Rachel Carson centenary - 06/05/2007

Interviewer: Michael Green, Policy Officer for the Soil Association, we've just celebrated the centenary of Rachel Carson, and at a celebration at the Oxford Science Centre, Policy Director of the Soil Association, Peter Melchett, explained how influenced he was by Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, so much so that he actually converted his farm to organic farming methods, and I just wondered if you could tell us why do you think that book had that kind of impact?

Michael: Well Silent Spring was published in 1962, and it still has as much impact today as it had back then, and it's influenced thousands, if not millions of people across the world. It's the book that is credited with launching the modern environmental movement. And what Carson did in Silent Spring was for the first time to vividly highlight the devastating impact that human intervention, in particular, synthetic pesticides, had on our natural environment, wildlife and on human health.

Interviewer: And was there enough evidence at that time to show that impact?

Michael: Well, Carson was a trained scientist, she worked at John Hopkins University, which was quite unique for a woman at the time. And, as well as being a very beautiful book to read, Silent Spring is really a robust scientific work, thoroughly researched and fully referenced. And at the time what she was saying was very much against the grain, going against the scientific and political establishment. So, she was highlighting existing research, that really didn't have a popular outlet at the time.

Interviewer: Do we know why she had this sensibility, why she was a maverick and she went against the received wisdom of the time?

Michael: Well, Carson was many things. As well as a scientist, she was also a lover of nature and she grew up in rural Pennsylvania, and from an early age had a very strong appreciation for aquatic life – rivers, lakes, all kinds of wildlife. So she had a close affinity to nature, and as a scientist, that brought into very sharp focus actually observing the devastating impact that pesticides and chemicals were having on the natural environment that she loved.

Interviewer: How was it received at the time? Did she get a lot of stick?

Michael: Well, yes, Rachel Carson was attacked quite viciously in the press, from the political and scientific establishment in the States and beyond. People tried to deride her by saying that she was being over emotional, and these kind of things, the same kind of arguments that are directed at environmentalists today, for example, the Soil Association and other opponents of genetically modified crops. But really history has shown Carson's work to be very prescient, and it's still as relevant today as it was in the 1960s.

Interviewer: Yes, I wanted to ask you – why is it still relevant? Why is a book that was written 40 years ago still relevant?

Michael: Well it's partly relevant because we're still living in what Carson called 'the age of poisons', where we're using this vast array of chemical pesticides to what she called create, 'a chemically sterile, insect-free world', and much of the way our food production is organised is still based around the technological quick fix. But, the other reason why she's still relevant is that Silent Spring was much more than a tirade against chemicals or against technology. It was a call for a different approach to producing food.

Interviewer: How does this connect then with the Soil Association? What's Silent Spring got to do with the organisation?

Michael: So in Silent Spring Carson called for 'biological solutions based upon the understanding of living organisms that they seek to control'. She saw a scientific relationship between plants, the environment, our food and humans. And we're all part of the ecological cycles and nature's balance and that's very similar to the way that people like Lady Eve Balfour and the founders of the Soil Association saw food and human health – the interconnectedness of the soil, plants, animals and humans.

Interviewer: Yes, I understand how she saw the unity and how they all impact on each other, and did she in her book advocate organic farming?

Michael: Well in 1962, the words 'organic farming' I don't think had actually been born and it wasn't until five years later that the Soil Association actually published its first organic standards. But when you look at what Carson was saying in the '60s and what the founders of the Soil Association and the organic movement were saying as early as the 1940s, then there are very, very strong parallels.

For example, Sir Albert Howard who was an organic pioneer wrote that 'the policy of protecting crops from pests by means of sprays and so forth is unscientific and unsound', and he concluded that 'pests must be looked upon as nature's professors of agriculture'.

Interviewer: The science that Rachel Carson demonstrated in her book – is this accepted by the scientific establishment now or is it still contentious?

Michael: When Silent Spring is discussed in 2007, often you'll hear from the intensive farming industry and pesticide companies that 'Oh, things have moved on, pesticides are safe, they're the most tightly regulated chemicals in the world, or at least in the UK'.

But the only reason they are regulated is because of public pressure. The American public and the British public were told for years and years that DDT was safe, but it wasn't until Silent Spring that public pressure was put on the government in the United States to ban DDT, and it was banned in 1972, although the British government waited another 12 years to ban it over here.

We're still dealing with the same problems, pesticides are still seen as something which is necessary and can be managed in a safe or an acceptable way, so that's why, one reason why, Carson's message is still important today.

Interviewer: And do you agree that pesticides can be managed in this way? I mean if they are regulated as the pesticides companies insist does that solve the problem?

Michael: Well pesticides are inherently risky. What pesticides are – they're not simply crop protection products, but they're chemicals that are put out into the natural environment to kill insects, fungi and weeds. They're there to kill other living organisms, so they're going to have a damaging effect, at least on the environment, the Soil Association believes on our food, and possibly on human health.

And we've seen over the last half a century, pesticides that are one day considered safe and then afterwards evidence emerges to the contrary and they're banned like DDT. The Soil Association highlighted lindane back in 1998 which was banned the subsequent year. Earlier this year, we've seen aldicarb being banned by the UK government that the Soil Association campaigned against in 2004. And Marks and Spencer has also banned another ten pesticides just this month from its own fruit and vegetables.

Interviewer: So we have some cause to celebrate then?

Michael: We definitely have some cause to celebrate – Carson gave a lot to science, to our understanding of the environment. Some of the chemicals that she highlighted have now been banned or phased out, but still our governments and regulators are dealing with a policy of firefighting. And there's no point campaigning or trying to regulate individual chemicals, but what we need to do is have more of a deeper look at our farming systems and look at prevention rather than cure.

Interviewer: So you think it's possible to farm without chemical pesticides?

Michael: Well there are over 600,000 certified organic farmers in over 120 countries across the world, and they produce large quantities of high quality food. So they're the people who know that you can produce without DDT or without lindane or without organo-phosphates. It's about – organic farming works – it shows that you don't need to pesticides to produce food.

Interviewer: I mean I can see that I personally don't want my food to have pesticides on it, but from the point of view of the agricultural workers, is there a risk?

Michael: The effect on the health of agricultural workers is something that's often forgotten, and I think the World Health Organisation estimates that around 20,000 people, particularly in the developing world are actually killed by pesticide poisoning every year, and that's not to mention the acute and chronic ill health effects of pesticides on people's health.

And this particularly happens in the developing world on food crops and also crops like cotton that we all end up wearing. Cotton uses a quarter of the world's insecticides, and in the developing world because it's out of sight, out of mind, they're much less regulated and the poor farmers and workers over there suffer from some quite horrendous health effects.

Interviewer: And what campaign is the Soil Association engaged on at the moment in view of pesticides?

Michael: Well, we've been campaigning against pesticides really since the Soil Association began back in 1946. In 1967 when we published our first organic standards, it banned completely the use of fungicides and herbicides and the vast, vast majority of chemical insecticides so our work to campaign against pesticides is as much in deed as it is in words.

So every organic farmer and every person buying organic food is making a really important contribution to reducing and eliminating the risks of pesticides.

Interviewer: So the more organic farming we have the less pesticide spray is around for the general public?

Michael: For the general public, for wildlife… and it's been calculated that if the whole of the UK went organic then there'd be a 98% reduction in pesticide spraying in the UK, and that would have an absolutely phenomenal effect on wildlife and the countryside and public spaces, not to mention reducing the bill that we all pay every year in cleaning pesticides from our drinking water.

Interviewer: Michael Green, thank you very much.

Michael: Thank you.

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