity. US Laws forbid the testing of chemicals on various demographics of the public, and also prohibit airplanes flying at low altitudes over urban areas. CDFA intends to break both of these laws and lawsuits are inevitable. CCOF should not support the breaking of laws which have been put in place to protect the public. Our government and its brother organizations should not be permitted to bypass these laws.

In addition to the illegal aspects of CDFA’s past actions in the Santa Cruz and Monterey regions, and their intended future actions in the SF Bay Area, the epidemic sickness and environmental damage caused by the aerial spraying has been documented. Santa Cruz and Monterey rivers were covered with surfactant foam and the coastline was fouled with the most severe red tide in recent recorded history. More than 600 cases of illness were reported to doctors who had not been warned to expect or treat pesticide-induced illnesses. Respected doctors are desperately speaking out on the carcinogenic components of the spray, which they expect to see affecting their patients for years to come. Perhaps worst of all, because the spray is encapsulated in particulate matter - as it is with biochemical warfare - humans, animals, water, and soil will be filled with minute bits of non-biodegradable plastic…forever. In such an environment, you cannot grow organic. CCOF’s farmers will be lucky if there is anyone left with lungs, organs, and immune systems intact enough to get to the store to purchase produce.

Having now spoken with numerous individuals whose lives have been permanently altered and damaged by exposure to the plastic particulate matter and its toxic contents, I do not need any further information to make up my own mind as to how unacceptable it is that CDFA is about to pour this spray all over the SF Bay Area, every 30 days, for an unlimited number of years. This concept of aerial spraying over urban areas represents a brash and callous new tactic of unethical corporations, and by not demanding that it be stopped right now, CCOF is giving permission for the spraying of human beings to become a norm in our country.

I urge you, your staff, and CCOF’s farmers to understand the ethical crossroads you are currently standing at. Your organization’s name will go down in history for the stance you take on this issue, which is going to have such a massive impact on California for all time. Please reconsider your support of spraying human beings. We do not want to be sprayed. Organic farmers cannot profit in the absence of devoted organic consumers. You have put yourself on the opposite side of the fence from us, and we want you to come back and stand with us.

Thank you for your time.