A Precautionary Tale

by Philip Ackerman-Leist

  Bringing in experts not only serves the primary purpose of enhancing public knowledge of the issues but also brings out supporters (some of whom may surprise you), encourages public dialogue about these difficult topics, and lends credibility and networking to your efforts. Consider adding a response panel to the event so that local expertise is added to the conversation. Be sure to include one or more farmers with different perspectives on the issue.

  3. Engage the best lawyers.

  Policy changes may be an early or a long-term goal, but the sooner your community understands possibilities, precedents, and potential impediments, the more realistic and strategic your efforts can be. Always examine not only successful community initiatives but also failed ones. Strategize accordingly.

  4. Win over the local farmers to your cause.

  Polarization seldom serves a campaign or a community well, and the language you use matters. Pesticides should be labeled, not farmers. The community of Mals has kept all farmers’ interests front and center, not only while trying to move the policy needle but also through measures of support in providing the economic and educational support necessary for transition to organic production. They also turned an “anti-pesticide” proposition into a “pesticide-free future” opportunity.

  5. Present a project that is focused on health, politics, social issues, ethics, and ecology.

  A strength of the Mals initiative was that activists approached their dilemmas from a variety of angles. This multipronged approach brings more players and perspectives to the table—and therefore heightened opportunities for success. The issues raised by pesticides are inherently complex, and they impact people in communities in different ways.

  Applying the Five Steps in the United States

  While the story of the Malsers’ struggle for a pesticide-free future is a tale of local citizens protecting what they know better and cherish more than their distant political representatives, it is also a reminder that different levels of government may take significantly contrasting approaches to respecting and protecting community-level concerns.

  For the Malsers, the provincial government has, up to this point, done more to protect its own interests and the interests of its political and financial backers than it has to address the concerns of the citizens of Mals. Perhaps ironically, the more distant Italian and the European Union governmental organizations have offered clear legal justification and support for local communities to protect human and ecological health, generally through the oversight of the mayor.

  In the United States, thanks to the strategic if not underhanded lobbying of the chemical industry, forty-three states have some sort of law that preempts local communities from enacting ordinances that regulate pesticide use in their own localities. Only seven states—Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Utah, Nevada, and Vermont—still allow local communities to reduce or eliminate pesticides on their own terms!

  This legislative boondoggle was no accident. In the latter decades of the twentieth century, chemical companies saw the forthcoming legal challenges associated with pesticide impacts. A Supreme Court judgment in 1991 ruled that local communities did, in fact, have the authority to create pesticide laws that were more stringent than federal laws. However, that federal judgment did not impede states from restricting local communities from writing stricter laws, leaving a door wide open for chemical industry lobbyists to peddle their influence.

  In response to the looming threat to their industry, companies producing pesticides created a political advocacy group dubbed RISE—Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment. One senior official with Dow AgroSciences, who was also at one point the chair of the board for RISE, bluntly stated that RISE helped industry representatives avoid “throw(ing) somebody else under the bus to take the pressure off of themselves. We didn’t want anybody to be the problem, because that meant there was a problem.”1

  RISE provided the pesticide industry in the United States with a well-funded and unified voice, and their efforts were soon bolstered by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the powerful lobbying cartel that took advantage of state-level legislative initiatives that could protect corporate and conservative interests in ways that might be less successful at the federal level. Suffice it to say, the combined forces of RISE and ALEC, coupled with the buyout of objective research at many land-grant universities, set the stage for the industrial production of alternative facts and assembly-line legislation regarding pesticide use and safety. Unfortunately, these organizations and their allies have tried to replicate these successes and stamp out local and even state initiatives to legislate the sale and use of genetically engineered crops.2

  All is not lost, however. Organizations such as those listed in Strategy 1 above are fighting back and training citizens and policymakers at all levels of government. They all provide an array of educational resources to inform the public of the issues as well as advocacy tool kits for tackling specific issues.

  Yet, it’s important to go a step beyond the review of scientific literature and advocacy tool kits. Too many well-intended movements fail due to a lack of historical understanding of the problems they face. Advocates for a pesticide-­free future at local and international levels (and everywhere in between) would be wise to base future strategies on a solid understanding not just of the history of pesticides but also of the industry and advertising campaigns behind them. No resource traces this history better than Will Allen’s War on Bugs, a brilliantly researched book, illustrated throughout with an evolution of ad campaigns for the pesticide and fertilizer industries from the 1800s forward.

  However, it is the timeline that follows the development of the pesticide industry and courses its way through the pages of War on Bugs that provides perhaps the most important lesson for advocates. The long and painful cycle of continued pesticide rollouts, subsequent failures, documentation of harm, and ultimate abandonment is documented in detail. This timeline of repeated failures reminds us that our society is on a pesticide treadmill, fueled by a constant quest for the next best panacea, no matter how toxic or dubious.

  Through this chronology of unheeded lessons, we have ample evidence that the turning point toward sane and sound agricultural production will never pivot on the introduction of the next new chemical that kills.

  Rather, our advocacy for a pesticide-free future requires us to pursue an ecologically oriented democracy. And we also must remember Pia Oswald’s admonition that we empower our movements with a positive perspective, always emphasizing what we are advocating for more than what we are fighting against.

  It’s hard to say no to yes.

  NOTES

  Chapter 3: Bufferless

  1.Stephen Harris et al., “Genetic Clues to the Origin of the Apple,” Trends in Genetics 18, no. 8 (August 2002): 427, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12142012.

  2.Ibid., 428.

  3.Consortium South Tyrolean Apple, Apple Country South Tyrol, 4th ed., November 2013, 4.

  4.Co-operative Heritage Trust, “About the Rochdale Pioneers Museum,” accessed January 11, 2017, http://www.rochdalepioneersmuseum.coop.

  5.“Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen,” Wikipedia, last updated October 15, 2016, accessed January 11, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Friedrich_Wilhelm_Raiffeisen&oldid=744478866.

  6.“History: Our Roots,” VOG, accessed January 11, 2017, http://www.vog.it/en/our-company/history.html.

  7.Ibid.

  8.Ibid.

  9.Massimo Tagliavini, “The Apple Industry in South Tyrol: An Example of Successful Agriculture in a Mountain Area,” presented in Berlin on February 5, 2014.

  10.Ibid.

  11.Julien Meyer, ed., Apple-Producing Family Farms in South Tyrol: An Agricultural Innovation Case Study, United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization, 2014, 12, 16.

  12.Ibid., 10.

  13.Ibid.
<
br />   14.Consortium South Tyrolean Apple, 10.

  15.Meyer, 12.

  16.Esmaeil Fallahi et al., “The Importance of Apple Rootstocks on Tree Growth, Yield, Fruit Quality, Leaf Nutrition, and Photosynthesis with an Emphasis on ‘Fuji,’” HortTechnology 12, no. 1 (January–March 2002): 38–39, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265753988_The_Importance_of_Apple_Rootstocks_on_Tree_Growth_Yield_Fruit_Quality_Leaf_Nutrition_and_Photosynthesis_with_an_Emphasis_on_‘Fuji’.

  17.Meyer, 12, 16.

  18.Martin Thomann and Jürgen Christanell, “Modern Apple Growing in South Tyrol” (South Tyrol: Beratungsring Group, 2012), 1, http://apal.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/fo-ow-09-nov-modern-apple-growing-in-south-tyrol-thomann-christanell.pdf.

  Chapter 4: Frozen in Time

  1.Ker Than, “Iceman’s Stomach Sampled—Filled with Goat Meat,” National Geographic News, posted June 23, 2011, accessed December 20, 2016, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/110623-iceman-mummy-otzi-meal-goat-stomach-science.

  2.Gudrun Sulzenbacher, The Glacier Mummy: Discovering the Neolithic Age with the Iceman (Bolzano, Italy: Folio, 2011), 61.

  3.Daniella Festi et al., “Mid and Late Holocene Land-Use Changes in the Ötztal Alps, Territory of the Neolithic Iceman,” Quaternary International 353 (December 2014): 19, doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2013.07.052.

  4.South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, “Ötzi: The Discovery,” accessed December 30, 2016, http://www.iceman.it/en/the-discovery.

  5.Robin McKie, “Moss ‘Toilet Paper’ Wipes Out Mystery of Iceman’s Nationality,” Deseret News, October 23, 1994, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/383147/MOSS-TOILET-PAPER-WIPES-OUT-MYSTERY-OF-ICEMANS-NATIONALITY.html.

  6.Klaus Oeggl et al., “The Reconstruction of the Last Itinerary of ‘Ötzi,’ the Neolithic Iceman, by Pollen Analyses from Sequentially Sampled Gut Extracts,” Quaternary Science Reviews 26, no. 7–8 (April 2007): 859, doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2006.12.007.

  7.Kate Ravilious, “Wounded Iceman Made Epic Final Journey, Moss Shows,” National Geographic News, page 2, December 4, 2008, accessed December 20, 2016, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/12/081204-iceman-moss_2.html.

  8.Oeggl et al., 860.

  9.Heather Pringle, “The Iceman’s Last Meal,” Science, June 20, 2011, http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/06/icemans-last-meal.

  10.Marek Janko et al., “A5—Ötzi Meets Nanotechnology—Skin, Wound Tissue, and Stomach Content Analysis” [Abstract], 3rd Bolzano Mummy Congress—Ötzi: 25 Years of Research, September 2016, http://www.eurac.edu/en/research/health/iceman/conferences/Documents/Abstract%20Book_%20for%20web_160926.docx.

  11.Oeggl et al., 860.

  12.Andreas G. Heiss and Klaus Oeggl, “The Plant Macro-Remains from the Iceman Site (Tisenjoch, Italian–Austrian Border, Eastern Alps): New Results on the Glacier Mummy’s Environment,” Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 18, no. 1 (January 2009): 32, doi:10.1007/s00334-007-0140-8.

  13.Sulzenbacher, 46.

  14.South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, “Ötzi: The Mummy,” accessed December 30, 2016, http://www.iceman.it/en/the-mummy.

  15.South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, “Ötzi: Equipment,” accessed December 27, 2016, http://www.iceman.it/en/equipment.

  16.Ibid.

  17.Stephen S. Hall, “Last Hours of the Iceman,” National Geographic, page 2, posted July 2007, last updated September, 2007, accessed December 30, 2016, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/07/iceman/hall-text/2.

  18.Daniela Festi et al., “The Late Neolithic Settlement of Latsch, Vinschgau, Northern Italy: Subsistence of a Settlement Contemporary with the Alpine Iceman, and Located in His Valley of Origin,” Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 20, no. 5 (September 2011): 367–79, doi:10.1007/s00334-011-0308-0.

  19.Ibid., 377.

  20.South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, “Ötzi: Clothing,” accessed December 29, 2016, http://www.iceman.it/en/clothing.

  21.Festi et al., 377.

  22.Stefanie Jacomet, “Plant Economy and Village Life in Neolithic Lake Dwellings at the Time of the Alpine Iceman,” Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 18, no. 1 (January 2009): 53, doi:10.1007/s00334-007-0138-2.

  23.Ibid., 56.

  24.Ibid., 55.

  Chapter 5: Seeds

  1.“The Benedictine Monastery of Marienberg in Burgeis,” Stiegen Zum Himmel, accessed January 3, 2017, http://www.stiegenzumhimmel.it/en/sites/17-the-benedictine-monastery-of-marienberg-in-burgeis.html.

  2.“Fürstenburg bei Burgeis im Vinschgau,” Castleside of South Tyrol, accessed January 4, 2017, http://www.burgen-adi.at/burg_furstenburg.

  3.“Fürstenburg,” Vinschgau, accessed January 4, 2017, http://www.vinschgau.net/de/kultur-kunst/sehenswuerdigkeiten/burgen-schloesser/10-fuerstenburg.html.

  4.P.I. Robert and Edith Berhard, September 5, 2015.

  Chapter 6: Seduction

  1.Christian Riedl, “Potential des Obervinschgaus nachhaltig nutzen,” posted May 17, 2011, accessed January 14, 2017, http://www.vinschgerwind.it/archiv-beitraege-vinschgau/2011/ausgabe-10-11/567-schleis-obervinschgau-landwirtschaft-alexander-agethle.

  Chapter 7: Organic Uprising

  1.“Biozide—Krebserkrankung durch gemischte Expositionen und Schadstoffe: Laudatio für Prof. Dr. Irene Witte anlässlich der Verleihung der Rachel-Carson Medaille von Prof. Dr. med. Rainer Frentzel-Beyme, Bremen,” Umweltschutzgruppe Vinschgau, https://umweltvinschgau.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/laudatio-witte-fb.pdf.

  2.Josef Laner, “Nicht verboten, aber bedenklich,” Der Vinschger, accessed January 14, 2017, http://www.dervinschger.it/artikel.phtml?id_artikel=17225.

  3.“Umweltschutzgruppe Vinschgau,” YouTube video, 5:01, posted by “initiativesuedtirol,” November 14, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6RADsqsHBs&html5=1.

  4.Ibid.

  5.“Großes Interesse unter den Zuhören: Reaktionen—Viele Fragen rund um die Lebensmittelsicherheit und die gesundheitlichen Auswirkungen von Spritzmittel im Obstbau.” Tageszeitung Dolomiten, November 5, 2011.

  Chapter 8: Rallying Cry

  1.“Bauernbund Vinschgau: Ja zu Versuchsfeld Laatsch,” Südtiroler Bauernbund, posted April 16, 2012, accessed March 5, 2017, http://www.sbb.it/home/news-detail/index/2012/04/16/bauernbund-vinschgau-ja-zu-versuchsfeld-laatsch.

  Chapter 9: A Precautionary Tale

  1.“Tavola 07: Principi attivi contenuti nei prodotti fitosanitari per ettaro di superficie trattabile (in chilogrammi). Dettaglio per regione—Anno 2014–,” accessed March 9, 2017, http://agri.istat.it/jsp/dawinci.jsp?q=pl07a0000010000012000&an=2014&ig=1&ct=428&id=3A%7C45A%7C66A%7C67A.

  2.Christine Helfer, “Volksabstimmung wird stattfinden—Mals pestizidefrei?,” posted July 12, 2013, accessed December 5, 2015, https://www.salto.bz/article/07122013/volksabstimmung-wird-stattfinden-mals-pestizidefrei.

  3.“Travola 07.”

  4.“Südtiroler wehren sich gegen die Vergiftung ihrer Heimat,” Südostschweiz, posted April 26, 2013, accessed March 10, 2017, http://www.suedostschweiz.ch/vermischtes/suedtiroler-wehren-sich-gegen-die-vergiftung-ihrer-heimat.

  5.“Eine Schweinerei,” Der Vinschgerwind 10–13, no. 417 (May 13, 2013).

  6.“Zeitung Vinschgerwind 10-13 Vinschgau Suedtirol,” Issuu, posted May 14, 2013, accessed March 12, 2017, https://issuu.com/vinschgerwind/docs/zeitung_vinschgerwind_10-13_vinschgau?reader3=1.

  Chapter 10: Bedsheets to Banners

  1.Madlen Ottenschläger, “Umweltgifte: Aufstand unter Apfelbäumen (Reportage, Brigitte Woman 4/2015),” posted April 2, 2015, accessed October 2, 2015, http://www.madlenottenschlaeger.de/umweltgifte-aufstand-unter-apfelbaeumen-reportage-brigitte-woman-42015.

  Chapter 11: Manifesto

  1.Immanuel Kant, Die Metaphysik der Sitten (1797), “Erster Teil. Metaphysische Anfangsgründ
e der Rechtslehre: Einleitung in die Rechtslehre,” B. Was ist Recht?, C. Allgemeines Prinzip des Rechts, http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Kant,+Immanuel/Die+Metaphysik+der+Sitten/Erster+Teil.+Metaphysische+Anfangsgr%C3%BCnde+der+Rechtslehre/Einleitung+in+die+Rechtslehre.

  2.Nancy Myers, “Debating the Precautionary Principle,” Science and Environmental Health Network, posted March 2000, accessed May 23, 2016, http://www.sehn.org/ppdebate.html.

  3.AGRIOS, “Guidelines for Integrated Pome Cultivation 2017,” accessed March 19, 2017, http://www.agrios.it/guidelines.html.

  4.AGRIOS, “History,” accessed March 19, 2017, http://www.agrios.it/history.html.

  5.James M. Witt, “Agricultural Spray Adjuvants,” accessed March 7, 2017, http://psep.cce.cornell.edu/facts-slides-self/facts/gen-peapp-adjuvants.aspx.

  6.Melinda Hemmelgarn, “Food Sleuth Radio, Warren Porter Interview,” produced by Dan Hemmelgarn, PRX, posted February 16, 2017, accessed March 19, 2017, https://beta.prx.org/stories/198129. This interview with Dr. Warren Porter is an exceptionally concise scientific overview of how pesticides and herbicides can impact the human endocrine, nervous, and immune systems while also creating issues of genotoxicity.

  7.Maria Mergel, “Precautionary Principle,” Toxipedia, posted May 11, 2016, accessed March 30, 2016, http://www.toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/Precautionary+Principle.

  8.Alexander Schiebel, “Pestizid-Abwehrkampf und Demokratie,” Salto, March 16, 2017, https://www.salto.bz/de/article/16032017/pestizid-abwehrkampf-und-demokratie.

  9.Robert Nef, “Direct Democracy: What Does It Mean and How Does It Work?,” IDDE, May 3, 2016, http://iddeurope.org/direct-democracy-what-does-it-mean-and-how-does-it-work/1210.

  10.“‘Cultura Socialis’: Jury-und Publikumspreis vergeben,” Landesverwaltung, posted March 24, 2014, accessed March 19, 2017, http://www.provinz.bz.it/news/de/news.asp?news_action=4&news_article_id=454052.

  11.“Bäuerliche Zukunft,” Bäuerliche Zukunft, accessed March 19, 2017, http://www.baeuerlichezukunftmals.com/baeuerliche-zukunft.