Carlsen gets a fat $10,000 bonus for himself (a sum vaguely described as his reward for ‘spearheading’ the program) and the rest of the money will be used for twist ties and inspections. All for nothing! The light brown apple moth fiasco continues to be one of the phoniest, most underhanded and dangerous grabs for state and federal funding anyone has ever attempted to pull off in California, and newspapers like the Point Reyes Light continue to make matters worse by re-printing the misleading speil of the California Department of Agriculture regarding the toxicity of the chemicals contained in their twist ties and traps.

This recent article by Kyle Cashulin is a perfect example of how easy it is for state ag officials to get non-diligent reporters to use their chosen marketing language for describing what is, in fact, a dangerous substance. Calling pheromone-pesticides ‘perfumes’ does not magically turn them into Old Spice cologne, but if people choose not to think too deeply about what they are reading, words like these do a truly magical job of creating apathy and ignorance. When West Marin’s primary newspaper can’t do better than this, I’d say this special county, with its high proportion of environmentally-minded residents, is in trouble.

For actual facts about the contents of the toxic twist ties, please refer to this article which describes the danger these chemicals pose to people, animals and the water supply. Considering the fact that no one can swim at Samuel P. Taylor park any more because of the poisonous water and that the coho salmon are barely managing to hang on throughout their historic waterway through the San Geronimo Valley out to sea, West Marin citizens have every reason to refuse to allow Stacy Carlsen to further pollute local water by introducing chemicals into the area which are specifically prohibited from being used near water. West Marin has water everywhere, from roadside ditches to creeks, rivers and the Nicassio Reservoir. Then there is Tomales Bay, and, of course, the Pacific Ocean. Rain on the twist ties will cause the chemicals to get into the water (against the law) and these chemicals will cause harm…all for a tiny moth that has never done any damage to anything in California despite decades of existence here.

So far, the LBAM program has been cited as:

-Sickenening hundreds of Central Coast families and putting children in the hospital
-Killing thousands of sea birds including the federally protected endangered Brown Pelican
-Killing domestic animals, pets and honey bees
-being illegally conducted, as was ruled by two courts in California
-Using pesticides that were subsequently banned by the EPA after being sprayed on human beings
-Causing incalculable amounts of stress to California citizens
-Turning formerly pro-government citizens against government agencies
-Draining California’s drastically troubled budget

But Ag Commissioner Carlsen wants to continue this scandalous charade in West Marin, with big money for him and his department and a further dose of toxins for a community which is still reeling from the news that the county ag commissioners have violated Marin’s own pesticide use laws 90 times in the past decade. East Marin suffers from one of the highest cancer rates in the world. West Marin struggles to build a name for itself as a GMO-free, organic farming community. Add all these things up and I think Carlsen’s deal with the government can easily be viewed in the light of betrayal in which the critically ill people of the east county and the valiantly environmental people of the west county will be needlessly exposed to further doses of toxins and ‘secret’ ingredients, unless this greedy, bad, unwanted plan is stopped. Please, if you live in Marin, tune into this issue to find out about what community efforts will be made to stop Carlsen’s plan. Your health, and the health of beautiful Marin County, is riding on it.

Yannick Phillips, a Sonoma County woman who has dedicated herself to stopping the LBAM spray program, has sent me the following update and list of actions Californians can take to continue to fight this unconstitutional and immoral toxic assault:

————————————

Thank you again for signing the petition to Stop the Spray. This was an unprecedented victory; there may not have been any other aerial spray program that has ever been stopped by citizen action.

But the program hasn’t ended, nor has the aerial spray component been done away with. Aerial spraying is still in the plan for forested and rural areas — terms which have never been defined. And by its own measures, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) has documented that spray can drift for miles and miles. In most of California, no one lives very far from open space, farms, or fields.

What’s worse, the LBAM eradication program is now on track for most of the state of California, excluding only a few areas like Death Valley.

Aside from the aerial spray component, the LBAM eradication program includes ground treatments which are known to be harmful to people, pets, wildlife, pollinators, and waterways. These poisons will be used where people live and not just on farms. In addition, millions of irradiated dyed moths are to be released in Napa and Sonoma this October as part of an LBAM eradication program pilot project. No one knows what environmental havoc might result from doing so; if the program isn’t stopped, more of these moths will then be released all over California, regardless of what their impact turns out to have been in Napa and Sonoma.

Like government waste? Almost $100 million of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)/CDFA money was spent in 2008 on the program; the program is on track to spend millions more in 2009 and beyond.

LBAM has caused no documented crop or environmental damage in California.

The LBAM eradication program harms farmers and growers, because it inflicts harsh and destructive quarantines (along with onerous record-keeping and forced compliance measures) on them. The program is particularly hard on small business people.

USDA/CDFA’s LBAM eradication program has tried to place a wedge between farmers and growers and those who benefit from what farmers and growers produce. This is wrong.

Since June 2008, many people have continued to dedicate themselves to stopping the program altogether — and there are signs of progress. For one, California State Senator Dean Florez, the senate majority leader, is an outspoken opponent of the program. For another, the National Academy of Science basically said the USDA has no sound science to justify its program.

So while progress is being made, there is still work to be done. We did it before, we can do it again with your help.

What you can do:

1. Come to an event demonstrating against the LBAM eradication program/showing support for farmers at the Tuesday Sonoma Farmers’ Market (Plaza on the Square, intersection of Broadway and Main streets) on October 20, from 5:00 p.m. to 6:15 pm. Tabling and leafleting throughout the Plaza will also be going on…

Signs and banners will be provided, but feel free to bring your own. Please RSVP if you need a sign at yphillips@comcast.net

As an added incentive for making the trip to Sonoma, world-famous sustainable agriculture advocate Vandana Shiva will be speaking that evening nearby at 8:00 p.m., as part of the Economics of Peace conference.

http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/AFQna/zJV3/AErkx

2. Politely call all these members of the government to tell them you want 1) funding for LBAM eradication program to be cut, 2) quarantines lifted, and 3) LBAM-associated trade agreements to be worked out:
* Cathy Neville, Sonoma County commissioner of agriculture
(707) 565-2371 in Sonoma
* Congressman Mike Thompson (St. Helena), member of the House Ways and Means Committee (international trade policy)
(707) 226-9898 in his Napa district office
* Congressman Sam Farr (Carmel), member of both the House Appropriations Committee and the Subcommittee on Agriculture
(202) 225-2861 in Washington D.C.

For more information on the LBAM eradication program, check out www.stopthespray.org
Contact info. Yannick A. Phillips yphillips@comcast.net

If you want one more reason why Californians must defeat the LBAM spray program, you will find it in this video:

I’m sure you heard what I did. Three times in this video, Professor Thomas Kerns states that the Central Coast of California and the SF Bay Area are the first places he has ever heard of where an aerial spray has been stopped. Knowing, as we do, that aerial spraying is a constant across our country, that aerial spraying is a common, accepted practice of both our government and conventional agriculture, we can begin to see why Professor Kerns reiterates his point in a tone of wonder and, even, awe.

To be clear, we did not stop the spray, but we did temporarily halt it and are still standing and fighting the LBAM program in all of its forms. Just think, for a minute, what it could mean to America and to the world, if we ultimately succeed – if we ultimately defeat just one of our government’s pesticide contracts. Think of the sickened and overwhelmed families of the East Coast, the Deep South, the industrial corn belt and the Great Lakes region, learning for the first time that you can overturn policies of environmental destruction and slow genocide. You can cause change to happen and you can win.

Because it isn’t just California and it isn’t just the Light Brown Apple Moth, of course. It is all of the states and all of the insects and all of the years of backward, pesticide-based mentality and greed that creates these programs of sickness and death for the people of America. Think with me of the day when a new mentality can arise from this Californian origin in which we no longer have to fear government or agriculture because we, as a nation, no longer view the use of killer chemicals as an acceptable suggestion to make within any sane community. Think with me of the day when our public servants serve our people and know, in the depths of each of their beings, that a turn in public office is no longer an opportunity to aggrandize one’s self through the robbery, misery and abuse of others. Think with me of that day.

So much is happening right now on the LBAM front. The National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council has issued a groundbreaking report that calls into question the USDA’s lack of scientific data. Roy Upton cites this report as a, “pretty strong rebuke” of the USDA and adds that he feels the next step will be a lawsuit against this agency. It is hard to express our gratitude toward men like Roy Upton for the time and spirit he has put into this terrible struggle.

Meanwhile, as we wait for each new piece of news regarding the LBAM scandal, we see the traps for LBAM, Gypsy Moths and Glassy Winged Sharp Shooters littering our rural region and our hopes and prayers are pinned not just on the defeat of this one inhumane government program, but the defeat of all such toxic assaults on our people. To everyone who is working and battling the LBAM spray program right now, keep going so beautifully strong, and keep thinking of what we can do if we overturn just this one dreadful plan. There are all of the other programs, all of the other insects, all of the other pesticides which are being used as as deceptive tools to capture hoards of wealth while sickening and killing our families. The LBAM battle is making us strong, and I believe it is only our first.

The truth is, the little girl won’t be hurt by a light brown apple moth, a gypsy moth, a glassy winged sharp shooter. She won’t be devoured by lady bugs or butterflies. But, she just may develop an autoimmune disease, Autism or cancer from walking in orchards and vineyards, parks or forests that the California Department of Food and Agriculture has flooded with endocrine-disrupting, carcinogenic herbicides and pesticides. With the exception of a very sick mosquito or tick, little bugs don’t kill little children – just think of the millennia during which Native American children played across the fields, beaches and woods of California, learning to love all of the diverse insects present here, and certainly not being killed by them.

What’s Really Happening In California?

The narration of this ghastly ad campaign warns that “California’s environment and agriculture are under attack,” and truer words were never spoken. Since the end of World War II, when the toxic leftovers of the war were put to use in agriculture as a money-making scheme, California’s air, water, soil, plants and inhabitants have been under attack by the deadly pesticides, herbicides and fungicides being sprayed daily by state and federal agencies and conventional farmers across the state. The honeybees, bats, frogs, oysters, fish, birds and butterflies are being shoved toward extinction and the human beings are losing their health and their lives because state and federal agencies turned the need to get rid of leftover toxins from the Second World War into a full-time job, an industry and a tremendous way to make vast sums of money.

And now, our state economy has collapsed. Our DMV and post offices may have to be closed several days a week. The governor has threatened to close 80% of our state parks. Funding for all kinds of human-interest programs has been taken away. Unemployment is skyrocketing while foreclosures dot the land with empty houses. And the California Department of Food and Agriculture is scared. Scared of losing their jobs because they cannot prove that they are essential to California’s bureaucratic structure.

Just recently, I watched Senator Dean Florez grilling CDFA reps at a hearing in which CDFA was being asked to justify the millions of dollars they wish to be given to continue their scandalous Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM) program – a program which has been condemned by scientists, doctors, local government leaders and the public as unnecessary, unsafe and unwanted. California has no money, and it was very interesting watching the CDFA reps grasping for those dollars, attempting to use their well-documented scare tactics which insinuate that California will be devoured by insects unless we all pay into the pockets of this agency.

What’s really happening in California is that state and federal agencies have pushed their chemical-based control programs to the limit, killing off the healthy, natural balances and checks that keep eco-systems diverse and well. They now want to be given more money to use more herbicides and pesticides to ‘fix’ the situation and they are low enough to show a little girl being demolished in order to make a grab for the money. These agencies are immoral. Their 2007 aerial spraying of Santa Cruz and Monterey counties put children in the hospital and killed thousands of sea birds, honey bees, wild birds and domestic animals. Those counties awoke after the night of the spraying to a world devoid of bird song. This is the truth about CDFA/USDA’s methods of ‘managing’ agriculture and the natural world and they do not deserve money, trust or respect.

The USDA Uses Social Media To Get Their Dark Message Out There

Social media is a form of marketing that encompasses blogging, video distribution and the use of platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. It can be used to promote good and worthy causes and it can be used to influence the public for ill. The HungryPests campaign has launched a blog at hungrypests.com (no link from me, but go see it) and they are posting their manipulative videos here on YouTube. The purpose of social media is to create buzz and draw public comment. The USDA/CDFA has just put their message out there. Please, go right ahead and start leaving your comments and let these unwanted agencies know what you think about organizations that use images of children disintegrating in order to scare people and make money. Tell them exactly what you think about that. That’s what social media is for.

And, should you attempt to post comments that mysteriously disappear, please, copy those comments into a document on your computer and feel free to paste them in here in the comments field on this blog post. We will gladly publish them.

VeganReader has been covering the CDFA’s LBAM program for over a year now, and in that time, I have heard from the people, the doctors and scientists who have been harmed and scandalized by the practices and tactics of this agency. If you’ve not been following the LBAM disaster, this post will serve as your crash course, and it is an accurate representation not only of the course of the Light Brown Apple Moth campaign, but all of CDFA’s ‘eradication’ programs. The bottom line is the the USDA/CDFA want to continue drowning the state and the nation in deadly herbicides and pesticides and simply will not make the vital change over to organic farming and forestry practices that create a strong and healthy environment with the power to balance itself.

Here is our planet, beginning to feel the effects of global warming while our children drop one by one into chemically-induced states of mental and physical illness, our honeybees which are responsible for nearly all of the food we eat are being exterminated and our water is so polluted, it is unfit for human consumption. Here we are with incredible numbers of human beings experiencing such reproductive dysfunction that they end up in doctors offices trying to figure out why they are unable to fulfill biological functions. Here we are with our mothers, sisters, aunts and daughters dying of cancer and our uncles, brothers, fathers and sons going to prison because of random acts of psychotic and possibly chemically-induced violence. Here we are with our markets purveying genetically modified substances that are no longer food and which the government will not label in case people wouldn’t buy them. Here we are with corporations owning our government and our nation’s first people dying in poverty on reservations hidden behind our national monuments.

Yes, there is all kinds of terrible, bad stuff happening right now in America. The last thing we need to add to this is further funding from our empty pockets for state and federal agencies who think that deadly chemicals are such a wonderful idea that they have sprayed them directly onto human beings, up and down the state and across the nation, under the guise of ‘invasive’ insect eradication. We don’t accept this. We don’t support this and we will not be fooled into thinking that our current economic or ecological peril has been brought about by butterflies!

We know that pesticides kill. We know that like suicide, regicide, homicide and genocide, words ending with ‘cide’ mean a dreadful death. We reject substances that cause death to insects, death to birds, to fish, to animals and people and we reject this wicked TV ad campaign, designed to brainwash the public by means of fearmongering and deception.

If you, too, reject the tactics and practices of the USDA and CDFA, please comment here and on their hungrypests.com blog and YouTube videos. By putting their message out there, these agencies are now open for your comments. What do you have to say about the HungryPests campaign?

3) Mating Disruption with LBAM-specific pheromones (using twist ties, ground application, aerial application), (4) Male Moth Attractant using the pheromone plus permethrin, and (5) Organically Approved Insecticides, Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki (Btk) and Spinosad, applied from the ground.

What Do Pheromones Do?
Veterans in this conflict with the CDFA are already well aware that the pheromones being used in CDFA’s assault on California are not natural substances but laboratory chemicals. Hundreds of families in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties fell severely ill in 2007 when they were aerially sprayed with CDFAs pheromone pesticdes (see summary of human health damages), beaches were littered with dead sea birds, domestic animals perished and honey bee populations were devastated.

CDFA’s planned use of further applications of pheromone pesticides across California by means of aerial spraying, telephone pole splats and twists ties endangers the health and lives of all humans and animals and must not be allowed.

What Does Permethrin Do?
From the Journal of Pesticide Reform:

The insecticide permethrin (in the synthetic pyrethroid family) is widely used on cotton, wheat, corn, alfalfa, and other crops. In addition, over 100 million applications are made annually in and around U.S. homes.

Permethrin, like all synthetic pyrethroids, is a neurotoxin. Symptoms include tremors, incoordination, elevated body temperature, increased aggressive behavior, and disruption of learning. Laboratory tests suggest that permethrin is more acutely toxic to children than to adults.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has classified permethrin as a carcinogen because it causes lung tumors in female mice and liver tumors in mice of both sexes. Permethrin inhibits the activity of the immune system in laboratory tests, and also binds to the receptors for a male sex hormone. It causes chromosome aberrations in human and hamster cells.

Permethrin is toxic to honey bees and other beneficial insects, fish, aquatic insects, crayfish, and shrimp. For many species, concentrations of less than one part per billion are lethal. Permethrin causes deformities and other developmental problems in tadpoles, and reduces the number of oxygen-carrying cells in the blood of birds.

CDFA says permethrin will not harm us, but the truth is that it will cause bizarre neurological symptoms of tremor and aggressiveness, and raised body temperatures (incidentally, a symptom of nearly all autoimmune diseases) and will kill our vanishing honeybees, fish and other creatures. Permethrin is very dangerous to all of us and is classified as a carcinogen. CDFA must not be allowed to put permethrin into California’s environment.

What Does Btk Do?
NCAP has a good toxicology sheet which explains some of the dangers of Btk exposure. In addition to being deadly to all kinds of cherished butterflies, moths and insects, Btk is a bacteria that survives and reproduces in the human intestinal system and has been linked with gastrointestinal disease. If you know anyone with Crohn’s disease, IBS, IBD or Ulcerative Colitis, please take the time to learn about this link between Btk exposure and gastrointestinal illness. The fact that Btk has been approved for organic use is not the result of proven safety. Rather, it is a tragedy of the corruption of the organic community and organic standards. I’m an organic farmer and I would never, never spray Btk on my fields. I consider it to be highly toxic to all life forms and so do the countless citizens of Auckland, New Zealand who were horrifically sickened after being sprayed with Btk. To learn more about this, visit The People’s Inquiry website.

CDFA claims exposure to Btk won’t harm anything, but science refutes this. CDFA must not be allowed to expose California to this dangerous toxin.

What Does Spinosad Do?
Spinosad is another toxin that has been mistakenly approved for organic use because of corruption and a totally irresponsible lack of research. What little research has been done has shown that spinosad is not only toxic to all kinds of insects and fish, but that it is totally deadly to the world’s disappearing oyster populations. If it is toxic to these little creatures, it is also toxic to us and it is criminal to introduce this little-understood poison into our environment.

CDFA claims exposure to Spinosd won’t harm anything, but the small amount of research available on this chemical refutes this. CDFA must not be allowed to fill California with Spinosad.

I urge every Californian to pursue an immediate education about all of the weapons in CDFA’s arsenal of deadly toxins and I give my highest recommendation to read Don’t Spray California’s incredibly thorough data sheet for each of these chemical substances. In my opinion, this is the best document on the web about the poisons to which CDFA intends to expose us. CDFA’s planned actions must not be tolerated and we will continue to fight their arrogance and their abuse of the defenseless and innocent.

For those Californians who have spent the past 2 years of the lives living in terror as a result of the CDFA’s policy of forcibly exposing citizens to pesticides in their scandalous and widely-criticized pursuit of the LBAM, I’ll cut this short. You’ve agonized plenty, I think.

Statements were made during the briefing by CDFA Assistant Secretary of Public Outreach, David Pegas, and a colleague that the findings of their environmental impact report indicate – to put it in a nutshell – that nothing the CDFA plans to do will have any negative environmental impact. Yes, the report includes aerial spraying, twist ties and telephone splats, but (surprise, surprise) none of these activities were judged to be harmful by the company that conducted the report.

In the Q & A, only 2 questions were asked, one of which requested clarification of whether aerial spraying was covered in the report and the CDFA rep stated that it was covered and that the report attests that it would have no environmental impact. The words ‘forested regions and agricultural lands’ were used. This means if you live near woods or a food growing region (and most of us do in California), here comes the specter of aerial spraying again.

Ironically, the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Report will apparently warn of one circumstance that would have a negative environmental impact – and this circumstance would be not doing anything about it. My bet is that the report goes out of its way to warn of the ‘devastation’ that would occur should CDFA not be allowed to continue with their pesticide program and very oddly, the representative cited that failure to eradicate the LBAM would result in increased noise. I’m almost positive I heard that correctly. It’s hard for me to keep from being flippant when the noise of moths is being cited as justification for their extermination.

This is just a brief preview of a report which I haven’t read. It’s going to be 1500 pages long and I know many of us will be reading it. All I can give you today is a crystal-ball prediction that all of the wording in that report will have been very carefully orchestrated to promote CDFA’s money-making plan for continuing their ruinous LBAM program and will do everything to ignore the fact that modern human beings know that pesticides kill.

If you have any other news about the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Report, please do comment. Frankly, I’m totally disgusted.

If you’ve been fighting the the LBAM scandal for years, months or weeks and are feeling like a parched wanderer in a desert landscape, Bolling’s piece will be your tall drink of water!

It’s great to see the truth in print and we at VeganReader are praying that Bolling’s piece will help further Bay Area residents realize that their money is being squandered and their lives are being put at risk by the CDFA.

What in the world is going on here?

Please, take a moment to read this SFStreets Blog Post which gives further details on this appalling situation and in which, lo and behold, you will be startled to find a reference to LBAM.

Don’t Spray California.org founder Maxina Ventura was in the neighborhood and pointed out to the author of the SFStreets blog post that insect traps had just gone up in the nearest park. Ventura explained that she views the harassment of Asa Dodsworth as one step in a developing campaign to force massive pesticide use on urban areas. If local officials and agribusiness can team up and say that urban food gardens host ‘invasive’ insects like the light brown apple moth (LBAM), then both parties can walk away with pockets bulging with money while citizens quietly fade away from pesticide-induced autoimmune diseases behind the closed doors of their targeted homes.

Whether what is happening to Asa Dodsworth is LBAM-related or not, I view the actions of Berkeley’s Code Enforcement Officers as a threat to his health and life. As an organic farmer, I can readily imagine that the Dodsworth household was figuring their homegrown produce into their budget over the summer months. When you don’t have to pay Whole Foods $150 a shopping trip for their industrial organic fruits and vegetables, maybe you can put that money towards getting some dentistry done that you’ve been putting off. Maybe you can devote more time to volunteer work in your community because of that extra money, or take your child to see a specialist about an ongoing health problem, or even just take your family on a camping trip because the incoming produce of your land has given your budget just a tiny gasp of breathing room in these tough financial times. For all we know, the food growing in Asa Dodsworth’s garden may mean the difference for him between plenty and starvation this year.

California is broke, and every Californian who invests $1.29 in a packet of seeds is making an incredibly smart, instinctive, time-honored choice to cultivate the available land to feed himself and his family. To see this turned into a crime is to watch bureaucrats and industry make breathing illegal.

I am absolutely appalled by this backward, anti-human action on the part of the City of Berkeley and I want food cultivation to be recognized as an inalienable human right. Government and industry must not be allowed to control the human food supply. Being born on planet Earth entitles us to eat, and let no man assert that we must pay for that privilege.

Please call the following people and tell them to get their hands off of Asa Dodsworth’s garden:

Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna, (510) 981-7000
Neighborhood Services Officer Angela Gallegos-Castillo (510) 981-2491
City Manager Phil Kamlarz (510) 981-7000

If you feel as shocked by the City of Berkeley’s behavior as I do, let them know that they are not acting in a vacuum and that concerned citizens are interested in seeing the rights of urban farmers cherished and protected. Sunset Magazine would be treating Asa Dodsworth as a hero. The City of Berkeley should not treat him as a criminal. Please, let them know.

——————–

Update Sent To Me By Don’t Spray California:

CONSCIENTIOUS PROJECTOR FILM SERIES of the Social Justice Committee of the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists presents:

URBAN GARDENS UNDER ATTACK?
DEFEND OUR LOCAL FOOD SOURCES!

Berkeley Code Enforcement is selectively fining activists for supposed “violations” in their gardens with fines that amount to extortion and eviction. They target neighbors actively engaged in helping communities gain some self-sufficiency by organizing permaculture skill shares, work parties, and growing diverse, edible, organic gardens that inspire and feed hungry people, wildlife, bees and other beneficials. In this time of global climate change, ecological collapse, and economic distress, tax dollars are wasted on harassment of urban gardeners by city officials who single out activists for otherwise ignored code, as well as on county and state insect trapping programs that frequently target such gardens with pesticides and quarantines. Homegrown food and ecology is not a crime!

Film: FRIDAYS AT THE FARM

Speakers:
Asa Dodsworth (Acton House Victory Garden)
Maxina Ventura (East Bay Pesticide Alert)
Nik Bertulis (Regenerative Design instructor, Merritt College)

Music: by Carol Denney and Max
Food: by Food Not Bombs

Community Participation Invited
Support Urban Gardens by Growing one Yourself: Sign up for a Community Work Day in Your Yard

Monday, June 22, 2009 7-10pm
BFUU, 1924 Cedar Street (at Bonita) in Berkeley
(SCENT FREE, PLEASE)

Event sponsored by East Bay Pesticide Alert / Don’t Spray California

Contact us if your garden is targeted with harassment or pesticides: (510) 895-2312 or beneficialbug@netzero.net

www.DontSprayCalifornia.org

Flyer for the event:

http://dontspraycalifornia.org/62209defendurbangardens.pdf

Fool me twice, shame on me…or rather on the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors who have sent a letter to California’s Secretary of Agriculture, A.G. Kawamura, begging him to hurry up and help them douse the county in poison and pesticides as the latest step in the Light Brown Apple Moth scandal.

Remember A.G. Kawamura? He works for the CDFA who did this to little children in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties in the fall of 2007:

Remember how the CDFA wanted to spray all the way up to the SF Bay Area and everywhere in between in 2008:

Remember how in May 2009, the EPA banned the Checkmate Pesticides CDFA had already sprayed on Central California families and wanted to spray on all Californians everywhere?

Remember how this banning finally took place after the EPA, the OEHHA, the USDA, the CDFA and Gov. Schwarzenegger repeatedly assured Californians of the total safety of spraying pesticides on men, women and children…all the while suggesting that we go inside our houses while the spraying happened?

Yes, you remember and I remember how Californians were terrorized, abused and lied to by the CDFA and its willing and greedy cohorts in the name of agribusiness being given hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for their utterly unfounded, ludicrous and deadly LBAM ‘eradication’ effort.

But the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors doesn’t remember. The California Certified Organic Farmers association doesn’t remember. The California Native Plant Society doesn’t remember. The California Land Stewardship Institute doesn’t remember. The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center doesn’t remember.

In their state of what I can only describe as hysterical amnesia, they have all decided that the CDFA is right. The CDFA is trustworthy. The CDFA is honest and good…and the light brown apple moth is a horrendous threat to all living things. Yes, the CDFA who poured deadly, now-banned pesticides over family homes while infants were rushed off to ERs in 2007 is the group of folks these organizations have decided to turn to as the authors of truth about the light brown apple moth.

As this cowardly, cringing Sonoma Board letter demonstrates, all of those who signed it have decided to jump on the LBAM charade bandwagon, casting aside all science, all ethics, all reason in order to be relieved of the burden of the totally phony quarantines that have been imposed as blackmail upon the region by the CDFA. They have played directly into the hands of A.G. Kawamura and the pesticide manufacturers and have acted without one modicum of backbone.

Rather than protect their own children from the utterly toxic poisons of pesticide twist ties, BTK, spinosad and other pesticides, these organizations have invited CDFA’s ghouls to ride into town, set up the most expensive possible ‘eradication’ program they can dream up and get on with the spraying. No, the LBAM still hasn’t done any damage to anything despite 3 years of being under microscopic scrutiny in the state and despite the fact that it has lived here for 50+ years. No, there are no grounds for panic or hysteria. No need to protect yourself or your plants from this infinitesimal insect. The moth harms nothing…whereas the twist ties and sprays are utterly toxic to all of us. Yet, these organizations are saying, ‘spray our kids and save us from…a bug.’

It’s disgusting. It’s completely disgusting what CDFA has done to the people of California and it’s agonizing to watch the organizations get in line to ask for another whipping, and fast. How any of the people who supported that letter can live with themselves knowing that they are joining league with a government agency that put children in the hospital in Santa Cruz and Monterey in 2007, I simply don’t know.

It isn’t that the Board, the California Certified Organic Farmers association and other groups don’t know better. It’s that they’ve chosen to drown out their consciences in order to get with the program, even if that means pretending to believe in total lies about a totally harmless insect and causing harm to their own families. It has become easier for these people to get with the program than to get real about what agribusiness is doing to California, the US and the world. These people must not be ready to get real and say ‘no’ to the devastation to life being caused by agribusiness around the globe. It’s horrific to have them not ready, and yet sitting on boards and signing their names to documents of ignorance and shame.

The Truth Is
The truth is that the Napa-Sonoma region is already so drowned in carcinogenic pesticides because of the industrial production of alcohol that it’s amazing anything is left alive there. If a couple of light brown apple moths are managing to gasp for breath amidst the nightly pesticide spraying that takes place across Napa, Sonoma, Kenwood, St. Helena, Calistoga and Cloverdale 8 months out of every year, I’m actually amazed. Everyone who lives in the Napa-Sonoma region wonders where the butterflies, the birds and frogs have gone, and because the spraying is done nightly under the cloak of darkness, few residents ever connect the alcohol industry to the loss of the rich biodiversity that was once ours.

It is absolutely no surprise to see all of the alcohol growers eagerly signing their names to anything that will lift the quarantines on their toxic liquor products. These people are in the pesticide business. They’ve got scores of migrant workers riding the spray machines for them night after night. They couldn’t care less about a few more tons of pesticides being added to the unfathomable load they are already dumping in the wasteland they market as ‘The Wine Country’.

But, the funny thing is, the alcohol industry CEOs like to do things under the cover of darkness. It keeps the public from seeing that their migrant workers aren’t even wearing masks and it keeps you from connecting the dots about their toxic business practices and your ruined health, your polluted town and your collapsing local environment.

In this case, however, with this letter, there are the names of their associations in black-and-white for anyone who happens to see that document to read. They are publicly endorsing the use of pesticides where you live, including if they have to bust down your gate to get into your backyard as these interests have been doing to our elders in Ojai, California. This time, what’s happening isn’t after midnight on those silent summer evenings in the alcohol valleys. This time, they are showing their hand and this gives you a chance to learn the truth about the presence of industrial alcohol production in California, the ethics of its proponents and its direct effects on you.

You can already see the utter fools being made of your neighbors by the games agribusiness plays within communities. To see the California Certified Organic Farmers endorsing constitution-crippling pesticide practices pretty much says it all to me. CDFA and the alcohol growers have managed to confuse and manipulate the state in a manner humanitarians would deem diabolical and I have to remind myself to have pity for those people on the various boards who are acting out of that abused mindset. I don’t hate those board members. I am completely pained by what has to be either their ignorance, or their corruption and I am just shaking my head over what is happening here in California.

We’re dead broke, we’re closing all of the state parks that support mental health by offering opportunities for exercise and contact with the natural world, and simultaneously, we’re begging government organizations to fill our towns with mood-altering pesticides that can result in psychosis. To me, the possible outcomes of this twisted combination of dangerous factors is no joking matter. It’s deadly serious.

What do you think?

For Immediate Release: May 24th, 2009

Media Contacts:

Yannick Phillips, Mothers Advocating for Children’s Health (MACH – Sonoma), (707) 933-0312

Debbie Friedman, Mothers of Marin Against the Spray (MOMAS), (415) 380-8578

Helen Kozoriz, Stop the Spray, (510) 336-0499

Paulina Borsook, Stop the Spray, (831) 429-8699

MOTHERS, FARMERS, AND SCIENTISTS CONVERGE TO DISCUSS LIGHT BROWN APPLE MOTH ERADICATION PROGRAM

Community forum planned for Sonoma County

WHAT: Panel discussion, Q&A; admission free

WHEN: Thursday, May 28th from 7:15pm to 9:30pm

WHERE: Sonoma Community Center, 276 East Napa Street, Sonoma, California

WHO: Ken Brown, Sonoma mayor; Frank Egger, former Fairfax mayor; James Carey, entomologist, UC-Davis; John Connell, director, Plant Health and Pest Prevention Services, California Department of Food and Agriculture (invited but declined); Caroline Cox, research director, Center for Environmental Health; Mike De Lay, coordinator, Coalition of California Cities to Stop the Spray; Dan Harder, botanist, UC-Santa Cruz; Chris Mittelstaedt, founder and CEO, The FruitGuys; Cathy Neville, agricultural commissioner, Sonoma County

WHY: To examine the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Light Brown Apple Moth eradication program

Sonoma, CA — With the battle heating up over the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s (CDFA) Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM) eradication program in Napa and Sonoma Counties, several mothers’ groups and farmers decided to sponsor a public forum in the town of Sonoma. At issue is whether the program is safe, necessary or effective.

The forum will be moderated by Ken Brown, Sonoma mayor, and Frank Egger, former Fairfax mayor. The panelists include James Carey, entomologist, UC-Davis; John Connell, director, Plant Health and Pest Prevention Services, CDFA (invited but declined); Caroline Cox, research director, Center for Environmental Health; Mike De Lay, coordinator, Coalition of California Cities to Stop the Spray; Dan Harder, botanist, UC-Santa Cruz; Chris Mittelstaedt, founder and CEO, The FruitGuys; and Cathy Neville, agricultural commissioner, Sonoma County.

The event will be held on May 28th from 7:15pm to 9:30pm at the Sonoma Community Center, 276 East Napa Street. Admission is free, and local organic snacks and refreshments will be provided. The public will have ample opportunity to ask questions during an hour of Q&A.

Dr. Carey, an expert in invasion biology, insect demography, and population dynamics, believes that the current distribution of LBAM in California, covering at least 10 counties with a combined area of between 8,000 to 10,000 square miles, suggests that LBAM is not a recent introduction, but has been in the state for perhaps 30 to 50 years, or longer. In a testimony to the Agriculture Committee at the State Capitol last year, he said, “The argument that LBAM is a recent invader because no populations were detected by CDFA in 2005 cannot be reconciled with LBAM’s current widespread distribution. This recent invader argument is simply not credible.”

Yannick Phillips, a Sonoma resident and founder of Mothers Advocating for Children’s Health (MACH-Sonoma) says, “While our teachers are being laid off and countless children living below the poverty line will be denied access to health care due to cuts in the California budget, it is outrageous that our federal government wasted approximately 90 million dollars of taxpayer’s money on a moth that does little damage, and is willing to spend an estimated 400 million more dollars in an attempt to eradicate this insect.”

Debbie Friedman, a Marin resident and chair of Mothers of Marin Against the Spray (MOMAS) says, “It is unconscionable that our elected officials and government agencies continue to spend enormous sums of money in pursuit of a flawed program without sound, scientific justification. Pesticides pose serious risks to human health, particularly children, the elderly and those with chronic illness. It is telling that after all these months there is no documented damage from this moth.”

About the LBAM eradication program

In the summer of 2007, CDFA began a controversial LBAM eradication program after the insect was trapped for the first time in California. Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties were aerially sprayed with Checkmate, an untested synthetic pheromone-based pesticide. After three rounds of spraying, 643 documented adverse health complaints were collected by a concerned citizen, including two reports of children who almost died from severe respiratory symptoms.

When the aerial spray program moved to the Bay Area, it was met with an enormous public outcry. Grassroots groups such as Stop the Spray and MOMAS staged a coordinated community effort which successfully halted the aerial spray over urban areas on June 18th, 2008.

However, the eradication program is far from over. According to CDFA, aerial spray is not off the table for “rural” or “forested” areas, and ground-based applications of pesticides are planned for both urban and rural communities. Furthermore, the LBAM program area has expanded to include almost the entire state.

CDFA and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) continue to impose quarantines on hundreds of acres of farmland in California. A federal quarantine is triggered when two LBAMs are trapped within a 1.5 mile radius. In Napa and Sonoma Counties, quarantines have placed a burden on farmers and growers, compelling public officials to act quickly in order to avoid losses to the agriculture industry.

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors recently sent a letter to CDFA and USDA to resolve the quarantine issue. The risks to public health and the environment from the proposed pesticide treatments were not addressed. In addition, this request failed to consider the lack of actual crop damage from the moth, or the fundamental problems of outdated trade policy.

On May 12th, a lawsuit filed against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in San Francisco Federal Court was dismissed after the government agency revoked its approval of Checkmate. However, residents worry that the EPA intends to replace Checkmate with another toxic aerial spray.

Meanwhile, the USDA is reviewing a petition to reclassify LBAM from Class A (serious pest) to Class C (of minor concern).

An Environmental Impact Report on the LBAM eradication program is scheduled for release in early June.

To date, there have been no reports of LBAM-related crop loss in California.

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