Vaughn Cox

“I would go out, wherever there was a group of farmers, … Talk to them. Explain the Right-to-Know law. Here it is. We’re tasked with enforcement. First, we educate you and tell you what you need to do. We will work with you to help you get that set up, and if you refused, then you’ll get some fines. By […]

Sandra Tenorio

“Some of my first meetings as director (of TDA’s Right to Know Program), imagine this room: Rebecca Harrington from the United Farmworkers, Jon Fisher from the Chemical Council, somebody from the Farm Bureau, somebody from the Farmers Union and then we had somebody from Legal Aid. Those were the five entities that were in the room to negotiate the regulations […]

Jon Fisher

“We did not think Hightower was gonna win until Reagan (Brown) stuck his hand in the fire ant mound and we just said, “Oh my God, this guy is going to come up and beat him…The Hightower years were the early part of my tenure at the Texas Chemical Council. Even though there were a lot of adversaries, I made […]

Pesticides and the Right to Know

August 5th 1982, farmworker Sacharias Ruiz awoke at dawn in Bryan, Texas.  He would not live to see the sun set.  Mr. Ruiz’s job that day was to spray Dinitro-3, a highly toxic pesticide, on cotton plants in Bryan, Texas. The pesticide canister had a leak, just a small leak, but, nonetheless, a fatal leak.  Soon, Mr. Ruiz was too […]