December 14, 2007

(For the full article, which covers many other topics, click here.)

“I’ve met with the secretary of agriculture I think five times now. I initially wrote a very long letter that compiled the concerns that have been raised by people here. I tried to get the secretary to address the concerns in a way that people could feel like they were being heard.

At this point, it’s going to take some third-party peer scientific review to make some statements to calm the public, if that’s the appropriate direction. I have been asking for that to happen in a way that people can examine what’s really going on.

They need to stand back and figure out how to address this. How are they going to deal with a third-party review of the science that gets people to listen and feel like their concerns are being addressed?

The secretary has thought his role is just to look straight ahead. Having been in local government as an elected official for 17 years, I know you have to go through the process first and make the decision second.

I think what inflamed people is that they said we’re going to spray and then in a little while we’ll get to the public process. It sent a signal that people weren’t having input, so it was backwards.