Editor’s Note: Gladys Brown says that grasshoppers have damaged or destroyed about 90 per cent of her Sea Buckthorn orchard in Midway.
“The trees were just black,” said Brown, “they ate every leaf and every fruit—because there’s no birds. The birds have all been killed.”
Brown sent the Times a copy of a letter she recently sent to Health Canada.
An open letter to Health Canada:
Reference your letter of Oct. 16, 2013 from Richard Aucoin, Executive Director Pest Management Regulatory Agency
A wise person will avoid experiments where, if things go wrong, the consequences are unacceptable and irreversible. Health Canada, I assume, should be promoting healthy health. Not the use of poisoned deadly chemicals.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says three million people a year are poisoned by pesticides. The pesticide corporations say that only by using their products can enough food be grown to feed the world. World hunger is not caused by food shortages. People are hungry because they are too poor to buy the food available.
How can farmers feed the world when people like you destroy our crops?
I suggest you read The CCPA Monitor, July/August 2001, and National Geographic, Volume 157, No. 2 February 1980, for scientific research on the pesticide dilemma.
How would you like your mother or daughter or grandchild using deadly chemical sprays behind a vehicle, on a hot windy day, with the deadly chemicals blowing in their face?
I have seen that happen in this area many times.
How many more children must die before somebody does something about these deadly chemicals? We are paying a shockingly high price for using chemicals. There are natural alternatives, like vinegar, yes vinegar.
I want to see Canada advocate a pesticide- free lifestyle, like the City of Kelowna and many other places of the world has done.
Gladys Brown, owner/operator of destroyed organic Kettle Valley Sea Buckthorn orchard,
Midway