Agribusiness Has No Business in School

* California’s agriculture industry has no shame. Undermining our children’s health is not enough, so it has now decided to tamper with their minds as well.

The Alliance for Food and Fiber (AFF), an organization funded by the state’s agriculture industry, is aggressively promoting an elementary grade level program called California Ag in the Classroom. It would use the Medfly to teach children math, geography and science and is currently being implemented at Camarillo Heights elementary school. Other schools will be targeted throughout the state this fall.

The Pleasant Valley School District’s responsibility, first and foremost, is to provide our children with an unbiased education and a safe learning environment, yet district officials have chosen a program that promotes the spraying of a neurotoxin over schools and is slanted in favor of the state’s agriculture agenda. I am alarmed at how a special interest has so “easily imposed upon” our local school officials.

California Ag in the Classroom does not educate. It indoctrinates. It is designed to create an acceptance and belief that urban aerial spraying is a necessary and sound method of eradication. This flies in the face of independent scientific research.

TERRI GAISHIN

Camarillo