Terrorism in Agriculture

Medical opinion by John F. Ruhland, ND

Do you have health-related questions for Dr. John, the Naturopathic Doctor? Send them to the Free Press at 1463 E Republican #178, Seattle WA 98112, or email to [email protected]. Please keep questions short. The opinions expressed below are on general issues of health. They should not be construed as personal medical advice. Readers should seek a variety of information about any health concern before deciding on a treatment from a personal physician.

In the 1920s, there was an advertisement for an antiseptic trying to arouse our angst about germs that asked �Are There Bolsheviks in Your Bathroom?� The theme has been revived, and Baby Bush is trying to create fear of another terrifying enemy�terrorists who could be lurking in every cornfield. We are supposed to worry that terrorists may try to poison our food.

But instead of fearing Al-Qaida, we should look at ourselves. Pesticides including Diazinon have been banned by the federal government, but are being sold at huge discounts, before the bans become effective, at Home Depot, Lowes and other suppliers.

Even more insidious, traffickers in toxic wastes have found a lucrative market for the poisons. High levels of lead, arsenic, cadmium and even deadly mercury are in the so-called fertilizers which non-organic farmers apply on the farmland. These fertilizers are also widely sold by the above-mentioned suppliers for use on every lawn in America, and dumped on clear-cut forests by the timber companies. Even with the knowledge of this nearly universal contamination steadily poisoning our land, animals, groundwater, and us, Cheney/Bush ask us to support repressive policies in order to prevent terrorists from inflicting agricultural terrorism.

The real horror comes from the big firms whose wastes are distributed over millions of acres, the distributors selling these fertilizers, and land-owners who knowingly apply these toxic wastes to the land. We do not need to bomb Afghanistan or Ethiopia to get rid of the terrorists. In order to stop agricultural terrorism, we need to regulate and punish the corporations that make dangerous pesticides or that sell their wastes for use in fertilizer.�