Defend Our Health Featured on ‘What You’re Eating’ Podcast
September 21, 2023 | Safe Food, Safe Water | Tags: Drinking Water, environmental health, Environmental Justice, forever chemicals, Maine, pfas, Toxic Chemicals
Hosted by Jerusha Klemperer, in episode 16 titled “PFAS: The ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Your Food,” Food Print spoke to our campaign manager, Adam Nordell, to focus their attention on Maine to learn more about PFAS and how the chemicals have ended up in well water, on farms, in food, and ultimately in people’s bodies. Adam (alongside impacted farmer Fred Stone, Sarah Alexander and Caleb Goossen of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, and policy expert Patty Lovera) delve into the impact that PFAS contamination has had on Songbird Farm.
“Ultimately, that discovery resulted in our farm completely shutting down. The fields are fallow. We’ve stripped all of our high tunnels. We’re not turning over any soil. Our business is dead and my family is highly exposed to the chemicals. We’ve been drinking that water for seven years. We’ve been breathing the dust.
– Adam Nordell
Some of our produce was impacted as well. We were a mission-driven farm. We signed up to provide fresh, clean produce to our community, to provide our community with a connection to a place and to rebuild a sense of hope and stability and our little piece of the vision of sustainability that we all are trying to achieve. And without us realizing it, all of that was completely undermined by some terrible management decisions that were approved in the early 1990s where they used sludge as a fertility source.”
Food Print is a project of the GRACE Community Foundation dedicated to research and education on food production practices. Through their work, the goal is to pull back the curtain on the impacts of industrial food production practices, explain the benefits of more sustainable approaches to food production and consumption, and help people raise their collective voices and take action to make real change in the food system.
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P.S – Help us continue this fight against PFAS contamination by pitching in today!