Posted on 07/07/2010 7:46:56 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Was it a competitor or just a vandal who poisoned 7 million vegetable plants at a seedling nursery in Australia?
The sabotage -- estimated at a loss of 23.5 million Australian dollars ($20.3 million) -- could more than double produce prices across the country due to decreased supply.
About 4 million tomato seedlings were poisoned, as well as bell peppers, melons and eggplant.
The region of Bowen, in northern Queensland state, grows the majority of Australia's winter vegetables.
Police investigations found that a herbicide was introduced in late June into the irrigation system of the Supa Seedlings nursery, which sells its seedlings to farmers for planting. Workers noticed the wilting and dying plants between June 20 and June 25.
Townsville Police Acting Inspector Dave Miles said police were considering a range of motives.
"It could be a grudge, it could be competition based, it could be the result of time-established market share, or it could be an act of vandalism," Miles told reporters Wednesday.
He said 12 detectives were working on the case and would investigate possible links with three previous poisonings since 2002.
The owners of Supa Seedlings declined to comment to the media about the poisoning.
Denise Kreymborg of the Bowen District Growers' Association told Sky News Australia that the poisoning affected 350 hectares of production land with the potential to produce about 200 tonnes of fresh produce. She said about 30 growers would be affected.
She said growers would continue harvesting their established crops in the next two months, with prices likely to spike around September when the lost seedlings would have been on the market.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
gmo sauteed anyone?
eeeww.
Well, we have all been waiting for the food jihad for a while now, to really take off after all the rather successful norovirus twirls...
Poisoned???
Koran animals ?
Or it could have been a minimum wage idiot who put the wrong chemical in the lines.
Around here some idiot sprayed 24D on a windy day and destroyed about a 100 acres of cotton, thankfully, the vineyards near there don’t seem to be hurt. The really stupid thing about it is that it was fallow land and they could have easily disked the weeds down.
I smell muzzies.
Heck, you can get 2,4-D drift on nearly windless days. I learned that the hard way. Just use the ester formulation instaed of amine, spray in the AM on what will be a hot (90F) day and it vaporizes then drifts. Knocked back alfalfa a quarter mile away.
Howzabout quit spraying period? Where does all that sh*t go? Up our noses, in our lungs and then when we eat it?
Insects are becoming immune and looking for other hosts....
Like human beings!
Certain agro giants are very bad corporations. The more we gm and spray, the sicker folks will get.
Don’t even try and tell me that this crap is all okay
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