- Theodore Roosevelt
- The Gypsy Moth
- The Fire Ants
- The Delaney Amendment
- The Cranberry Scare
- Grassroots Organizations
-
Theodore Roosevelt
"It is also vandalism wantonly to destroy or to permit the destruction of what is beautiful in nature, whether it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird. Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests, and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals... But at last it looks as if our people were awakening."
Theodore Roosevelt -
The Gypsy Moth
"Gypsy moth populations expanded greatly during the early 1950’s, at which time state and Federal officials conducted a thorough appraisal of the problem... In 1956, the Congress made funds available to initiate an eradication program; 2,230 km2 in three states were sprayed with DDT, which had been used experimentally from 1944 to 1948 in Pennsylvania; another 12,000 km2 were sprayed in 1957."
Slow the Spread: A National Program to Manage the Gypsy Moth, April 2007 -
The Fire Ants
"By the end of the 1950s, government spray programs began to provoke public opposition as their impact on animals and wildlife began to be noticed. In Alabama, for example, the legislature withdrew its funding for fire ant spraying in 1959, fearing that the spraying could eliminate up to 75 percent of the state's wildlife."
Roger E. Meiners and Andrew P. Morriss, DDT: An Issue of Property Rights, Fall 2001"...the accumulated studies provided 'strong evidence that present fire ant control practices entail unacceptable hazards to wildlife resources' and demanded 'that there be a cessation of present application methods and dosages of these chemicals until safe procedures can be determined.' The Mississippi Wildlife Federation , the Alabama Wildlife Federation, the Georgia Sportsmen's Federation, and Audubon affiliates across the country lobbied the USDA to call a halt to the program."
Joshua Blu Buhs, The Fire Ant Wars, 2004 -
The Delaney Clause
"The Delaney Clause is a part of the 1958 Food Additives Amendment... This clause governs regulation of pesticide residues in processed foods. It establishes that no residues from pesticides found to cause cancer in animals will be allowed as a food additive. This means that tolerance levels must be based only on the risk of carcinogenicity and that the benefits of the pesticide may not be considered."
Rodney L. Holloway and Melissa Rowell, Texas Agricultural Extension Service -
Cranberry Scare
"The Food and Drug Administration today urged that no further sales be made of cranberries and cranberry products produced in Washington and Oregon in 1958 and 1959 because of their possible contamination by a chemical weed killer, aminotriazole, which causes cancer in the thyroids of rats when it is contained in their diet, until the cranberry industry has submitted a workable plan to separate the contaminated berries from those that are not contaminated..."
Arthur S. Flemming, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, November 9, 1959 -
Grassroots Organizations
"...National Audubon Society President John H. Baker called the program a 'chemical peril' to humans and to wildlife, and urged Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson to curtail the action before it began. Dieldrin, Baker noted with alarm, is 'one of the most deadly of the modern insecticides,' and the USDA proposed to apply the chemical at approximately two and a half pounds per acre, a concentration sure to wreak havoc upon southern wildlife. National Wildlife Federation President Ernest Swift... warned that the program would serve only to devastate the ant's natural predators, and that too little was known about dieldrin's toxic chronic effects to use it with confidence..."
Christopher J. Bosso, Pesticides and Politics, 1987