Right-Wing Lauds Alice Waters: Oh Alice, Don’t Let Them Do This To You
Oh lord, now an industry astroturf group (the American Council on Science and Health) is expressing their schadenfreude over Alice Waters' refusal to renounce growing any food in sewage sludge.
April 12, 2010 | Source: La Vida Locavore | by Jill Richardson
Oh lord, now an industry astroturf group (the American Council on Science and Health) is expressing their schadenfreude over Alice Waters’ refusal to renounce growing any food in sewage sludge. And there’s one thing they have right (which is one more than usual): Alice Waters IS a hero of the sustainable food movement.
But here’s the full statement they made:
“I have to admit to some schadenfreude when the organic, ‘environmentalist’ crowd turns on itself,” says Stier. “Ms. Waters was a hero of the sustainable food movement, but now they are turning on her because of very low levels of heavy metals in this compost, less even than you’d get from a vitamin supplement. The irony, of course, is that using biosolids is a wonderfully environmentalist thing to do, since it safely recycles waste materials; the ‘environmentalists’ are on the wrong side of this environmental issue.”
They are congratulating Waters because using sewage sludge is a “wonderfully environmentalist” thing to do?? Alice, please, these people still think DDT should be legal. Don’t let them count you as being on their side. It hurts me to see Alice Waters used like this.
(As for those heavy metals… they’ve done a nice job cherry-picking the ONE class of toxins in sewage sludge that is somewhat regulated. Sure, sludge might not have too much lead in it… but how about flame retardants, dioxins, pharmaceuticals, and phthalates?)