Organic Farm
Contaminated by Pesticides Wins $1M Verdict
Environment News Service (ENS)
Lawyers for Jacobs Farm / Del Cabo
said today that organophosphate pesticides evaporating after application and
then blowing onto the organic herbs made it impossible for Jacobs Farm to sell
significant portions of its 2006 and 2007 harvests of sage, rosemary and dill.
While there are rules in place to control pesticide drift
from aerial spraying, neither federal nor state governments regulate
evaporative drift of pesticides.
The organophosphate chemicals at issue in the case - chlorpyrifos, diazinon and dimethoate - are legal on the fields of vegetables where
they were sprayed, but national organic food guidelines prohibit their use on
organic crops.
The ruling Friday is the result of a case filed in May 2007
by Jacobs Farm / Del Cabo against pesticide
application company Western Farm Service, Inc.
Jacobs Farm sought a court order to stop Western Farm
Service from spraying pesticides that contaminate crops at
Jacobs Farm also sought compensation for losses that
resulted from pesticide contamination. The jury found that Jacobs Farm was
damaged in the sum of $1 million, and Judge Robert Atack
ordered judgment in that amount against Western Farm Service.
The court ruled that pesticide applications by Western Farm
Service resulted in trespass of the pesticides onto Jacobs Farm and were
legally determined to be a nuisance depriving Jacobs Farm of the right to use
and enjoy the land, caused by negligence on the part of Western Farm Services.
Western Farm Services, which supplied the pesticides, said
it is likely to appeal the verdict.
Assessing the uses and risks of pesticides should be the job
of federal, state and county regulators, not local juries, Western Farm Service
said in a statement. It said the verdict "raises concerns about future use
of organophosphates in
The company said it followed standards on the product labels
and county agricultural permits when applying the pesticides.
The company argues that Jacobs Farm should not have come
into an area where conventional farming was taking place with its
"incompatible crops."
"With growing public concern about food safety and the
use of pesticides on food, the world has changed for conventional and organic
farmers," said Larry Jacobs, president of Jacobs Farm Del Cabo.
"Growing practices that do not rely on toxic chemicals
already exist," he said. "We need to implement these approaches and
work on expanding the toolbox so that farmers have more non-toxic options for
crop production."
The farm first discovered trace residues of chlorpyrifos and diazinon in
October 2006. Staff and management immediately stopped harvesting the affected
crops.
Jacobs Farm management contacted the County Agriculture
Commissioner and the state Department of Pesticide Regulation requesting that
they intervene to prevent continued drift of these pesticides.
Jacobs Farm also notified Western Farm Service of the
problem. When initial outreach to regulators and the
pesticide applicator proved fruitless, Jacobs Farm file the lawsuit against
Western Farm Service.
"The scientific community's growing knowledge of how
these chemicals move in the environment after application was not considered by
pesticide applicators or government regulators," said Jacobs.
"Regulations prohibiting the continued application of pesticides that
damage crops on other farms are in place. But until now, these prohibitions did
not apply to damage from pesticides when they evaporate after they are
applied."
Located on the
In 1986, the Del Cabo project was
founded to accomplish social change for the growers of Del Cabo,
a cooperative of small family farms in
Jacobs Farm has four farms in the
ens-newswire.com