We have a right to live Without pesticides: We should work with nature instead of waging chemical warfare against it  

When Rachel Carson published her famous anti-pesticide book `Silent Spring' in 1962, a campaign was launched to discredit her. Things haven't changed much in 38 years. 

 

PUBLICATION                 The Guardian (Charlottetown)
DATE                                  Wed 23 Aug 2000 EDITION
FINAL SECTION/CATEGORY         Opinion
BYLINE                              Sharon Labchuk

HEADLINE: We have a right to live Without pesticides: We should work with nature instead of waging chemical warfare against it

The personal attack on me by Robert MacDonald (`Let's not forget: farmers are people', The Guardian, Aug. 19, 2000) is typical of the potato industry. Earth Action gets plenty of calls from people who support us but say they can't speak publicly for fear of punishment. Those of us who do speak out in defense of our families and communities, including the non-human members, are subjected to ridicule and even hate.

In the five years I've campaigned against pesticides, I've been harassed on the street by men bigger than me, my property has been vandalized twice, and I've been called a liar and a fearmonger by politicians and farm organization leaders.

When Rachel Carson published her famous anti-pesticide book `Silent Spring' in 1962, a campaign was launched to discredit her. Things haven't changed much in 38 years.

MacDonald tries to discredit our work by implying our primary motive is publicity. He calls me a ``professional activist'' and insinuates the recent leafletting at Gateway Village was for the sole benefit of TV cameras. He seems unable to comprehend that anyone would actually protest the release of cancer-causing, hormone-mimicking, baby-deforming, immune system-depressing, brain- damaging pesticides into the environment because she is a mother who cares about her children, or fish, or birds, or the Earth.

No attack from the potato industry is complete without mocking the photograph in which I posed in a potato field wearing a gas mask. When pesticide proponents describe the photo they stress the nudity and try to put a distasteful spin on it. MacDonald calls the photo a publicity stunt.

This is an insult to photographer Nancy Ackerman, who contacted me out of the blue to sit for a photo, of her design, for a book about Canadian women activists. Nancy's work is shown in art galleries, has appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and she has lately worked for the Smithsonian Institute photographing aboriginal peoples of the Americas. The potato field photo has been widely exhibited, including in the Confederation Centre Art Gallery, and is even available there as a postcard.

Other P.E.I. women who dare speak out against pesticides are called whiners, complainers and hypochondriacs. When I worked with women who were trying to protect their families from spray drift on the Mason Road in Stratford, we were called ``housewives'' who feel important by spreading myths about pesticides.

And when a group of women invited me to show a film on breast cancer and pesticides, they received intimidating calls from prominent potato growers in the community.

From day one, potato growers have reacted to important human health and environmental information we bring forward with hostility and overwhelming denial. They have resisted, kicking and screaming, any change. The few pitiful regulations now in place are there only because of public pressure.

MacDonald says the potato industry is working hard to be sustainable. Sustaining profits perhaps, but many of us don't see anything sustainable about releasing powerful poisons into the environment that can kill, deform and sicken living things. Industrial agriculture is not, and can never be, sustainable by any stretch of the imagination.

Pesticides, when used according to label directions and in accordance with the law, still cause harm. It is dangerous for anyone to believe the line that pesticides can be used safely if only we can get proper regulations in place, i.e. larger buffer zones, crop rotations, new sprayers.

Pesticides travel on the wind, in water and on soil. All corners of the globe are now contaminated. Pesticides are detected in amniotic fluid, breast milk and in the blood and urine of children in agricultural areas. All of us on P.E.I., during spray season, are breathing pesticide-contaminated air. Yet MacDonald says the potato industry should be celebrated for its contribution to our future. What?

Potato growers want people to accept their ``need'' to spray pesticides. How about the unborn baby's right to develop into a normal healthy child? How about the rights of animals, birds and fish to simply live?

Well, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development has something to say about these rights. In a report issued this May the committee says, regarding proposed new pesticide legislation:

``. . .it will no longer be necessary to balance public safety and environmental concerns against the needs of growers and industry. Rather, public safety and the environment will be paramount.''

Charles Caccia, Ontario MP and chair of the committee says, ``The choice facing us is clear: either to continue with our chronic dependence on pesticides to the detriment of the environment, agricultural sustainability and human health or, to give public health clear precedence. We have already done so with tobacco, lead and asbestos. Pesticides should be next.''

The only proven safe and long-term viable option to the industrial production of food is organic agriculture. This doesn't mean converting P.E.I.'s 100,000 acres of potatoes to organic - monocultures won't work under any agriculture system. It means breaking down big land holdings into smaller diversified farms where more people are involved in growing a variety of crops for local consumption. It means working with nature, instead of waging chemical warfare against it.

Islanders have been patient for too long, waiting for change. People are telling me they've reached the end of their rope. Pesticide reduction is not acceptable for those of us living near potato fields. We have the right, maybe not legally, but morally and ethically, to not be contaminated with toxic chemicals.

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