CITRUS CANKER
An eerie resemblance
to the criminal treatment of foot and mouth?

Eyewitness News 25 at http://www.wpbf.com/wpb/news/stories/news-20001011-092519.html brings us a story of 'a dreadful disease' breaking out in the Florida citrus orchards. Citrus canker is threatening the orchards of thousands of people. The page tells us fearfully that citrus canker is spread by:

· windborne rain
· lawnmowers and other landscaping equipment
· animals and birds
· people carrying the infection on their hands, clothing or equipment
· moving infected or exposed plants or plant parts

What is citrus canker?
Basically, citrus canker is a minor affliction that is entirely harmless to humans, which can cause early leaf fall and early fall of fruit. It can also blemish the fruit with brown scars (making it unsaleable in our shiny, plastic, bleached-white bread, everything sparkly clean and scrubbed for today's discerning shopper-type environment). There is no evidence that citrus canker is spread on the wind, by lawn-mowers, etc.

State law says that any citrus tree healthy or otherwise, within 1,900 feet of a so-called infected tree, must be chopped down. This has led to forced entries onto private residences, with government officials chopping down trees without permission of the owner, ruining lives and livelihoods in an instant. The simple truth is that the thousands upon thousands of trees currently being destroyed DO NOT NEED TO BE CHOPPED DOWN.

A recent report in Florida's Naples Daily News tells of a group of attorneys who charge that the Florida State program to remove uninfected citrus trees to prevent the spread of canker is based on faulty science and should be stopped.

Attorney Mal Misuraca told Circuit Court Judge Leonard Fleet that the state agriculture department cannot prove it's policy of cutting down all citrus trees within 1,900 feet of a canker-infested tree will stop the disease's spread. "The state is slaughtering millions of trees ... based on junk science," Misuraca said. (exactly the same scenario in the recent UK foot and mouth 'outbreak') The attorneys also argued that a newly enacted law allowing the state to obtain countywide search warrants to enter yards and remove uninfected citrus trees violates the constitutional rights of individual property owners. "People have an inalienable right to preserve and protect property," said Andrew Meyer, an attorney for Broward County. Naples Daily News, 4th May 2002. Full story at
http://www.naplesnews.com/02/05/florida/d769484a.htm

Draconian measures
Once again, draconian laws have been rushed through, under the pretext of wanting to protect the individual, but which resemble all too clearly the cynical moves by big business and big governments to destroy all private means of food supply at any cost. The various farm crises, such as foot and mouth, BSE, swine fever, chicken flu, bovine TB etc, have all taken on the same shape as "the citrus canker threat!" Big headlines, doom and gloom virus forecasts, "this disease is carried on the wind to all orchards everywhere." etc., etc.- all these false statistics have created the perfect climate for officialdom to savage and kill everything in its path. This is the exact blueprint for the UK foot and mouth 'epidemic', where millions of perfectly healthy head of cattle have been destroyed, along with the livelihoods of thousands of farmers - the mass cull fitting neatly into the EU plan to depopulate the UK of its farming communities and of an independent means of food supply.

Should citrus canker be any different? As the USDA issues its orders on the cull of thousands of fruit trees, please bear in mind that Dan Glickman's department has a proven history of deceit and collusion in a variety of vested interest escapades in the past. Basically, the USDA must be trusted as far as you can throw a lawn-mower.

All those afflicted by the citrus canker 'outbreak' should acquaint themselves with the other side to the recent foot and mouth outbreak in the UK. Please visit www.whatareweswallowing.freeserve.co.uk/footandmouth.htm You might never see citrus canker in the same light again.
Credence international correspondent