Robert Van Den Bosch: Stop the Pesticide Conspiracy
(Page 6 of 12)
July/August 1979
By the Mother Earth News staff
VAN DEN BOSCH: The overall pesticide and pest control costs to the United States alone probably run to between two and four billion dollars a year, and these figures are steadily growing. Of course, that money represents quite a" take" for the various vested interests that I group under the term "mafia". Included in this hodgepodge are not only the chemical industry itself, but also federal and state pest control regulators, many bureaucrats, food processors, a number of farm groups, commodity organizations, the trade magazine people who make their living off the industry, agricultural commissioners, and so forth. All of these people are more or less committed to the same course of action . . . that is, defending the pesticide status quo.
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And this disparate group prefers to attack its enemies by name-calling . . . using such loaded terms as "eco-freaks", "bird and bunny lovers", "radicals", and even" hippies". I am challenging the system that supports the pesticide mafia . . . thus its members consider me a radical and resort to attacks upon my personality, integrity, intentions, and motivations in their attempts to silence me.
Most of these people are equivocators . . . men and women who prefer not to take a hard look at the issues. So when I or any other ecologically concerned individual comes on strong about the hazards of unnecessary spraying—how it kills off our honeybees and pollinators, for instance, or impedes economical crop production in general—they react to my positive statements. I tend to speak in terms of black and white on such issues, while my opponents think in terms of white and gray.
PLOWBOY: Can you prove your anti-pesticide statements scientifically?
VAN DEN BOSCH: Of course, and I do so in The Pesticide Conspiracy. All of the points that are made in my volume have either stood the test of independent scientific examination or are based upon my own experimentation and research.
Furthermore, I've tried-in that publication-to restrict my "radicalism" to those areas in which I have firsthand experience. I don't, for instance, attempt to deal with the very real problems of carcinogenesis. I've limited my treatment to the pest control question . . . an area I feel very confident in because of my own research, the published literature on the subject, contact with my colleagues, etc.
PLOWBOY: Do your pro-pesticide opponents offer any scientific evidence to support their points of view?
VAN DEN BOSCH: Well, it must be taken into consideration that most of the people who've attacked me are either nonscientists or men and women who are only superficially involved in some area of scientific study. More often than not, my detractors are spokespersons for one vested interest or another.
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