CCA Funds Abuse
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson. The Washington State Department of Health has reportedly given nearly a half million dollars from Climate Commitment Act funds to a farming activist group.
Save Family Farming’s Executive Director, Ben Tindall says that group, Empowering Latina Leadership and Action, or ELLA, has since created videos, with the department’s logo on them, that directed disparaging and inaccurate information about Lower Yakima Valley farmers …
TINDALL … “This, of course, raised some questions to us on, is the Department of Health sponsoring and endorsing these anti-farming messages?”
So, Tindall says, from there …
TINDALL … “We issued a complaint first to the Attorney General’s office and followed that a couple of weeks, maybe a month or so later with a complaint to the Department of Health asking for an inquiry to answer these questions.”
Six months later, the DOH replied, saying they’d contacted ELLA and the issue had been resolved.
So, Tindall says they checked ELLA’s social media …
TINDALL … “Those videos are still up. They have been untouched, it appears, and are still there and promoting and using the Department of Health’s logo on their videos, again, miscommunicating to the public or potentially accurately communicating to the public that the Department of Health is endorsing this message.”
Tindall says they have now requested a meeting the Secretary of Health, but have not yet heard back.
