Conscious Choice: Food Fight, Mercury & Arctic Oil Spill

April 2006 | Editor’s Note

Food Fight, Mercury & Arctic Oil Spill

Each spring, as I sow seeds and plant yet another tree in my yard — the tiny plot of earth entrusted to my care — I recall an Indigenous People’s Environmental conference held years ago on a Northern Wisconsin Indian reservation.

For three days, we sat in talking circles as Native American activists from across the country told of clear-cuts, uranium spills, birth defects, fish die-offs and chemical spills that spawned six-legged/two-headed frogs on or near their lands. And for three days they also talked about a revered elder who would tell us what to do about all this.

So, on the last day of the conference, we fell silent as the elder walked up to the makeshift platform in the middle of the powwow grounds. I expected a long, impassioned speech with detailed instructions. But instead, here’s what happened: The elder stepped up to the microphone, looked at us, and said: “Go home. Grow a garden.” Then he sat back down.

Go home? Grow a garden? That was his solution? Was he crazy? Senile? Deaf? Had he heard anything that was said? What were we supposed to do about the fish die-offs? The clear-cutting? The cancer clusters? The uranium spills? Go home? Grow a garden?

I had forgotten all about this directive until about a year later when I moved from an apartment to a rented house in the far western suburbs. I figured it was my Italian genes kicking in when I gave in to the impulse to plant a backyard vegetable garden, and felt determined to keep it natural.

So, that summer I found myself at village board meetings demanding that the village stop spraying to kill mosquitoes since it wasn’t doing anything except poisoning my tomato plants and killing the bees that were pollinating them. Pretty soon, since I worked at a major metropolitan newspaper, I was writing stories about the advantages of larvacides over sprays in killing mosquitoes and nearby suburbs began adopting larvacide programs. Then it hit me: the whole thing began with one person’s determination to protect a tiny backyard vegetable garden. And I began to wonder what a different world we would live in if every person on the planet took responsibility to keep pure the tiny bits of land where they lived and worked. And I finally understood the wisdom of that Indian elder’s words.

I’m bringing this up now because we face a similar situation. It’s on a larger scale, but it has to do with the same concepts: retaining local control over our land and environment so we can grow organic food. There’s something called pre-emptive legislation that’s being introduced at both the state and national levels. Basically it would translate into local governments losing control over land, crop and food issues. Pre-emptive measures have already passed in more than a dozen states, and are expected to be introduced in Illinois soon. The details are in this issue’s cover story.

It’s no surprise that the big agriculture giants are pushing for such measures at a time when a growing number of people are beginning to understand the benefits of eating pure food, and the demand for organics has hit the mainstream. Basically, the big agriculture corporations want to dictate what can be grown and where. Apparently they want it only to be their genetically altered crops, not organics grown by small family farmers. In effect they want total control over our food supply.

“If we are going to control anything locally, it should be our food,” said Deborah Koons Garcia, the producer of “The Future of Food,” a documentary that reveals the dangers of genetically modified (GM) food and how the industrial agriculture giant, Monsanto, is successfully suing and putting out of business small farmers who refuse to use Monsanto’s GM-altered seeds.

Garcia was in town for the recent Familyfarmed organic farmer’s expo, and plans to return for the April BioETHICS conference in Chicago. Equally troubling, she said, was the controversial “National Uniformity for Food Act” proposal. That measure, already passed by the U.S. House, would pre-empt, or take away the rights of states, counties and cities to require more detailed labels on foods that would alert consumers to ingredients that are “likely to cause cancer, birth defects, allergic reactions or mercury poisoning,” as well as “genetically engineered foods and Monsanto’s recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH),” according to the Organic Consumers Association.

But there is hope. Among the dignitaries at the recent organics expo extolling the virtues of organics were Mayor Richard M. Daley and Illinois First Lady Patti Blagojevich. Blagojevich addressed the crowd, holding her toddler daughter, Annie, on her hip. She explained that Annie had a host of food allergies, which necessitated the careful reading of food labels in the Blagojevich household, which eventually led to questions about “where our food was coming from.” Since the governor is concerned about organics and food labeling in his own home, let’s ask him to expand that concern to the place he works, and thus is entrusted to his care — our state.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich already has made great environmental strides in mandating stricter statewide mercury pollution-control standards.

Mercury

If you’re interested in learning more about why Mercury Pollution is No Fun, and what you can do about it, I’ll be speaking on that topic along with Rebecca Stanfield, an Illinois Public Interest Research Group attorney, at 7 p.m., Monday, April 24, at a meeting sponsored by the League of Women Voters in the Palatine Area at the Palatine Library, 700 N. North Court. For more information, call 847-891-2813.

Arctic Spill & Drill is Back

As we we go to press there are reports that the U.S. Senate voted 51-49 to include drilling revenues from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the federal budget, as “BP workers in Alaska scrambled to contain a 200,000-gallon oil spill that went undetected for days … (making it) the largest crude oil spill in the history of the North Slope,” according to the Sierra Club.

— Marla Donato

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