“Bitter Medicine” Suggests Frightening Parallels With Farm Chemical Poison Manufacturers

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Subject:  “Bitter Medicine” Suggests Frightening Parallels With Farm Chemical Poison Manufacturers
Date:     Fri, 31 May 2002 09:14:31 -0400
From:      Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization:     Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)

To:     Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
          Director, State of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation 

cc:    Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov

Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought you might like to read the following article from The AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER dated: May 31, 2002

 #165 - EDITOR\PUBLISHER: A.V. Krebs ADDRESS: PO. Box 2201, Everett, Washington 98203-0201 - E-MAIL: avkrebs@earthlink.net WEB SITE: http://www.ea1.com/CARP/  TO RECEIVE: Name and e-mail address - Contributions Welcome.

COMMENTARY: ABC-TV NEWS  "BITTER MEDICINE" SUGGESTS FRIGHTENING PARALLELS WITH FARM CHEMICAL POISON MANUFACTURERS.

One can only hope that those family farmers who were fortunate enough to see Peter Jenning's "Bitter Medicine: Pills, Profit and the Public Health" on ABC-TV Thursday night did not let it escape their notice that the same situation the public finds itself in being at the mercy of the pharmaceutical industry when it comes to health care is the same for farmers when it comes to their reliance on chemical poisons in the production of their crops.

Not only in many cases are the same companies involved, but in matters of who pays for research, patent awards, heavy advertising and defraying costs the predicament is the same as the articles below illustrate.

Ever since the end of World War II the nation's and the world's farmers have been fed a steady diet of "new and improved" chemical poisons, slickly obfuscated by the use of the word "pesticides." As the late brilliant and outspoken University of California entomologist Dr. Robert van den Bosch characterized it:

"Fundamentally, pest control as it is now practiced . . . is essentially not an ecological matter. It is largely a matter of merchandising. In essence, we are using the wrong kinds of material in the wrong places at wrong times in excessive amounts and engendering problems which increase the use of these materials, adds to the pollution problem, adds to the cost of agricultural pest control, and adds to what you might describe as the      concern of the general public."

By emphasizing pest eradication rather than pest control the manufacturers of these chemical poisons have managed to keep farmers on a treadmill, promising with each new product that there problems with pests will be solved, which in fact often only generate new problems with both the loss of the pest predators, but also increasing the immune system of many pests as we have seen with mosquitos and DDT giving rise to whole new generations of super bugs.

Yet in the farm press, which would undoubtedly disappear over night were the chemical poison manufacturers and the farm machinery manufacturers ever to yank their advertising for it pages, continually show farmers pictures of lush green crops and weedless and pest free fields effectively propagandizing  and economically seducing them into buying more of the company product.

At the same time the poisons that they can't sell to this nation's farmers because of government restrictions they export abroad which are in turned used on those crops and produce which are increasingly being imported back into the United States with less than one percent, according to the General Accounting Office, being inspected for harmful residues.

At the same time a large measure of the research dollars that go into developing these chemical poisons come out of the tax payer's pockets, just as in the pharmaceutical industry, by way of the efforts of our nation's land grant university's who in many cases not only do the research and development, but through their various extension services, do the actual promoting of these poisons in our fields and orchards.

The time has come for family farmers and grassroots farm organizations to take a long and hard look at these chemical drug dealers who not only care little about despoiling the environment, endangering the health of the men, women and children who work in our fields, but continue to force consumers to play a game of Russian roulette when it comes to the health and safety of the food they buy for themselves and their family.

Well Mr. Helliker, this may just another "day at the office" for you.  But, I am always amazed at the "marketing and regulation" of your "registered" POISONS.

Respectfully, Stephen L. Tvedten

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