

Twenty-five environmental and pubic health groups asked Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday to abandon the state's new plan for eradicating agricultural pests and explore a less toxic approach, such as crop rotation or planting neighboring crops that deter insects.

The plan, announced this week by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, would abandon the traditional practice of assessing the environmental effects of attacking pests one by one, and instead publish a $3-million comprehensive impact report on eradicating all flies, worms, moths and other insects at once.

Such a comprehensive report would reduce oversight, according to Nan Wishner of the California Environmental Health Initiative. “This is a huge state, with many ecosystems and bio-regions, with many threatened or endangered species, and it’s impossible to assess in detail all the implications of all possible pesticides for any pest or future pest” in one report, she said.

“They’re trying to write the Encyclopedia Britannica of pest management.”

The environmental groups also criticized the state's traditional method of quarantining crops and then spraying pesticides, a method that does not look at alternatives other than pesticides to prevent invasive species. State agricultural officials have used 294 eradication programs over 30 years to combat nine pests, Wishner said. “Every year, [they are] trying to kill same bug, and it’s not working. We don’t need to poison whole fields to get rid bugs,” she said.