Beginning August 1, Gov. Schwarz. has sanctioned monthly spraying of pesticide for the duration of one year to control the light brown apple moth (LBAM). I encourage you to please read up on what the LBAM does to vegetation, and what our dangerous aerial spraying will and will not accomplish in terms of LBAM abatement.
It is the duty of our government to solve the problems of our nation NOT by simple, unstudied, stop-gap measures, but by coming up with the BEST solutions that have the most positive effect on residents, and the ecosystem. Aerial pesticide spraying is not a long-term nor viable solution and you MUST invest in more studied, safe solutions to issues like this.
Please pass the information along to all the folks in the Bay Area you know, and sign the petition to stop the aerial pesticide spray for the Light Brown Apple Moth – they need to come up with a better solution than this unstudied stop-gap.
Stop the spraying in the Bay Area now!
Further reading:
Dept of Food and Agriculture will start spraying San Francisco, Marin, the East Bay and other counties on Aug. 1 (and Monterey, Santa Cruz et al. counties JUNE 1), with a chemical pesticide called CheckMate.
Some quick facts about CheckMate:
• Low-flying airplanes will drop CheckMate on us in the evenings, 3-5x/month for a year (and likely longer).
• CheckMate is a chemical pesticide that has not been tested for safety on humans.
• The intention is to eradicate the light brown apple moth, despite the fact that scientists and agriculturalists have testified that spraying is unlikely to work (and that the moth is unlikely to cause
significant damage).
• CheckMate’s manufacturer is owned by a financial contributor to Gov. Schwarzenegger, the main political proponent of the spray. If you live in the Bay Area or Santa Cruz counties, you WILL be sprayed.
What you can do to stop it:
• Tell everyone you know by email, phone, letter, tin can, etc.
• Join over 20,000 of your neighbors by signing the petition to stop the spray
• Download this flyer and distribute it to local your businesses
• Contact your legislators and voice your opposition to the spray
• Visit Stop the Spray! to learn more.
Tags: aerial pesticide, LBAM, light brown apple moth, pesticide spraying, petition to stop spraying for light brown apple moth, spraying for the light brown apple moth
April 17, 2008 at 1:41 pm |
UGH. It’s like them spraying for mosquitoes over here during the West Nile/encephalitis scare. Only here, they do it without telling anybody.
April 17, 2008 at 11:22 pm |
Thank you so much for giving space on your blog to this crisis, Poet. I am heartened every time I see another blogger start speaking up about what is happening here in California.
The spraying will be happening 3-5 nights a month for an unlimited number of years, and the more years they add to the total, the more funding CDFA receives from the Federal government. Poisoning 7 million people just got very lucrative in California, and our children, wives and husbands are paying the bill with our health.
Our family is going to have to leave if we can’t stop this hideous crime against the innocent. The build-up of carcinogenic toxicity in residents bodies is going to be absolutely horrific after a decade of chronic exposure. And once they have sprayed here, they intend to keep chasing the moth across the whole country, according to the USDA, so every state will become part of the spray zone. It diabolical, truly, and we’ve never faced a more insidious war on the American people than this one being created and waged on us by our Governor and his friends in the ag/chemical industries.
Thank you so much for blogging about this. You might like to visit our blog on the issue, too. We have created a base of anti-spray graphics that are free for anyone to use to help educate people about this devastating crisis.
Mim
http://www.veganreader.com
April 18, 2008 at 5:38 am |
This sounds like an absolute nightmare. I can’t believe it’s happening. Please keep us posted on this. I want to know what happens with the petition.