Now that the powers that be (a court and the S

Now that the powers that be (a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge and the Schwarzenegger Administration) have agreed to temporally suspend the threatened aerial spraying of pesticide gas over much of the S. F. Bay Area in an attempt to sexually harass a small brown moth, we need to force a complete and final end to this insane plan.

By James K. Sayre

The incompentent Bush Administration has been wrong about almost everything in the last seven years; why does anyone in their right mind possibly think that they would be right about a supposed big threat posed by the presence of the Light Brown Apple Moth (Epiphyas postvittana)?

American apple growers originally lobbied the federal United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to classify this small moth as a big threat to their crops as a way of cutting down on competition from New Zealand apple exporters. It worked for awhile, and forced the New Zealand apple growers to undertake unnecessary and toxic sprays of their orchards. This moth has been living in New Zealand for about a century and is considered to be a minor agricultural pest there.

This moth, a native to Australia, has also lived in New Caledonia, Hawai'i and England for many years. These areas are still green and agriculturally productive. The residents and the farmers of Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Hawai'i and England have managed to co-exist with this moth without having to resort to the aerial pesticide spraying of entire cities and towns.

But now that this moth has been discovered in California, other countries can and are demanding that this State take steps to eliminate the presence of the moth. So the discovered presence of the Apple Moth is a threat to the potential export profits of American apple growing corporations, it is not an actual threat to the growing of the apples. Hoisted on their own petard! Just agribusiness corporate greed coming home to roost, so to speak.

A quick search of the Internet will reveal that the supposed presence of agricultural insect pests is the basis of many ongoing trade battles and trade wars between different food-producing countries and food-consuming nations. This Brown Apple Moth brouhaha is just the latest conflict to appear recently in our California news media as a major story. Our apple farmers and our state and federal agricultural experts need to consult with apple growers in New Zealand and Australia and find some low-key biological controls as a remedy for the presence of the moth. The USDA should rejoin the real world and immediately downgrade this bogus threat level posed by the presence of this moth.

Please write letters to your City Council representatives, your County supervisors, your State representatives and your Federal representatives and tell them "no" to any aerial spraying of pesticides or any other poison gases in the Bay Area.

End.

Bottlebrush Press has maintained its presence on the Internet since 1996.

Return to the home page of Bottlebrush Press: The homepage of Bottlebrush Press

This web page was recently created by James Sayre.

Author's Email: sayresayre@yahoo.com

Web page last updated on 25 April 2008.