Saturday, April 11, 2009

White House Garden too clean?

This should be of special interest to my students and neighbors who are reading Silent Spring this spring. Michelle Obama has returned to the tradition of a garden at the White House, partly in response to a national campaign for healthy, local food.

Leaders of the pesticide industry shudders (their word) at the thought of the First Lady eschewing "crop protection products" (their phrase).

CREDO Action has issued an alert; if these guys cared much about what I think, they would not be pesticide executives, but I signed CREDO's petition anyway.

2 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Two things. First, the CREDO campaign is catching on. As of today, 87,000 people have signed the petition.

    Second, I looked around at the web site of the Mid America CropLife Association, the group that objects to the First Lady's gardening methods. The group does what industry groups do when they do not have sound science on their side. They play a lot of semantic games (pesticides, for example, are "crop protection products" and misrepresent the nature of scientific discourse. The group also misrepresents the chemical industry itself, boldly arguing that the chemical industry voluntarily gave up DDT!

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Thanks for your comment and your interest in my blog. I will approve your comment as soon as possible. I had to activate comment moderation because of commercial spam; I welcome debate of any ideas I present, but this will not be a platform for dubious commercial messages.

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