Pesticide Free!
The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld a decision made by the Ontario Court of Appeal in May. That court upheld the bylaw passed in T.O. to ban, with few exceptions, the use of pesticides on private property. The chemicals in question are supposedly "safe" for us all. Or are they? They have been linked to several childhood cancers, as well as breast cancer. Deposits of the chemicals have been found in the testes of men who worked for years at such jobs as grounds keepers on golf courses where the chemicals are sprayed liberally. Just who is it declaring these chemicals to be safe?
Croplife Canada is, for one. This is a trade association that includes - surprise! - pesticide producers. They are the group who challenged the decision reached by two previous courts to uphold the ban. They funded a study in 2003 and 2004 that found 80% of fresh foods tested to be pesticide-free, and 90% of processed foods to be the same. What a surprise that their study should show such results. Who ever would have expected that?
There are two sides to every coin. You can look at a weed growing on your lawn and see a hideous blot on the landscape. You can also look at it and see a wild plant that does no actual harm, even though its presence may annoy. On the other hand, pesticides do harm. They kill. You know, pesti-CIDE, from the Latin verb "cidere: to kill". If they kill anything, maybe they are capable of killing more than you might want them to. Maybe it's a little harder than the good folks at Croplife Canada think it is to get the chemicals to be good little chemicals and only harm those nasty-wasty dandelions. How exactly do those good folks instruct chemicals not to harm the people who inhale them, and track them into their houses on the soles of their shoes, where they can get into every corner of their house; every molecule of their very being.
Just for once, couldn't a corporation like Croplife care more about people than it does about the dollar sign entries in its financial records? Haven't they noticed that they're no more impervious to the deleterious effects of chemicals than the rest of us are? Don't they ever stop to think about their own children going out to play in all those weed-free, chemcial-ridden playgrounds of pestilence - oops! I mean pesticides?
Croplife Canada is, for one. This is a trade association that includes - surprise! - pesticide producers. They are the group who challenged the decision reached by two previous courts to uphold the ban. They funded a study in 2003 and 2004 that found 80% of fresh foods tested to be pesticide-free, and 90% of processed foods to be the same. What a surprise that their study should show such results. Who ever would have expected that?
There are two sides to every coin. You can look at a weed growing on your lawn and see a hideous blot on the landscape. You can also look at it and see a wild plant that does no actual harm, even though its presence may annoy. On the other hand, pesticides do harm. They kill. You know, pesti-CIDE, from the Latin verb "cidere: to kill". If they kill anything, maybe they are capable of killing more than you might want them to. Maybe it's a little harder than the good folks at Croplife Canada think it is to get the chemicals to be good little chemicals and only harm those nasty-wasty dandelions. How exactly do those good folks instruct chemicals not to harm the people who inhale them, and track them into their houses on the soles of their shoes, where they can get into every corner of their house; every molecule of their very being.
Just for once, couldn't a corporation like Croplife care more about people than it does about the dollar sign entries in its financial records? Haven't they noticed that they're no more impervious to the deleterious effects of chemicals than the rest of us are? Don't they ever stop to think about their own children going out to play in all those weed-free, chemcial-ridden playgrounds of pestilence - oops! I mean pesticides?
1 Comments:
Not to mention what goes into the ground, eventually ends up in the water supply ...
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