A Little Encouragement

Chris sent me this story a week ago and I've been meaning to blog on it since. It's got a completely non-accusatory title: "Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird?"

Basically it's about how food from south of the border is grown using pesticides that are either illegal or restricted in the US. Consequently, North American songbirds are being poisoned as they winter down south and populations in the US have plummeted. Two crops it notes as the worst offenders: coffee and bananas. So buy them organic if you care about the majestic bobolink.

It's a little scary to think if these chemicals are (a) banned/restricted in the US and (b) known to be killing off birds, what are they doing to us? I mean, this isn't like DDT where the chemical was weakening the shell of birds' eggs and their baby birds got squashed. These birds are actually being neurologically poisoned. Just something to think about...

I liked this article not because I really care about songbirds (they're nice, I guess) but because it supports the US/non-US line that we drew, although lately we've been including Canada as the 51st state. And Puerto Rico as the 52nd (rum).