MAINE–(ENEWSPF)–August 2, 2012
Even if you catch my (pesticide) drift in your lungs or on your skin, it’s not my problem according to a Minnesota court (National Pesticide Information Center photo).
Second-Hand Pesticides Are An Unfortunate Fact of Life
If someone fires a gun or an arrow in your direction that’s clearly violating your space. If someone tosses garbage or a rock toward your house, that violates your rights. If someone even so much as steps foot on your property against your will, well, that’s trespassing and can land the offender in jail.
Reversing a ruling that gave organic farmers hope, however, the Minnesota Supreme Court said yesterday that it’s OK when one farmer allows his or her pesticides to drift to another farm. Or, to put it a different way, what the Court really said amounted to “no harm, no foul” or “out of sight, out of mind.”
Justice Lorie Skjerven Gildea, who wrote the head-scratching opinion, declared pesticide drift to be “intangible and cannot be a form of trespassing.” Here’s the story from the state’s largest newspaper: http://www.startribune.com/local/164607876.html.
The justices did allow that in some extreme cases farmers could sue other farmers for being negligent and causing financial damages, but the burden of proof required would seem to make it a virtual impossibility that cases would ever go to trial.
Beyond the farm, the ruling is seen as a major blow to neighborhoods across the United States where neighbors unwittingly subject their neighbors to toxic drift of lawn and garden chemicals, what we call “second-hand pesticides,” on an almost constant basis. To the Minnesota Supreme Court’s way of thinking, that’s just an intangible part of American life these days.
Note: Here’s a link to the National Pesticide Information Center’s web site on pesticide drift: http://npic.orst.edu/reg/drift.html
Source: http://www.safelawns.org
