Big Chemical Still Proving Rachel Carson Right

Back in the '70s, there was a great commercial about butter-tasting margarine with the tag line "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature," followed by a clap of thunder and lightning.

 

It became iconic in part because the newly-created EPA was riding high, attacking toxics-producing corporations left, right and center. Being an environmentalist was cool, and "it's not nice to fool Mother Nature" was a cool way to express the simultaneously protective and threatening ethos.

 

In our house, "Mother Nature" was also a symbol of the mother of the anti-toxics movement: Rachel Carson.

 

From Carson biographer William Souter:

Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s landmark warning about the indiscriminate use of pesticides, turns 50 this month. By extension, that puts the environmental movement also at the half-century mark—along with the bitter, divisive argument we continue to have over both the book and the movement it spawned. The terms of that argument, which emerged in the brutal reaction to Silent Spring from those who saw it not as a warning but as a threat, haven’t changed much. And they leave us with a vexing question: Why do we fight? How is it that the environment we all share is the subject of partisan debate? After all, the right and the left inhabit the same planet, even if it doesn’t always seem that way.

Carson’s book was controversial before it even was a book. In June 1962, three long excerpts were published by The New Yorker magazine. They alarmed the public, which deluged the Department of Agriculture and other agencies with demands for action, and outraged the chemical industry and its allies in government. In late August 1962, after he was asked about pesticides at a press conference, President Kennedy ordered his science adviser to form a commission to investigate the problems brought to light, the president said, by “Miss Carson’s book.” A month later, when Silent Spring was published, the outlines of the fight over pesticides had hardened. Armed with a substantial war chest—Carson’s publisher heard it was $250,000—pesticide makers launched an attack aimed at discrediting Silent Spring and destroying its author.

How successful have the anti-Carson, pro-death-by-toxic-chemical forces been? They are literally creating super bugs that can destroy American agriculture and our ability to feed ourselves.

  

Aviva Shen at Think Progress:

Agricultural giant Monsanto Company has risen to the top of the corporate food chain largely thanks to its seeds. These are no ordinary seeds — they have been genetically modified (GM) to withstand and even produce herbicides and pesticides. Monsanto’s GM corn and soybean seeds have become so widespread over the past two decades that now, a new crop of “superweeds” have evolved to resist these potent chemicals. Farmers then have little choice but to buy Monsanto’s beefed up seeds in an arms race with nature.

Now, the EPA is launching a review of one of Monsanto’s corn strains engineered to produce the natural pesticide Bt. As the agency told Bloomberg, “There is mounting evidence raising concerns that insect resistance is developing in parts of the corn belt,” where Monsanto’s corn dominates the fields. Root worms exposed to the corn’s toxin seem to have become immune to it, breeding an unprecedented colony of superworms that are bound to spread throughout the entire Midwest.

Meanwhile, Monsanto recently released a new sweet corn variety containing the Bt pesticide. And for the first time, Monsanto will market this corn as fresh produce, rather than an ingredient for processed foods. Although Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and General Mills have refused to carry the corn, Walmart will start stocking the GM sweet corn in the coming months, without any label to let consumers know what they are buying.

And Monsanto hopes to keep consumers in the dark. The company recently spent $4.2 million trying to kill a November ballot initiative in California that would require labeling on food products containing genetically modified ingredients. Proposition 37 would bring the state in line with Japan, China, the European Union, and Australia, which already require labels on genetically modified foods. 91 percent of Americans support GMO labeling.

Opponents of Proposition 37 claim GMOs are harmless and would unfairly bias people toward the organic food industry. Though there has been no conclusive evidence that eating GMOs leads to health problems, the FDA does not require safety studies before approving them and Monsanto has lobbied the USDA to reject any and all outside studies when considering applications for new strains. Leaving health aside, the onslaught of superweeds and superworms alone should afford Californians the chance to decide what types of food they want to support.

The EPA has spent the last 20 years ostentatiously not stopping Monsanto from finding ever-new ways to eliminate the ability of human beings to grow food on earth.  They're not about to change direction now.

Grow your own food. Anybody can grow a tomato plant in a pot in a sunny window. Buy food you can't grow from local farmers you trust. Ask the manager of your chain grocery why the food is not labeled GMO and ask for labeled products. Ask your congress critter why she doesn't want you to know which toxic food to avoid feeding to your children.