We do not have to accept the use of pesticides [including herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides] as a way of life. We have been a living laboratory for chemical companies for the last 50 some years.


We can refuse to allow pesticide use in agriculture, in our homes, our hospitals, our schools, our workplaces, our parks, and along streets, roads, and highways.

THE U.C. CONNECTION THE BIG PICTURE

While 2% of U.S.agriculture is certified organic, only 1/10th of 1% of research money goes towards organic farming. Rather than take organics seriously, the State's central brain trust for the war on the GWSS, the GWSS/Pierce's Disease Science Advisory Panel, convened by U.C. President Richard Atkinson, focuses on "solutions" that threaten to choke off any organic alternative to conventional agriculture.

Though U.C. web-pages tout physical barriers and importing parasitic wasps from Mexico, the reality on the ground is usually more and more pesticides. "Lorsban [is] our best integrated pest management tool," attests Beth Grafton-Cardwell, UC Cooperative extension researcher and GWSS Scientific Advisory Panel member, as proudly quoted on the chlorpyrifos.com website. (Dursban, the commercial version of Lorsban, using the same active ingredient, Chlorpyrifos, was banned June 8, 2000 by the EPA due to its extreme toxicity.)

If you don't like U.C.'s short-term solution, pesticides, the Advisory Panel has a long-term "solution": genetic engineering. "[D]isease resistance ... offers the only sure protection for grapes from the ravages of the X. fastidiosa bacterium. This will require ... the application of genetic engineering and other biotechnology techniques to insert disease-resistant genes into plants. There is insufficient time for conventional plant breeding practices, which could take 20 years or more to breed resistance into grapes."

Researchers in Brazil have already sequenced the genome for one strain of this bacterium, and American grape growers are chipping in to fund research on the North American strain. In Hughson, California, America's largest permanent crops nursery, Duarte, has teamed up with Dry Creek Laboratories to develop genetically modified grapevine rootstock as a "solution" to the sharpshooter.

ACT LOCALLY

In November 2000, the state-directed, federal and state-funded, UC-assisted GWSS control program initiated mandatory pesticide spraying in the East Bay, beginning with 200 homes in Brentwood. In April 2000, more pesticide was applied, this time by drenching. Activists are needed to educate local communities on the dangers of pesticides and genetic engineering, canvass spraying victims about health effects, conduct non-violence preps, and support direct action.

East Bay Pesticide Alert does NOT compromise over health