APRIL 4, 2006
Have
you ever read the label of your processed food? We have a rule in our family, if you
can't pronounce it you can't eat it on a regular basis, and if you
can't spell or pronounce it, you can not eat it at all. No one should be required to eat any ingredients that have so many letters that one word looks like a run on sentence. However, if you really want to stump spelling bee kids, look at the names of the chemicals we have allowed on our fruits and vegetables and introduce those words into their vocabulary.
Recently sales and distribution of several known food additive chemicals were cancelled by the big agri-business companies. I wonder why? If they were profitable they would not cancel them. If they are carcinogenic they would not admit it. If they did not work, that is the only reason I can see a company voluntarily removing a chemical they spent millions researching, registering and then promoting. However, the withdrawal is never over-night.
Here are six, each now cancelled: ethyl parathion used on barley, soybeans, corn, cotton and wheat; proponil on wheat, oats, barley; azinphos-methyl, molinate, and my favorite of all fenamiphos to be phased out by May 2007. In the article from which I excerpted this information, there was of course, the wonderful news that leftover product may be used through the 2009 growing season. In other words, we need to use it up to remain profitable even thought it may be an endocrine disrupter or a cancer producer.
I am perplexed by the leaders of our industries who know that something is bad for one's long term health and yet they produce it and sell it in vast quantities. Maybe the panel of tobacco executives did not impact you, but the cover-up of the cigarette companies is matched by the chemical companies, and it is time to ask them to be held accountable for what they produce.
Only you, and maybe your friends, and possible your children, and assuredly the poor will suffer the consequences of their greed.
--Peter