Are organic activists preventing the effective control of mosquitoes in your area? Maybe it’s time to stand up to them, because mosquitoes are more than a mere nuisance; they can be deadly!
If you live in the tropics, malaria can still kill you the way it always has: very painfully over the course of a few days, or within hours if you’re lucky. In northern climes, West Nile virus can likewise kill you within days if you’re young or elderly. But don’t bother complaining to organic activists about mosquitoes that carry these diseases.
Dying from preventable diseases like West Nile virus and malaria is “natural,” according to leaders of the organic movement. Better to let people die rather than resort to the use of synthetic substances to control mosquitoes. It has been the case since activists banned DDT in 1972, eliminating our only effective means of preventing the spread of malaria.
The United Nations’ World Health Organization has finally backed off, somewhat, in its resolute ban of DDT. But still, upward of 1 million people die every year in the world’s poorest regions, mostly children under the age of 5, from a preventable disease.
Here in North America, the leadership of the organic community is likewise doing everything it can to impede the effective control of mosquitoes.
In Colorado, a judge recently ruled that longtime resident Jim Hopper can continue spraying mosquitoes on his property, but only as long as he stays 150 feet back from his neighbor’s organic fields.
Federal law, meanwhile, requires only a 25-foot buffer—on the organic crop side of the fence. Through judicial activism, egged on by organic fanatics, mosquitoes can now continue to breed freely along a vast swath of Jim’s property.
Jim started spraying when his wife Georgia contracted West Nile virus back in 2006, after local authorities gave in to organic activists and stopped spraying mosquitoes. Georgia Hopper almost died, so Jim bought his own equipment and set out to protect his wife’s health, not to mention that of others in the area.
Organic activists dragged Jim and Georgia into court and enforced the absurd 150-foot buffer restriction. The baseless legal restriction has no precedent. Instead, it is being imposed in the name of an empty concept of being “natural.”
In British Columbia in Canada, Erica Kroeker, who ran her local government’s mosquito-control program, warned local politicians that “organic farms will lose their status” if larvicide is used on their properties to control mosquitoes. She was being egged on by the folks who run the tax-subsidized offices of Certified Organic Associations of B.C. But guess what?
Organic farmers will not lose their certification if mosquito larvicide is applied on their properties, or if mosquito spray is used near their properties.
The only way an organic farmer could face any possible backlash for allowing a neighbor or local authority to spray or apply larvicide is if someone within the leadership of the organic industry arbitrarily decertified or threatened to decertify his land. This would not only be unconscionable, but illegal.
In both cases, organic activists want no spraying and only a “natural” larvicide to be used. But the choice of organic activists, Bacillus thuringiensis serovar israelensis (Bti), dissipates quickly and has to be reapplied every time after it rains.
Bti also kills nonbiting midges that are food for fish, so it’s actually worse than man-made larvicide that specifically targets mosquito larvae. And if an effective larvicide isn’t used, you then have no choice but eventually to spray mosquitoes after they take flight.
But facts be damned! Authorities in Colorado and British Columbia have decided to allow organic activists to “help” determine what qualifies as an “acceptable” solution, which is tantamount to asking vegetarians to come up with an “acceptable” version of the turkey dinner.
See Popoff’s site here
