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Dear Friend,
The government shouldn't fund disinformation campaigns!
Send an email to the USDA and CDFA today.
We know we did something right with EWG's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides when conventional agribusiness targeted it with an expensive, misleading public relations attack campaign. The Alliance for Food and Farming (AFF), a California-based public relations group of pro-pesticide, big agricultural producers made the unfounded charge that the EWG Guide is influencing people to eat fewer vegetables. Those bogus claims won't fool most people. Still, we were shocked when California and federal officials started handing out taxpayer dollars to support the industry's tactics.
That's right. The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have awarded a $180,000 grant to an industry front group.
If you think attacking non-profit, independent, food safety watchdog groups, like EWG, that educate the public about pesticides in food is an outrageous way to spend taxpayer funds, the CDFA and the USDA need to hear from you today.
Click here to send an email telling USDA and CDFA officials they shouldn't fund disinformation campaigns!
According to the state's press release, the $180,000 grant aims to counter "claims by activist groups about unsafe levels of pesticides." The money is being channeled out of the USDA Specialty Crops Block Grant program -- a program intended to promote sales of fruits and vegetables. California and USDA officials are distorting this program to help chemical-dependent agribusiness fight back against increasing demand for organic and sustainably produced fruits and vegetables. The grant to the Alliance for Food and Farming is one of 63 USDA Specialty Crops Block Grants, totaling $17.5 million, issued to California food and agricultural organizations. Only one research grant is going to support organic agriculture in California.
The AFF has a long history of putting pesticide-dependent profits ahead of sound choices. When the EPA phased out methyl bromide -- a powerful pesticide that damages Earth's protective ozone layer -- representatives of the AFF called the phaseout "a big concern." They then embraced a replacement, methyl iodide, that EPA officials call "highly toxic."
This is not the type of group that should be getting taxpayer money. Help us convince California and USDA officials that the Specialty Crops Block Grant program should be used to promote locally grown, organic and sustainably produced fruits and vegetables, not to bulk up the public relations budget of pesticide-dependent corporate farming interests. The $180,000 grant to an industry front group should be rescinded.
Click here to send an email today.
Thank you for supporting organic farming.
Sincerely,
Ken Cook
President, Environmental Working Group | 
