Mission Statement

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.

History

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.

Save Our Soil became a project of Earth Island Institute in December 2002 originally under the name Safe Food and Fertilizer.

Staff

Patty Martin, Director

Advisory Board

JANE WILLIAMS
California Communities Against Toxics
BRIAN LIPSETT
Environmental Background Information Center
BARBARA MILLER
Silver Valley Community Resource Center
ANNA MARIE CARTER
“The Seed Lady of Watts”

SAFE FOOD and FERTILIZER is a member of the following coalitions:

Northwest Toxic Communities Coalition
Collaborative on Health and the Environment
Toxic-Free Legacy Coalition (TFLC)
Choose Clean Water (CCW)

Our Successes

2010 – Present	Currently completing four appeals associated with air pollution emanating from computer data centers newly established in central Washington State
	Evaluating and tracking sewage sludge from municipalities to farmlands and forests in Washington State
2007	Stopped the National Organic Standards Board from adopting lenient standards for fertilizers, as proposed by a waste industry trade group
2003 – 2004	Conducted analysis of home-use fertilizers sold in Hawaii, and advocated new legislation to ban the sale of hazardous waste-derived fertilizers
2002-2003	Filed an appeal in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to halt Environmental Protection Agency plans to allow zinc-containing hazardous wastes to be sold as fertilizers
2002	Reviewed FDA’s 1962 – 1996 Market Basket Studies to discover that arsenic in the diets of toddlers had doubled over the 12-year-period 1984 – 1996
2001	Worked with Greenpeace International to analyze fertilizers from 14 countries, for comparison with fertilizers from 12 states in the US
2000 – 2002	Stopped enabling legislation in Maine and California to prevent human exposure to toxic wastes in the form of fertilizers
1992 – 1997	Worked cooperatively with Central Washington farmers to evaluate and expose the flow of hazardous wastes from industrial sites into the Columbia Basin, which became the basis of “Fear in the Fields: How Hazardous Waste Becomes      Fertilizer” and “Fateful Harvest”

It takes a village.  Please donate.

Our Sponsor

Earth Island Institute, a 501(c)(3) organization, provides fiscal sponsorship, resources, training, technical assistance, and peer relationships to environmental activists looking for an organizational home and institutional leverage for their work. Becoming a fiscally sponsored project is a strategic decision Safe Food & Fertilizer made in order to increase our effectiveness, organizational durability, and greater capacity to do out work.  Earth Island leverages the power of a network of diverse projects, the invaluable knowledge and influence of renowned leaders in the environmental movement, and the track record of a 35-year old organization and experienced staff.  They are home to projects on the forefront of the environmental movement utilizing strategies that are responsive to the social, economic, and political realities of our time.