Robert Van Den Bosch: Stop the Pesticide Conspiracy
(Page 5 of 12)
July/August 1979
By the Mother Earth News staff
In fact, the central problem with current insect management programs is, stated simply, this: The chemical industry has taken over our pest control efforts, and as a result we are locked into the unilateral approach that I mentioned previously. Unfortunately, the impetus for this trend has more of a merchandising than a scientific imperative . . . the huge pesticide firms are trying to maintain and expand their markets. And the profit motive has become more important to them than killing insects . . . or maintaining environmental quality.
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PLOWBOY: If it is true that a number of your colleagues, some of them entomologists who enjoy great prestige, are "dominated and orchestrated" by-or are, in effect, stooges of the chemical pesticide industry . . . then the road to rational insect control will surely be a rough one. Why, however, would such respected scientists allow themselves to be manipulated?
VAN DEN BOSCH: Although I would say that some of these men are stooges, while some are dupes and others are merely unaware of what they're doing . . . my point is that entomologists have played a subservient role in insect control for the last quarter century. In other words, my profession has been dazzled by the toxicologists and physiologists and chemists . . . and, of course, many entomologists were susceptible to the temptation that the chemical firms offered. Those industries lured these scientists—with grants and such—in specific research directions which have all led to an insect killing—rather than insect management—approach . My profession sometimes seems to have abandoned all its other possibilities in the quest for better bug killers.
PLOWBOY: In your book, The Pesticide Conspiracy, you refer to the various proponents of chemical control as the "pesticide mafia". That's a strong term, of course, but certainly no more defamatory than the accusations that the propesticide forces have leveled against you. Do you feel that the "mafia's" verbal attacks-some of which were quoted at the beginning of this interview-were brought about merely because you challenged their entrenched ideas?
I am challenging the system that supports the pesticide mafia . . . thus its members . . . resort to attacks upon my personality, integrity, intentions, and motivations . . . to silence me.
VAN DEN BOSCH: I've done more than just challenge those ideas ... I've been doing my best to turn the whole insect control field around. Naturally, any time someone goes against a powerful consortium—especially one that has control of an extremely lucrative situation—there is going to be retribution of one sort or another.
PLOWBOY: Well, just how much money is involved in today's chemical pest control business?
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