Letters to the editor, March 2004

PCC beef

Just wanted to send a note of thanks for your flyer. Instead of burying your head in the sand like all the others, you explained the beef issue clearly. I went to your store yesterday and bought lots of organic beef with no reservations. My family was so excited to have cheese burgers again! Thank you!
— Wendy (last name withheld on request), Kirkland

Irradiation and firewood

I’m mailing your great article about irradiated beef/foods (What’s the beef?, February Sound Consumer) to Margarita Prentice, state senator, 11th District (South Seattle, Burien, Renton area).

Also, someone wrote in about (how) it seems to be a bad policy for PCC to sell firewood. They cited reports and studies done by the EPA and Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. These agencies and power administrations would like us all to use as much electricity and gas as possible to increase their $$. Wood smoke has been on earth since there was trees. Wood smoke is natural as opposed to smoke from plastic, rubber and those unnatural “clean burning” pressed logs. The ashes I use in my garden are pure nutrients and concentrated; gardeners should use them sparingly on acid-loving plants.
— William Coomes, Seattle

Battle for supplements

If you want to keep your freedom of choice (for supplements) please help us stop Codex from gaining a foothold in America. The first thing to do is contact your representatives, especially your senators, and tell them that you want them to stop the present bill, S.722 in the senate (yes — the danger is already afoot) and that you ask that they resist any sort of bill that would allow Codex Medicus to gain a foothold in America.

S.722 and Codex are a means for drug companies to take over all vitamins and herbs and force you to see a doctor to get a prescription for doses of vitamin C above ten milligrams.

NO prescriptions for Vitamin C. You can make a difference. See the site http://capwiz.com/nnfa/S722.html, click “issues” and sign the protest. Please act now, tomorrow may be too late.
— Russ Hamerly, Boeing IT Services

The scoop on fertilizer

The article you have online (The scoop on organic fertilizer, Sound Consumer March 2003) is wrong about our company totally and Duff Wilson is wrong in his writings about us. We have never been banned in Canada or any other place as far as I know and I have been working for Soda Springs Phosphate for 25 years.

Too bad he is on some kind of witchhunt and what he writes about is not based on facts. We have purchased nothing from Monsanto since 1984 and it was not sold as organic. In 1989 we changed the production over to mined rock phosphate and it is listed as organic by OMRI as is all our products. We do not use waste of any kind.
— Lynn Moore, Sales Manager, Soda Springs Phosphate

Duff Wilson: My information on Soda Springs Phosphate’s purchasing Monsanto’s unwanted phosphate rock was from John Hatfield, owner of the company, as quoted in detail in “Fear in the Fields” and “Uninformed Consent” and confirmed by Monsanto. He paid $10 a ton for it, milled it, and then sold it as 100 percent organic fertilizer.

Numerous people and the Seattle Times have found extremely high levels of cadmium in Soda Springs Phosphate “organic” products. The fact that they were banned in Canada came from Darlene Blair, Canada’s top fertilizer regulator.