Quotes About Pesticides

#1. When people say they prefer organic food, what they often seem to mean is they don't want their food tainted with pesticides and their meat shot full of hormones or antibiotics. Many object to the way a few companies - Monsanto is the most famous of them - control so many of the seeds we grow.

Michael Specter

#2. We have to draw the line someplace with all the pesticides being used by the farmers.

John Catsimatidis

#3. When the deaths first started increasing, there were all sorts of rumors. From defective childhood vaccines to pesticides in our food - people grasped for any excuse.

Suzanne Young

#4. Starbucks goes to a great effort, and pays twice as much for its coffee as its competitors do, and is very careful to help coffee producers in developing countries grow coffee without pesticides and in ways that preserve forest structure.

Jared Diamond

#5. We farm workers are closest to food production. We were the first to recognize the serious health hazards of agriculture pesticides to both consumers and ourselves.

Cesar Chavez

#6. Don't Make Your Life A Barren Land Where The Crops Of Happiness Cannot Be Cultivated , Use Some Pesticides Like HOPE , CONFIDENCE And Make Your Life A Fertile Land Where Happiness Can Be Cultivated

Nithin Kumar

#7. The average lawn is an interesting beast: people plant it, then douse it with artificial fertilizers and dangerous pesticides to make it grow and to keep it uniform-all so that they can hack and mow what they encouraged to grow. And woe to the small yellow flower that rears its head!

Michael Braungart

#8. I eliminated coffee and fish from my diet. The pesticides in coffee and fish, as well as the mercury in the latter, are considered possible contributors to birth defects in fetal tissue.

Constance Marie

#9. There is rising concern about pesticides, used on plants for food, causing endocrine disruption, meaning that the residual pesticides appear to be changing hormone levels in our populations.

Daniel G. Amen

#10. I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist.

Alice Waters

#11. Some days he walked along the banks of the river that smelled of shit and pesticides bought with World Bank loans.

Arundhati Roy

#12. Incidentally, if you really think organic means pure, then you're in for a helluva heartbreak. Organic farms do use pesticides and, as reported by Brian Palmer in Slate, organic wine needs eighty times more fertilizer than conventional vino.

Greg Gutfeld

#13. Earth is a living entity. And if it's a living organism, then we have to have a reverence for all life. Food should be local, organic rather than grown with chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides.

Satish Kumar

#14. Many of the birds Audubon painted are now extinct, and still we go on killing them, more or less casually, with our pesticides and wires and machinery.

John Burnside

#15. The cleanup costs of polluting a river, injecting pesticides into the ground water, or putting noxious gases into the air have not been figured into the cost of the manufacturing or agribusiness that put them there in the first place. Historically, the economic incentive has been to pollute.

Gloria Steinem

#16. Most of the plants grown to be fed to farm animals are heavily saturated with pesticides and herbicides and have been genetically modified, all of which contributes to the pollution and destruction of our environment, which harms us all.

Sharon Gannon

#17. Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticides, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide - all can be traced easily to too many people.

Paul R. Ehrlich

#18. Be sure to buy organic versions of the 'dirty dozen:' the fruits and vegetables that, when grown conventionally, are loaded with pesticides and chemicals: Grapes, apples, lettuce, bell peppers, carrots, nectarines, peaches, strawberries, pears, kale, and celery.

Suzanne Somers

#19. My understanding has always been that if there is any indication that pesticides are harmful, that they would not be allowed to be used.

George Deukmejian

#20. I had all kinds of allergy problems with certain meats, and with fruits and vegetables with pesticides. So I turned to bear, caribou, venison, hippopotamus, buffalo, elk and moose. Taste-wise, buffalo and elk are tied for first. Not gamy, and loaded with protein. And very expensive, I might add.

Billy Casper

#21. If you care about the animals, actually, organic might not be the best answer because now we have organic feedlots, organic factory farms. If you care about the environment - pesticides, especially - organic is the answer.

Michael Pollan

#22. The more we pour the big machines, the fuel, the pesticides, the herbicides, the fertilizer and chemicals into farming, the more we knock out the mechanism that made it all work in the first place.

David R. Brower

#23. If we weren't so dirt-conscious, we would obtain adequate vitamin B12 from soil, air, water, and bacteria, but we meticulously wash and peel our vegetables now - and with good reason, as we can't be sure our soil is not contaminated with pesticides and herbicides.

Sharon Gannon

#24. The standard approach has been to pump up the dosage of chemicals ... Twenty percent of these approved-for-use pesticides are listed by the EPA as carcinogenic in humans.

Barbara Kingsolver

#25. Every time you consume factory-farmed chicken, beef, veal, pork, eggs, or dairy, you are eating antibiotics, pesticides, steroids, and hormones.

Rory Freedman

#26. When the farmer can sell directly to the consumer, it is a more active process. There's more contact. The consumer can know, who am I buying this from? What's their name? Do they have a face? Is the food they are selling coming out of Mexico with pesticides?

Jerry Brown

#27. Swallows have disappeared, bees are dying out because of pesticides that should have been banned long ago - it's a scandal.

Brigitte Bardot

#28. Our actions today will protect children from the adverse effects of exposure to pesticides commonly used on foods. The agency also is on schedule to meet all deadlines for ensuring safer pesticides use under the new Food Quality Protection Act.

Carol Browner

#29. I love judging food by its smell and feel and taste. The healthiest tomato isn't always the perfect one that's been covered in pesticides.

Sheherazade Goldsmith

#30. Certainly people in empty places feel they have the right to do what they want to their property and don't necessarily see the effect of their pollution or pesticides on others. But Texans have an appreciation for water problems and are very aware of the droughts.

Gail Collins

#31. We are bombarded with reasons to stay inside: we're afraid of mosquitoes because of West Nile and grass because of pesticides and sun because of cancer and sunscreen because of vitamin-D deficiency.

Nancy Gibbs

#32. Exposure to some pesticides during infancy, even at very low levels, can lead to serious life-long consequences if the pesticides disrupt hormone-driven developmental processes.

Charles Benbrook

#33. I don't prefer to fill my body with antibiotics, pesticides, steroids, and growth hormones - my body is my temple, and I treat it as such.

Suzanne Whang

#34. Pesticides poison the main brain happy hormone or neurotransmitter, acetyl choline.

Sherry Rogers

#35. Environmentalists blame the farmers for overdosing with pesticides, and the farmers blame the consumers for demanding blemish-free fruit.

William Alexander

#36. Golf has an ambivalent relationship with the environment. On one hand, it's a great preserver of open spaces. Golf doesn't pave the world - it helps to green the world. But the downside is, it uses a lot of fertilizer, pesticides and water.

Thomas Friedman

#37. Several studies, including research done by Allison Byrum of the American Chemical Society, have shown fruits and vegetables grown without pesticides and herbicides to contain 50 to 60 percent more antioxidants than their sprayed counterparts.

Barbara Kingsolver

#38. A Who's Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones - we had better know something about their nature and their power.

Rachel Carson

#39. I'm thinking waiters and waitresses are going to be bracing for more customers coming in going, not just kind of where is that beef from, but, like, where is that vanilla from and what's up with that sunflower oil? Is it organic or not and how many pesticides?

Michael Moss

#40. I always knew pesticides affected farmworkers. That's why I always tell people, "eat organic." Not just because it's better for you but because you know the people who picked your food weren't in a toxic environment.

Eva Longoria

#41. In general, I try to eat food without added hormones and pesticides, but I'm not so strict that I won't have a Big Mac once in a while.

Missy Peregrym

#42. Pesticides came about after the first world war. Some brainy petrochemical money maker said, 'Hey, that mustard gas worked great on people, maybe we could dilute it down and spray it on our crops to deal with pests.'

Woody Harrelson

#43. The final principle of natural farming is NO PESTICIDES. Nature is in perfect balance when left alone.

Masanobu Fukuoka

#44. Despite a tenfold increase in the use of pesticides between 1947 and 1974 (in the US), crop losses due to pests have ... remained at an estimated 33%. Losses due to insects alone have nearly doubled, ... from 7% in the 1942-1951 period to about 13% in 1974.

Frances Moore Lappe

#45. The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became. I realized that here was the material for a book. What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important.

Rachel Carson

#46. It's amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease. When the poor share some of the power that the affluent now monopolize, we will give a damn.

Cesar Chavez

#47. Healthy, sustainable food production methods give us food that is nutritionally better and with fewer pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones.

Marion Nestle

#48. Our generation has taken to the cosmetic use of pesticides and I think, perhaps unwittingly, not fully understanding the dangers it represents to ourselves and, most importantly, to our children.

Dalton McGuinty

#49. I've said this over and over, but I'll say it a million more times - I'm concerned more about the death of a bee than I am about terrorism. Because we're losing hives and bees by the millions because of such strong pesticides.

Patti Smith

#50. Carson's thesis that we were subjecting ourselves to slow poisoning by the misuse of chemical pesticides that polluted the environment may seem like common currency now, but in 1962 Silent Spring contained the kernel of social revolution.

Rachel Carson

#51. I've always thought the main argument for organic was more environmental than a health argument. I just don't think spraying a lot of pesticides into the environment on a routine basis is a good thing.

John Mackey

#52. Organic agriculture is more about fairness and respect than it is about parts-per-billion of pesticide residues

Jim Hightower

#53. These days, they use so much pesticide that when I feed the children, I have to soak the vegetables for at least two hours.

Liu Cixin

#54. First law: The pesticide paradox. Every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffective.

Boris Beizer

#55. A good laugh is the best pesticide.

Vladimir Nabokov

#56. In Marin County, north of San Francisco, the search for a safe haven resulted in a new apartment complex - the first, and only, such government-sponsored project aimed at MCS.

Peter Radetsky