The anti-spray movement

July 2016

Photo Creative Commons

"A spray helicopter ... had its electrical wires, oil and fuel lines cut ... a spray crew bus had its brake lines cut." 

" ... a (herbicide spraying) ground crew was attacked by protesters, beaten, their spray gear destroyed, and their leader forced at knifepoint to sign a statement promising not to spray again in that area." 

"... An armed mob threatened to shoot down spray helicopters." 

"Someone ... punctured ten 550 gallon drums of (2,4-D herbicide)" 

"Activists ... contaminated 500 gallons of herbicides to prevent their use." 

"Mobs of activists routinely trespass in areas scheduled for aerial spraying and prevent thousands of acres ... from being sprayed." 

Non-Violent Resistance training weekends are being run to prepare the "occupation forces" to prevent herbicide spraying. 

Civil disobedience and sabotage have become a routine part of the anti-pesticide movement. So much so that an Intelligence Division has been formed with special spray-programme agents to monitor local resistance to herbicides and the activities of local leaders in the antispray movement. 

"... a spray helicopter ... was completely destroyed by fire" after which two women appeared on television and radio to explain that the burned helicopter was "a message to the companies who profit from spraying poisons indiscriminately with disrespect for human and animal life and Mother Earth." Their reason was the years of ill effects from "herbicide contamination, including miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer ... Our present health and genetic future are at stake."

Is this fiction? Are these real people taking action against the threat of herbicides to humanity? Are these ferocious eco-terrorists and saboteurs characters in a novel?

No, it's all real. But, this isn't a new environmental group reacting to the emerging science of Roundup as a probable carcinogen [1], a hormone disruptor [2], and a trigger of reproductive dysfunction [3,4], or to the desperate re-introduction of 2,4-D [5].

All of these events took place during 1979, 1980 and 1981. They happened over a decade before the huge GM-dependent increases in Roundup application had even been thought of.

The complainants were ordinary American citizens whose crops, water supplies, homes and children were regularly sprayed by the US Forest Service using Agent Orange active ingredients, 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T (since banned), and glyphosate. 

Since then, nothing's changed: regulatory corruption and secrecy aimed at protecting commercial interests have meant that the problems caused by the sprays were never meaningfully investigated nor solved.

OUR COMMENT

This same regulatory mind-set has slipped increasing amounts of glyphosate (shortly to be joined by 2,4-D) into the US food supply in a way designed to protect only commercial interests and in a way which prevents any problems arising from being meaningfully investigated or solved.

There is another way. Check out THE ILLUSION OF SAFER SUBSTITUTION - July 2016.

Background

[1] GLYPHOSATE IS A PROBABLE CARCINOGEN - May 2015

[2] GLYPHOSATE DISRUPTS OESTROGEN-LINKED GENES - April 2015 

[3] ROUNDUP HARMS FARM-WORKER FERTILITY - August 2014 

[4] ROUNDUP AND DECLINING FERTILITY - May 2014

[5] ENLIST DUO - News, June 2016

SOURCE

• Carol Van Strum, A Bitter Fog, 1983, ISBN 0-87156-329-0