The organic standards allow farmers to call produce organic
even if the crops are watered with fracking wastewater, which is filled with
dangerous chemicals.
I demand that the U.S. Department of Agriculture stop
allowing fracking wastewater on organic crops and protect us from these
questionable chemicals.
It's horrifying that Farmers are using fracking or oil
drilling wastewater (leftover water from oil and gas wells). This water is
laced not only with petroleum, but with dozens of other chemicals that the
fracking industry refuses to disclose and which haven't been determined to be
safe for human consumption.
The USDA bans petroleum-derived fertilizers in organic
standards, but the same rules don't apply to the water that goes on the crops.
The USDA hasn't even established what levels of these chemicals in wastewater
are safe for human consumption, but is allowing our food to be doused with it.
This isn't a small problem. In increasingly drought-stricken areas like
California, oil companies last year supplied half the water that went to the
45,000 acres of farmland in Kern County's Cawelo Water District, where
certified organic grapes and raisins are grown.
For our health and safety, the USDA needs to immediately
stop the practice of watering our crops with chemical-laden fracking wastewater
and definitely stop Farmers from labeling those crops organic. No fracking
wastewater on Organic Crops.
