November 11, 2010
Contact:
Heather Pilatic, Communications Director
Pesticide Action Network North America
heather@panna.org, cell: 415.694.8596
New website links “Grassroots Science” to online activism
Pesticide Action Network re-tools to support public engagement in issues considered the sole purview of experts
San Francisco, November 11, 2010 – Building on decades of scientific and technical advocacy, Pesticide Action Network (PAN) today launched a new website designed to provide citizens and consumers with science-based information for action. The new site meets a fast-growing consumer demand for engagement pathways to reclaim and rebuild local, healthy food systems across the country.
For decades, the complicated chemistry behind pesticide health effects and firm corporate control of agricultural messaging has kept consumers overwhelmed and silent. In the last few years however, support for resilient local food economies has grown, just as the science linking pesticide exposure to cancer, ADHD, Parkinson’s Disease and a “silent epidemic” of neurodevelopmental damage has garnered substantial public attention.
Today’s launch of www.panna.org links the organization’s decades of science-based advocacy with communities calling for healthy and fair food production.
“PAN has been at this work for nearly three decades, and the recent surge in public support for a safer, more democratic food system is really extraordinary,” said PAN’s Executive Director, Kathryn Gilje. “There’s a real, bipartisan appetite for vetted and decoded science that links moms, farmworkers and rural families with each other as people on the frontlines of pesticide exposure. People want access to solid information to feel empowered to speak and to connect the dots. This website is designed to meet that need.”
The website features an online action toolkit with letter writing tools, an “Advocacy 101” section and an interactive blog featuring PAN’s scientists as well as voices from the group’s international network.
Last year, PAN launched the first database linking pesticide food residues data to toxicological risks with What’s On My Food.org. The database is also an iPhone app, which has been downloaded over 65,000 times since it’s November 2009 launch.
Resources & key features:
PAN & PAN partner publications, fact sheets & reports: http://www.panna.org/publications
PAN’s new blog featuring scientists, experts and community voices from around the world, GroundTruth: http://www.panna.org/blog
An online hub for citizens and consumers to get more involved: http://www.panna.org/get-involved/what-you-can-do
About Pesticide Action Network:
Pesticide Action Network promotes the elimination of highly hazardous pesticides and offers solutions that protect people and the environment.
PAN North America is one of five independent regional centers of PAN International, a worldwide network of more than 600 organizations in 90 countries. For more than 25 years PAN has fought for environmental justice, sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty.
