The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission says it won’t be giving out any more of its “compost” made from sewage sludge, until it’s completely retested. CBS 5 Investigates reported last month that a nonprofit group’s tests found chemicals such as dioxins in that sludge product – a product the city was calling “organic.”

Now activists are taking their protests over that product to one famous Bay Area resident’s front door. This is where the sludge fight wound up, at the front door of the internationally famous Chez Panisse restaurant.

Protesters from the Organic Consumers Association dressed in plastic suits held a banner congratulating the restaurant on its 30th birthday, then calling out owner Alice Waters for in their view, not taking a strong stand against “toxic sludge.”

The group is upset about a product given out for free by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, something the SFPUC called “organic biosolids compost.” Schools and gardeners took the product, some for use in organic gardens.

But as CBS 5 Investigates first reported, the city actually makes that product from sewage sludge. It’s not organic, and can contain any number of toxins, because the sewage is not just from homes but also from farms and factories.

What does all that have to do with Chez Panisse and Alice Waters? The Organic Consumers Group believes Waters and her foundation have a potential conflict because the executive director of the Chez Panisse Foundation, Francesca Vietor, is also vice president of the Public Utilities Commission.

“Ms. Vietor’s presence at both Chez Panisse and the PUC tends to create a contradiction” said John Mayer with the Organic Consumers Association. “The PUC is not advocating for green farming, and the product that they were giving away was not green or organic, but over here they do advocate for green farming and organics, and for her to be doing both things at once seems to be a contradiction.”

But in a statement, the Chez Panisse Foundation fired back, saying when Vietor heard of the compost program, she asked the PUC, among other things, to “put the program on indefinite hold until sound scientific data can be gathered and evaluated”. And the foundation said the Organic Consumers Group owes Vietor and Alice Waters a “public apology” for what it calls “false statements.”

OCA representative John Mayer says he doesn’t think an apology will be forthcoming. And as for the protest, could it backfire? Mayer said, “That remains to be seen. Alice is revered and loved and rightfully so but I think what is equally compelling is to ask the question why won’t Alice come out and say that she condemns the sludge giveaway, which she has failed to do. Especially since it is in perfect keeping with her organic practices.”