permaculture

["Sal" <sals@rain.org>]

 

check out a organic growers web page
http://www.rain.org/~sals/my.html

----- Original Message -----

From: kim defazio

To: sals@rain.org

Sent: Monday, September 06, 1999 1:44 AM

Subject: Bad Anti-Biological Control Bills Pending in the US Congress and Senate.

Editor: Please make this known.

 

Two proposals H.R. 1504 and S. 910 will establish conditions that will guarantee more pesticide use, greater adoption of genetically modified organisms (GMO'S) and slow the implementation of the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) by greatly limiting access to biological control alternatives.  These laws do not make any distinction between beneficial biological control organisms and harmful "plant pests".  They are not the same thing, that interpretation would serve only one purpose; the wholesale repression of biological control technology. Organic farming and sustainable agriculture will be crippled, biological farming will be dead on arrival.  These bills are are fatally flawed and should be withdraw.  They are poison pills, with a plausible exterior and unacceptable improperly defined, counterproductive content.

 

While there is still time, they are presently still in committee, obtain the full text of these bills, read them carefully and let the Honorable Dan Gickman, Secretary U.S. Department of Agriculture, 14th St.and Independence Ave. SW, Washington, DC 20250.  Fax: 202-720-2166 just what you think. Contact your local elected officials and make it clear that this is not just a bill that "will take proactive measures to prevent noxious weeds and foreign organisms from destroying crops." as the analysis of the bill reported to our elected officials states. Instead it is the work of remarkable cowards who would repress biological control technology to maintain a option sterilized landscape for the multinational agrochemical and genetic engineering corporations.  These bills would serve magnificently in their relentless assault on the family farm.

 

The protections these bills claim a need for already exist.  Collectively the Plant Quarantine Act; 7 U.S.C. 151-164a, 167 of 1912, The Federal Plant Pest Act (7 U.S.C. 150aa et seq., 7 U.S.C. 147a note), Department of Agriculture Organic Act of 1944

(7U.S.C. 147a), and The Federal Noxious Weed Act of 1974 (7 U.S.C. 2814) already do what this new bill offers; with one important difference "the only good bug is a dead bug" anti-biological control component has been imbedded.  This is a sneaky but sadly predictable was to get around the complete drubbing that USDA took on the biological control regulation "strawman" document, that was put out for public comment a few years back that was universally slammed by all comenters, then withdrawn.  Apparently this is the clandestine resurrection of the rules and regulations that nobody wanted.

 

 "Protecting" us from saner, safer, more affordable and environmentally benign pest management is not in the best interest of the common good.  Biological control has one of the best health and safety, environmental and economic return records of any human enterprise.  What is this? Biological control is the very engine that drives the planet it goes on around us every minute of every day. Biological control has already been "beta tested" for 2.5 billion years and proven itself worthy. Life and life process will be both "owned" and regulated by this pending authority. 

 

The definitions in this bill are acutely worse than the botched organic standards proposal.  Biological control organisms are not plant pests.  We should all demand an explanation for why they are being are they being labeled that way.  There is no scientific justification for such a representation.  You only have to look at the enforcement aspect of these bills to see just how dangerous and silly they are. Put another way this law will "protect" the environment from the environment. This is nothing less than arrogant hubris.  IPM practitioners will have no fear of having to integrate their coveted pesticides with any bothersome living component, the mission will then be accomplished.     

 

The terms I personally thought I would never hear in association with biological control include warrantless searches,  Secretary of Treasury, contraband, prohibition on intrastate and interstate movement.  Sec. 105  Biological Control and "Declaration of Extraordinary Emergency and Resulting Authorities." United States Magistrate Judge, warrant for entry, Enforcement of subpoena, Criminal penalties for violation, A. $50,000.00 Dollars in the case of any individual, $250,000.00 in the case of any other person, and $500,000.00 in the case of all violations adjudicated in a single proceeding, settlement of civil penalties, and a year in prison. Some of these penalties are greater than violating drug laws. Is this being done to "taint" biological control as "risky","dangerous" and marginally illegal?

 

I guess the real question is do we have enough prisons to make room for large number of government employees that apparently must have been criminally negligent up until now for not protecting us from these awful "risks"?  Why would have our government and elected officials failed to protect the public all these years from enormous dangers associated with the use of ladybugs, lacewings, and nematode that this pending legislation implies in its draconian enforcement severity? Unless there is no real risk and this is a very serious snow job being played out at public expense. Have the advertisements in the back of gardening magazines actually been representing shills for the risky and dangerous"bug trade"?  The trials will probably go on for years.  The television spin-off, Ladybug Cops, and Land Grant Entomologist "Secret Agent's", busting down the door of an illegal bug traffickers will win our Friday night time slots.  Exposing the operators unlicensed beneficial predatory spider mite operations will be the work of the "Americas Most Wanted" program.  Kicking the door in on a family farm for a ladybug harvesting operation, will all be good fun.  Has poor science education in America come to this?  Will people now be arrested for criminal pesticide evasion? There is something horribly wrong here.

 

 As a practical matter these laws will be grossly abused.  They are pointed directly at the family farmer and alternative agriculture.  They will give legal authority to those individual employees that have been hostile and obstructionists for many years deeply imbedded in many federal and state governments and public institutions, such as the extension service of our land grant universities and some State Department of Agriculture's.  The direct result will have an immediate and sustained cooling effect biological control projects nationwide.  Who would want to be the test case for these kinds of exaggerated fines and penalties and you can just about count on someone zealously working to justify these outrageous proposals, to show just how "necessary" they really are.  I am surprised ladybugs were not named as tools of bioterrorism in this outrageous artificial construction.

 

Who actually authored this defective "product", chemical pesticide industry representatives, or maciavellian bureaucrats working to expand fiefdoms?  Obviously somebody wants them, but these bills are clearly not in the best interest of the majority of the American people.

 

Patrick D. McKown, Samuel DeFazio, Jean E. McKown, Praxis. 616-673-2793.