You are saying that the label and the chemical data sheet are false science. Are you really saying that everyone should ignore chemical labels and data sheets or do you just wish to pick on 1080?
If you are saying that the regulations are fraudulent then I suggest that you very quickly get the Government to change the EPA personnel because you have just called them incompetent and mischievous.
To be 100 per cent truthful you should be saying that anti-1080 people believe in the regulations while the pro-1080 people such as Ospri have been given dispensation not to work to the regulations.
Even then the pro-1080 people are disobeying the few restrictions placed on them when given the dispensation. There are two rules governing 1080. This is the essence of the issue. This has been stated often.
So now it comes down to who is actually ill informed, the anti-1080 people or Ospri and commentators like yourself?
When Ospri forces non-compliant applications of 1080 on the populous with no due care of the results it is despicable.
It builds the fear, anger, frustration and a genuine need to protest. Your article ridicules those affected and only adds heat to this.
To tell anti-1080 people they are using false science, when they are working to the label and data sheets (the regulations), builds the anger to contempt and accusations of fraud and corruption.
Your opinion piece has just drawn all these on to you and your paper. Integrity would require your words to be withdrawn and an apology offered to all of New Zealand for helping expose them to this horrendous deadly poison that has no antidote, has horrendous side effects on all mammals (humans are mammals) birds, insects, and plant life.
1080 breaks down at 200C, dissolves easily in water and is known to create secondary and tertiary poisoning, and in many cases leaves the carcasses to rot over many months in catchment areas (insects die if they try to eat the carcass), creating a bacterial contamination.
It is time you did some research to find what is driving the fear and anger and the frustration. It is columns like yours that are ill-founded, ill-informed and somewhat unhinged.
You say anti-1080 people create havoc with the environment, which is also slanderous.
Most of us are well aware of the environment and the protection of it. Especially when it comes to humanity.
Awareness is driven by fear that we will have more effects like thalidomide, 245T, 24D, DDT, and asbestos, to name some. These were all declared safe by the manufacturers and our own EPA and yet created social trauma. The 1080 label and EPA say 1080 is not safe.
If you get a chance, look at the photos the New Plymouth nurse took over several years of fetal defects in the Paratutu area where the Dow factory was located. I am sorry, humanity comes first.
To try to tell New Zealand that there is no alternative to 1080, is crap.
Pests are very well controlled in all farmland and It was not aerial dropping of 1080.
Alternatives are controlled and precise.
However, I would prefer the expansion of these alternatives to the short and long term results of current uncontrolled aerial spreading by people who have no credibility or ethical behavior.
* Norm Brown is a director of Mohaka Rafting on State Highway 5
