by Nick Bernabe
The state of California has taken up the noble task of suing natural food retailer Whole Foods over all-natural pesticides the California Department of Pesticide Regulation says it has not approved of. The natural pesticides, including: 365 Natural Pines Pellet Cat Litter, Purely Botanical Cat Flea Spray, Purely Botanical Dog Flea Spray and Enviroman Bugs R Done Bug spray are being sold at Whole Foods markets despite the government reportedly not authorizing permission to sell these products in California.Perhaps these products would have been readily approved had the companies greased the pockets of California politicians like Monsanto and other large corporations do when legally bribing or 'lobbying' government officials to pass laws that favor their companies and speed up the regulatory approval process.
Related: Join the March Against Monsanto on October 12th
One may naturally question the credibility of the California Department of Pesticide Regulation after it willingly disobeyed constituents when it approved the use of methyl iodide pesticides in December 2011, despite even the farmers' unwillingness to use the chemical.
From CaliforniaWatch.org:
The controversy over methyl iodide has simmered for years, but it erupted in 2010 when Department of Pesticide Regulation managers overruled both their own staff scientists and an agency-appointed peer review panel to approve the chemical for use in California agriculture.
UCLA professor John Froines, who led the peer review committee, appeared at a state Assembly hearing in Sacramento last April and said “science was subverted” in the state’s decision to approve methyl iodide.
“I would not want my family, my friends or anyone else to live or work or go to school near fields where this methyl iodide will be used,” Froines said after detailing the chemical’s properties that are known to cause cancer and damage nervous systems. “You had the best science you could have had, and the fact that it was ignored is devastating.”It seems that despite popular opposition, farmer's reluctance to adopt the chemical pesticide, and clear science showing that this chemical would cause drastic negative health and environmental effects, it was still approved by California Department of Pesticide Regulation: making claims of bribery all the more likely.
The pesticide has since been abandoned in the US by the manufacturer Arysta LifeScience Inc. due to questions over the safety and effectiveness of the product and lack of interest from farmers who were afraid to use it due to consumer and political backlash.
As the war on natural health continues to march on, many people are beginning to question the objectivity and even legitimacy of regulatory bureaucracies who often times receive a large portion of their budgets directly from Big Pharma and Big Food. In fact, the FDA's year over year budget increase of nearly 1 billion dollars is 94% funded by Big Pharma, yet the agencies escape any transparency due to the mainstream media's willful ignorance(and perhaps the $2.4 billion the media receives in ad revenue from Big Pharma every year).
So can we trust these unelected bureaucrats, who often times have direct ties to the very companies they are "regulating", to make unbiased decisions on our behalf? Can we trust them to fairly represent industries that do not lobby them? Let us know how you feel about it in the comments below.
