Safe Food and Fertilizer is a grassroots
citizens’ organization whose mission is to protect human
health and the environment by advocating for a ban on the use of hazardous and other industrial wastes in fertilizer, soil
amendments and animal feed. Our goals are to seek the establishment of national standards protective of
our most vulnerable populations, especially developing fetuses; to provide technical, regulatory, and educational assistance
to organizations, individual and elected officials locally, nationally and internationally; and to ensure that laws governing
waste product recycling -- and hazardous and solid waste disposal -- are enforced at the state, federal and international
levels, litigating when necessary to seek compliance.
About Us
Safe Food
and Fertilizer was co-founded by former mayor Patty Martin; Jane Williams, former chairwoman of the Sierra Club’s Committee
on Hazardous Waste and the Executive Director of California Communities Against Toxics, and Dr. Brian Lipsett, co-founder
of the Environmental Background Information Center. The trio recognized the need to establish an organization
committed solely to this issue, in large part because of the complexity of the regulations governing it and because of its
obvious consequence to human and ecological health.
A
1997 Seattle Times’ investigative series “Fear in the Fields: How Hazardous Waste Becomes Fertilizer” and
the book “Fateful Harvest, the True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry and a Toxic Secret” detail the events
of the embattled mayor and farmers Dennis DeYoung, Tom Witte, Russell Sligar and Duke Giraud.
Safe Food and Fertilizer became a project of Earth Island Institute in December
2002.
STAFF
Patty Martin, Executive Director
