Urgent: Threat of Blanket Spraying of Pesticides in California
Below is a letter that we have e-mailed to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. There is a draft that would allow the blanket spraying of 79 chemicals, some known to be connected to environmental and health problems. Please consider e-mailing comment before Oct 31, the deadline. For more info and e-mail address to respond to, go to this Organic Consumers Association Web page:
Laura Petro, Senior Environmental Scientist
Statewide Program Draft PEIR Comments
California Department of Food and Agriculture
1220 N Street, Suite 221
Sacramento, CA 95814
Dear Laura Petro:
My husband and I are Biodynamic organic farmers in California for some very personal reasons. We both grew up on conventionally farmed land in Illinois and are alarmed at the amount of autoimmune diseases and cancer that our immediate families have suffered. We stopped using agricultural chemicals on our Napa ranches after my husband’s daughter became ill from the chemicals used in the vineyard where she was living. She became disabled and had to move out of the area to get better. When we stopped using herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and artificial fertilizers, and started using Biodynamic/organic techniques and good farming, we have increased production and have effectively managed pests in organic ways that are not harmful to our farmworkers, to the ranch, to our neighbors, and to us.
There is so much evidence that several chemicals on the list are not only destructive to our own health, but also to the environment. We urge to the California Department of Food and Agriculture to stop Pest PEIR, the blanket approval of 79 chemicals also linked to cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and reproductive system impacts, and to the destruction of honey bee populations.
Use of these chemicals would profoundly impact us not only health wise, risk our certification as Demeter Biodynamic organic farmers, and cause unspeakable destruction to the environment. We do not need more chemicals, we need better farmers.
We urge you to oppose Pest PEIR.
Kind regards,
Patrica Damery
Donald Harms
Napa, CA 94558
707-257-2602