Conflicting Goals Cloud State’s Pesticide Policy : Health: The agriculture agency responsible for protecting the public is dominated by farmers.

Henry Voss knows all about the aerial spraying of pesticides.

As a San Joaquin Valley farmer, he occasionally hires an airplane to spray his peach orchard--and his house in the middle of the orchard--with fungus-killing pesticides.

As director of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, Voss ordered the spraying of malathion over homes in Southern California to eradicate the Mediterranean fruit fly.

“We in agriculture have to live with pesticides,” Voss said in a recent interview. “Most of us live on the farm. We have to live in an environment where pesticides are used from time to time. We’re not without concerns, but when applied properly, most of us feel it’s safe.”

Voss, a genial 57-year-old grower, typifies a long California tradition of appointing farmers to run the agency that regulates the agriculture industry. The former head of the California Farm Bureau--the state’s largest farm organization--now presides over a department that has a profound effect on the safety of the food people eat, the water they drink and the air they breathe.

By law, the Department of Food and Agriculture is charged with a dual mission. It has the job of “promoting and protecting the agriculture industry.” It is also responsible for “the protection of the public health, safety and welfare.”

But when the two goals come into conflict, the department has a history of siding with the interests of the $17.5-billion industry, its critics say. Environmentalists, farm worker activists and even some Deukmejian Administration officials contend that the department acts as the guardian of agriculture at the expense of the public health.

In urban Los Angeles, the role of the department in protecting the interest of farmers has become abundantly clear this year as helicopters hired by the state agency have sprayed malathion repeatedly over residential neighborhoods to eradicate the Medfly.

Now, both candidates for governor, Republican Pete Wilson and Democrat Dianne Feinstein, have called for change in the way the state regulates pesticides. Feinstein supports stripping the department of its pesticide regulation program and turning it over to the Department of Health Services. Wilson proposes creating an Environmental Protection Agency that would include pesticide regulation among its functions.

Similarly, a major portion of Proposition 128--the sweeping environmental initiative on the Nov. 6 ballot--is aimed directly at Voss and his department. Among its many features, the proposition would ban the use of 19 cancer-causing chemicals on crops and curb the department’s authority over pesticides and farm worker safety.

“Mr. Voss comes from the agriculture industry and he views his role as acting on behalf of the big growers, not on behalf of the public,” charged Al Meyerhoff, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council and a co-sponsor of the initiative. “It’s just like having the agriculture industry itself regulating pesticides.”

The department was created by the Legislature in 1880 to help growers stem an outbreak of phylloxera, a devastating disease that attacks grape vines. First known as the Board of Viticultural Commissioners, the agency now has 2,141 employees and a budget of $210 million.

It regulates weights and measures, inspects produce, controls farm pests and animal diseases and promotes the sale of farm products in California and abroad. At the same time, the department has the primary authority within California for deciding what pesticides can be used and what exposures are safe for farm workers.

Voss, appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian in April, 1989, rejects the notion that the department unfairly favors agriculture. At times, he points out, the department has banned pesticides or imposed restrictions on farmers that make it tougher to compete with growers in other states.

“If you were to go out and ask people in agriculture, they would tell you we’re trying to put them out of business,” Voss said. “In many cases, they think we’re their enemy.”

Merlin Fagan, a lobbyist for the California Farm Bureau, put it a little differently: “What we see is this agency has a very difficult task because it tries to make decisions involving worker safety, environmental safety and also maintain some type of viable production. . . . Food and Agriculture has made a lot of decisions on issues that farmers were not happy with.”

Nevertheless, the interests of agriculture are well represented within the department. In addition to Voss and other top officials drawn from the ranks of industry, a myriad of advisory boards set up to guide the department are dominated by farmers.

Of 1,072 positions on these boards, 889 are filled with members who represent the agriculture industry. Another 126 are filled by government staff members or academic experts on agriculture. That leaves only 57 positions--or 5%--for individuals designated to represent the public at large.

“The medical world is regulated by medical people,” Voss said. “They don’t bring in garbage collectors or attorneys. The legal profession is regulated by legal people. I don’t think it’s particularly unusual that people from an industry are involved.”

One of the department’s most controversial actions was the decision by Voss last year to permit farmers in most of California to continue using a pesticide known to contaminate ground water.

A panel of state scientists, including representatives from the Department of Health Services and the State Water Resources Control Board, recommended that the pesticide aldicarb be banned because of its ability to contaminate ground water.

Aldicarb is perhaps best known for causing the widespread poisoning of California consumers in 1985 after the chemical was illegally applied on watermelons.

The pesticide has been found in ground water in Humboldt County, where the water table is higher than in most areas of the state. A study by the product’s manufacturer, Rhone-Poulenc, showed the chemical moves easily through soil to ground water 50 feet below and lasts for at least two to three years.

But Voss overruled the committee of scientists and said aldicarb could be used safely. To counter the panel’s findings, the department conducted its own survey of wells 200 to 300 feet deep and found no evidence of contamination.

Voss defended his decision, saying farmers in the San Joaquin Valley should be permitted to continue using aldicarb because soil conditions there are different than in Humboldt County.

“The director is not here to blindly accept all the advisory committee’s advice,” Voss said.

In a similar case, Voss’ predecessor, Jack Parnell, approved the continued use of atrazine, a popular herbicide found in ground water in Los Angeles and other parts of the state.

Implementing a 1985 law intended to prevent the contamination of ground water, Parnell banned the use of atrazine within a mile of wells found to be polluted. But he placed no restriction on the use of atrazine in uncontaminated areas.

By that logic, environmentalists protested, the use of atrazine is prohibited only after contamination occurs.

Parnell, now deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, explained his view of the law in a 1987 interview with California Farmer Magazine: “We’re trying to make sure we can keep the tools we need,” he said. “We’re being as lenient as we can.”

Environmentalists point to the decisions on atrazine and aldicarb as examples of how life would change under Proposition 128, which supporters call the “Big Green” initiative. If approved by voters, the power to ban such a pesticide would be transferred to the Department of Health Services--whose experts recommended banning aldicarb and placing stricter restrictions on atrazine.

The Department of Food and Agriculture also is under fire for allowing the continued use of 19 pesticides identified by the Environmental Protection Agency and the state of California as causing cancer or birth defects. All 19 would be phased out if the initiative passes.

Voss defends use of those pesticides, saying it is still unclear how much of a risk they pose to humans in the amounts used on California crops.

“You’ve got to look at each one of those chemicals and look at what the risk of cancer is,” Voss said. “Some of those chemicals in the dietary process you would have to consume truckloads of them every week.”

Meyerhoff, the Natural Resources Defense Council attorney, countered: “His comment is probably the best evidence of why we need this initiative. It reflects the logic of the nation’s big pesticide companies and food producers. That’s not good science.”

Earlier this year, a study by the Senate Office of Research concluded that the department was violating standard scientific procedures in approving the use of hundreds of chemical products in California that were not proven to be safe.

Recommendations by the department’s own health experts have been ignored, overruled and even changed by non-scientist staff members in their rush to approve pesticide products for use, the Senate Office of Research reported.

“As a consequence of these problems, Californians are not warned about known and unknown hazards that exist as a result of pesticide exposure,” the report concluded. “It is likely that hundreds of pesticide products currently registered for use in California contain inappropriate warning labels or lack adequate and complete health effect studies to evaluate potential hazards.”

In at least one case, Senate researchers said, a scientific report was altered with White-Out by department officials to cast a chemical in a more positive light. Scientists within the department’s Medical Toxicology Branch, which conducts scientific review of pesticides considered for use in California, have complained of interference by department officials.

“Those who lack expertise and training are attempting to compromise the scientific integrity of Ph.D.s with considerable experience,” protested 10 department scientists in a 1986 letter to their superiors. During the Deukmejian Administration, the Medical Toxicology Branch has been plagued with high turnover among scientists, the report noted.

Under Proposition 128 and Wilson’s proposal, the department would lose the medical toxicology unit and its authority to conduct the scientific review of pesticides.

But Voss, in defending his department against charges that it is biased, praised the quality of scientists and health experts that work for the agency.

“They’re the people who really make the judgments and write the recommendations . . . and it’s very seldom that their recommendations are not accepted,” Voss said.

Voss rejected many of the charges contained in the Senate Office of Research report, but acknowledged that his department had not properly conducted the review of some chemicals.

“There’s obviously some errors made and some mistakes,” Voss said. “A couple of cases actually did slip through.”

The Department of Food and Agriculture has long been criticized for its handling of worker safety laws. For years, it resisted such proposals as banning the short-handled hoe and requiring the wider posting of signs in fields to notify workers when crops had been treated with pesticides.

More recently, the department has come under fire for allowing farm workers to be exposed to hazardous levels of pesticides when working in the fields. Department officials acknowledge that at least 257 farm workers have suffered cases of pesticide poisoning since 1986 because standards set by the Department of Food and Agriculture allowed them to enter treated fields before it was safe.

In each case, the department moved to extend the quarantine period or prohibit use of the pesticide after the workers became ill. For example, repeated cases of poisoning forced the department to increase the quarantine period for methomyl in grape fields first from one day to seven days, then to two weeks and now, at certain times of the year, to three weeks.

But Ralph Lightstone, an attorney with the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, charged that the department has been too lax in setting safe standards that would have prevented the poisoning cases in the first place.

“Farm workers are being treated like guinea pigs,” Lightstone said. “Over the years, hundreds, maybe thousands, have been poisoned. The quarantines are inadequate and they are not enforced adequately.”

Dr. Michael O’Malley of the department’s worker health and safety branch said the agency uses theoretical models to predict when it is safe for workers to re-enter fields, but acknowledged that the models are not always accurate.

“It’s clear from these episodes there were some gaps in the existing regulations,” O’Malley said. “Some of the models used were not adequate for predicting the safe re-entry time.”

But when cases of illness arose, he emphasized, the department moved quickly to protect workers’ health. “The crucial point to me is that the surveillance system works well and that when we identify problems we can respond adequately,” he said.

At the same time, state records show that few farmers are severely punished for violating pesticide regulations or farm labor safety laws. The department takes the view that it is better to persuade farmers to comply with the law than to cite them.

Much of the responsibility for enforcing pesticide regulations is delegated to county agriculture commissioners who are appointed by county boards of supervisors but are accountable, in part, to the director of Food and Agriculture.

Statewide in 1988-89, 517 violators were fined and eight were the subject of civil or criminal complaints. By contrast, 5,766 violators received non-punitive sanctions such as a letter of warning, a notice of violation, a cease-and-desist order or a personal interview with county officials.

Some counties that are heavily agricultural were even more lenient in their enforcement activities. Kern County, for example, took non-punitive action in 357 cases, levied only 13 fines on agricultural offenders and referred no cases to county prosecutors.

By contrast, Los Angeles County, with a smaller farm community, levied fines in 89 cases, referred two cases to the district attorney and issued 267 non-punitive warning notices. Even heavily urban Alameda County fined 17 farmers--31% more than Kern County.

“The chances of being caught are extremely low, and the chances of being punished are even lower,” Lightstone said. “We need some law and order and tough pesticide enforcement in agriculture.”

Voss, however, explained the department’s rationale: “First of all, you have to decide whether you’re trying to build a record of catching people and fining people or whether you’re trying to assure a safe use of chemicals. And if you’re looking for a safe use of chemicals, then I think education and working with industry in the long term will be a lot more productive . . . than having stiff penalties and pointing to the number of penalties.”

Similarly, the state is lenient when it comes to licensing pesticide applicators.

The state routinely issues licenses to pesticide applicators without reviewing their record of violations, officials said. In fact, the department keeps no centralized record of the enforcement actions taken against violators of pesticide laws.

For example, the state issued a license to San Joaquin Helicopters--and hired the company to spray malathion over homes in Southern California--without checking the company’s record of violating pesticide laws. Records kept by the Kern and Fresno County agricultural commissioners showed that the firm was cited 13 times since 1986 for such things as spraying crops with prohibited pesticides and discharging chemicals on a county road.

Voss acknowledged that the failure to keep a centralized record of violations is a flaw in the department’s operations and indicated the state should check each operator’s record before issuing a license.

“It’s probably a good point and we ought to look at it seriously,” he said.

To its critics, the department’s handling of the Medfly crisis illustrates the agency’s reliance on pesticides and its willingness to help farmers at the expense of urban dwellers.

Despite the constant threat of infestation during the last decade, the department was not prepared to handle the massive invasion of Mediterranean fruit flies in Southern California during the last year.

The state’s breeding facility for sterile fruit flies--which are used to thwart the pest’s spread--was woefully inadequate for the scale of the infestation.

Unable to rely on the sterile flies, the department resorted to repeated aerial spraying of malathion in an attempt to keep the insect from spreading to rural areas of the state where crops could be jeopardized.

While Voss and his colleagues were comfortable with the aerial application of pesticides in residential areas, the spraying of malathion alarmed thousands of Southland residents who worried that it would be harmful.

Critics said the handling of the Medfly illustrates the department’s subservience to agribusiness.

“My impression of the California Department of Food and Agriculture is that they put economic decisions above health decisions and they put industry and the old-boy network above the general public,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), an opponent of the spraying. “I think the Medfly is a perfect example of economic concerns outweighing health concerns. The department has maintained from Day 1 that they knew what they were doing, but they didn’t do their homework.”

But Voss defended his department’s handling of the infestation, saying it had little choice but to halt the Medfly with malathion. In retrospect, he said, the department’s mistake was in not launching a public relations campaign to persuade residents of the need for the spraying and its safety.

“I don’t think there’s an awful lot the department would have done differently, all the other circumstances being the same,” he said.