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, Director

Cypress Sigman, Student Intern

Advisory Board

Jane Williams, California Communities Against Toxics

Toni Temple, Ohio Network for the Chemically Injured

Steve Dickens, Healthy Rivers, Healthy Communities

 

 

 

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