UPDATE : The Global Pesticide Pushers in Latin America
Langman, Jimmy
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 update
Spraying kiwi vines with pesticide in Chile’s Central valley, region vI...
...Agrochemical companies are actively entering the GM crop industry, which is growing by about 8% a year, with Latin America the largest customer of GM seeds after North America...
...But Amvac’s most insidious product has been dibromochloropropane, or DBCP, the active ingredient in Nemagon, an extremely toxic soil fumigant...
...He has written about Latin American issues for Newsweek, The Nation, the London Guardian, and The Miami Herald...
...Evelyn became a national symbol in Chile, representing that country’s many children born with malformations stemming from the misuse of hazardous pesticides...
...The lawsuit argues, moreover, that Dow and Amvac knew about DBCP’s role in causing sterility, which has been public knowledge since the late 1950s, but the companies “continued to market, sell, and use pesticide products containing DBCP outside of the United States...
...Erika Rosenthal, a lawyer with the Washington-based Center for International Environmental Law and an expert on pesticides in Latin America, sees a duplicitous tactic behind this argument over terminology...
...Despite several scientific studies that back the workers’ case, the companies continue to deny that their use of DBCP is at fault in the worker’s health problems...
...Still, more than 25 years later, the vicious circle remains...
...In 2002, a bold judge in Nicaragua made a historic ruling when he demanded that the companies pay $490 million in compensation to 583 banana workers injured by DBCP...
...There is also little control by authorities...
...Confined to a wheel chair for life, the child grew at an infinitesimally slow pace...
...NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update cases, the companies withdraw some chemical ingredients from the market because governments are requiring them to seek new approval for certain pesticides through a costly re-registration process...
...In 1999 the Hospital of Rancagua producedastudythatfoundanunusually high incidence of miscarriage and babies born with defects in the Cen after hoop in the country’s public health care system for the sake ofhergrandsonRodrigo,nowsixyears old,whosuffersfromaplethoraofbirth defects...
...You basically have U.S...
...unpublished article...
...This many instances highly pesdoes not mean, however, have revenues ticide dependent...
...Muñoz says agricultural businesses in Chile are mostly careless when it comes to the health of their workers...
...In 2004, pesticide sales in the region grew by 25% over the previous year, the largest such increaseinmorethanadecade,reaching more than $5.4 billion...
...bytheUNCodexAlimen for pesticides and food between countries...
...pesticide manusurpassing the for example, requires ex facturers are becoming tensiveuseoftheherbicide incomes of the conscientious—instead, glyphosate, also known as like multinationals in nations in which Roundup, a chemical that other industries, they are they do business...
...That is a very crude term...
...It was finally banned in the United States in 1985...
...And although the FAO revised its International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides in 2002—urging that the most dangerous pesticides, including those on the World Health Organization (WHO) list of hazardous chemicals, not be used in developing countries unless control measures “can ensure that the product can be used with acceptable risk to the user”—the code is strictly voluntary...
...As Cerda looks at Rodrigo, who after 15 operations still shows outward signs of problems, including a cleft lip and an abnormally sized head due to hydrocephalus, she sees a boy as energetic and curious and fun-loving as any other...
...helen hughes...
...T he issue is not new...
...In some countries, the registration process is not more than an administrative rubber stamp...
...and E.U...
...headquarters to sell those very chemicals in developing countries to both big corporate Jimmy Langman is a freelance journalist based in Chile and Bolivia...
...The group, called Help Rodrigo, includes 34 women from her town, Melipilla, who all have children suffering from birth defects linked to pesticides...
...Although the United States and European Union have banned and imposed strict regulations on a long list of pesticides, they permit multinational agrochemical companies with U.S...
...Offshore production is another tactic...
...It’s an all too common story throughout Latin America...
...This amounts to about 70,000 yearly poisoning cases, which can lead to death and a far greater number of serious, long-term illnesses, according to the International Labor Organization...
...But because of exposure to pesticides, he’s likely to need medical attention for the rest of his life...
...in 1979, journalists from the Center for Investigative Reporting published an article in Mother Jones that later became the landmark book Circle of Poison.Theirworksparkedan outcry in the media and in the halls of governments...
...Beyond the strengths and weaknesses of the existing multilateral agreements in controlling hazardous pesticides, the international trade system—from the WTO to regional and bilateral trade deals—is gues that there was no “conclusive scientific evidence” to support such a ban...
...A NACLA investigation supported by the Samuel Chavkin Investigative Journalism Fund finds that the pesticide industry has made this possible through a handful of strategies, including offshore production, using local distributors, and selling production licenses to smaller companies...
...before she died at age 14 in 2003, her body was the size of a three-year-old’s...
...Large, medium, and small companies from industrial countries sell pesticides through local distributors, like the monocrotophos, which is manufactured in China but packaged and sold by a Bolivian company...
...mand for “harmonization,” have been The WTO’s binding, also referred to as “concur-downgraded to global standards on the rence” and “equivalence,” acceptable pesticide resiwhich means setting mini-“dangerous” or dues in food are decided mum common standards “slightly toxic...
...pesticide registration lists of various Latin American governments...
...In the United States, according to Rosenthal, some of the pesticides that companies export are never registered to begin with...
...Why do we keep allowing companies and governments to continue doing this...
...Mejías and her family say they 0 remember smelling and breathing the chemicals in their home and enduring headaches, stomachaches, diarrhea, and vomiting...
...Soy, corn, cotton, rice, wheat, and other tries, despite that the Environmental Protection Agency’ banned the chemical in 1994, after it became the leading cause of poisoning among California’s agricultural laborers...
...she says...
...Their constant and vociferous pressure has helped lead to two significant UN conventions aimed at curbing the sale and use of the most hazardous pesticides...
...We think that there has been a lot of progressintheimplementationofthese international conventions,” Vroom says, “and a lot of capacity building around the world in almost any country that needs to be a sovereign entity with regard to the regulation of these complex products...
...By moving production offshore and using local intermediaries, the agrochemical companies are expanding their business, with global sales surpassing $35 billion in 2006 and increasing faster in the past few yearsthantheyhaveindecades.Meanwhile, the pesticide industry has consolidated during the past two decades through mergers and acquisitions into six major companies—call them the Big Six—that control about 80% of the market (see chart, opposite page...
...Jay Vroom, president of CropLife America, the trade association for pesticide companies in the United States, says the term ban belongs to “political jargon...
...Nine of the 12 chemicals banned by the Stockholm Convention are pesticides and were formerly part of the so-called “dirty dozen” that environmental groups have campaigned to ban since the 1980s...
...Monsanto is far and away the GM industry leader, with a 90% market share...
...Rosenthal pointsoutthatmostdevelopingcountries do not have the ability to monitor the application of “restricted use” pesticides in the field...
...Instead of allowing their products to go through the registration cancellation process—commonly known as having their products banned for use in the U.S.—many companies will voluntarily withdraw or cancel the pesticide’s registration in an effort to avoid bad publicity,” she says...
...almost 28 million pounds of them were either banned, severely restricted, or unregistered in the United States...
...In the Central American Common Market, the labels on some formuI n bolivia, i talk to guido con darco of Plagbol, an independent group that advises the Bolivian government on pesticide issues...
...court...
...and E.U...
...Her back was twisted with her spine exposed, her legs were paralyzed and crooked, and a small device had to be implanted in her skull to continually rid her brain of excess water...
...Take the Los Angeles–based Amvac Chemical Corporation...
...Bolivia has the highest rate of growth in pesticide imports in the region, more than doubling its imports over the past five years, 30% of which is contraband...
...When the U.S...
...In one of the lawsuits, filed on behalf of nearly 5,000 banana workers, lawyers argue that during the spraying of DBPC on banana trees, the chemical fell on workers and entered their water supply...
...Desiree Elizondo, former director of the Nicaragua environmental ministry and a consultant on regional pesticide issues, says few of the chemicals that are actually used in Latin America are named by the conventions...
...This is happening even as U.S...
...For example, if a country wants to enact a stricter standard on pesticides than the WTO’s, it could face the risk of being challenged as a “technical barrier to trade” and receiving millions of dollars in trade sanctions...
...Amvac began producing it and found a buyer in Dole Fruit, which had been using it on its Central American banana plantations since the late 1960s...
...Elsa Nivia, an agronomist from Colombia and coordinator of RAP-AL, says those chemicals are a disproportionate cause of deaths and poisonings in the region...
...Customs records, the Los Angeles–based Foundation for Advancements in Science and Education found that between 2001 and 2003, 1.7 billion pounds of pesticide products were exported from U.S...
...Pesticide Action Network, “Food and Fairness Briefing: WhichPesticidesAreBannedinEurope...
...One estimate puts Latin American sales at $7.5 bil health complaints and cancer suspicions throughout popular soy-growing areas in Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia...
...georgetown international environmental Law review, Summer 2004...
...In one exhaustive study of U.S...
...Ten other chemicalsarebeingreviewedforpossibleinclusion to the Stockholm banned list...
...In other The agrochemical industry’s Big Six and the pesticides they sell in Latin America...
...But many pesticide experts in Latin American countries say that, in their current incarnations, these UN treaties do not address the main pesticide problems facing the region...
...Dow Chemical and Shell Oil stopped producing the chemical in 1977, when the Environmental Protection Agency suspended it after finding it could cause sterility in workers...
...Environmental groups like the Pesticide Action Network (PAN)—formed after the publication of Circle of Poison, and today composed of groups and individuals in more than 90 countries—have wasted little time moving to tackle the issue from a variety of fronts...
...But in 1989, her daughter Evelyn was born with congenital malformations, or birth defects...
...TheLatinAmericanPesticideAction Network (Red de Acción en Plaguicidas y Sus Alternativas para América Latina, or RAP-AL), a regionwide network of groups, has been pressing for just such a change: the complete ban on the use of all pesticides found on the World Health Organization’s list of extremelyhazardous(1A)andhazardous (1B) chemicals, the vast majority of which are not mentioned in the UN conventions...
...has generated large-scale shifting their production offshore to cut costs and, in part, to avoid stricter environmental scrutiny at home...
...JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 update Spraying kiwi vines with pesticide in Chile’s Central valley, region vI Multinational pesticide corporations headquartered in the Global North are expanding their sales of some of the most dangerous chemicals in Latin America—chemicals known to cause a plethora of health problems, including cancers and birth defects...
...The first, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, signed in 2001 and since then ratified by150countries,callsfortheelimination of 12 highly toxic chemicals that remain in the natural environment for longperiods,canbeeasilytransported across the globe, and accumulate in the body fat of humans and animals...
...During her pregnancy, Mejías lived just yards away from an apple orchard regularly fumigated by planes...
...officials go abroad to these Codex meetings, they typically bring with them a lobbying team of 10 or 15 industry representatives to decide what the global rule is going to be on the various pesticides,” she says...
...Take Eugenia Mejías, one of Chile’s thousands of temporeros, the seasonal farm workers who help Chilean exporters get their crops to port from also undermining national In Central america, lations of paraquat, which pesticide laws and weak-several pesticides has been banned or seening the ability of Latin verely restricted in a host American governments to that are classified of European countries, restrict dangerous chemi-as “extremely or has been downgraded to cals...
...The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and several bilateraltradedealsarelargelypatternedon NAFTA and include similar investor rights clauses...
...According to Fernando Bejarano, coordinator of the Mexico group Pesticide and Alternatives Network, the downward harmonization imposed by the WTO on standards has already been at work in Central America, where several pesticides that are classified by the WHO as “extremely or very dangerous” have been downgraded to “dangerous” or “slightly toxic...
...The strongest are the most toxic,” says the shopkeeper, 21-year-old Alberto López...
...These pesticides are either banned or severely restricted in the United States and European Union...
...We want to speak out because this must stop,” Mejías says...
...Progress has been slow,” concedes Gero Vaagt, head of the FAO’s julio etchart JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 update pesticide management program, who agrees that the present UN treaties don’t go far enough...
...The numbers sound alarming, but they represent a signifi lion by 2009...
...But the millions of farm workers across the region are still largely untrained and ill-prepared to handle the chemicals safely, and government regulations, where they exist, are usually unenforced...
...They charge that Dole did little to protect them by, for example, giving them gloves, safety goggles, or masks...
...One liter of Thodorn 600, or methamidophos, produced by Todo Agricola S.A., a Peru-based manufacturer,costslessthan$10.Theinsecticide is banned in the United States and the European Union, as is monocrotophos, also an insecticide, going for $10 and change...
...Homegrown Latin American manufacturers also produce and sell generic versions, which are known to cause a number of serious ailments, from cancers to birth defects...
...They are not informing their people, for example, telling them when they can safely return to the fields after aerial spraying...
...The workers claim the chemical caused widespread sterility and other health problems, ranging from miscarriages and birth defects to liver damage and cancer...
...More than 70,000 different chemicals are available on the market today...
...This rapid growth in Latin America’s pesticide market is driven by expanding crop areas, new disease outbreaks, and an increase in plantings of genetically modified (GM) crops...
...In other cases, however, companies have sold rights to the chemicals to smaller companies...
...Bayer, Syngenta, and BASF—the top three multinationals that control more than two thirds of the Latin American pesticide market—all have production facilities around the world, including in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico...
...He adds: “Simply because a product is not registered for use in one country does not mean it is banned...
...The farmers do not understand the risks involved [with these chemicals], nor even that they are prohibited,” Condarco says...
...developing country governments have made it clear in their national implementation plans for the Stockholm Convention, for example...
...Many governments in developing countries lack the professional staff, analytic capacity, and regulatory infrastructure necessary to even evaluate pesticide risks...
...The Rome-based commission’s workings and decisions are dominated by food and chemical industry lobbyists, says Mary Bottari, director of the Harmonization Project for Public Citizen, who has attended some of the Codex meetings held in the United States...
...Pesticideinfo.org...
...According to Barbara Dinham, a longtime activist with PAN, about a third of the pesticide industry’s research dollars are being spent on supporting re-registration in the European Union...
...ports...
...Paula Barrios, “The Rotterdam Convention on Hazardous Chemicals: A Meaningful Step Toward Environmental Protection...
...NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update tral Valley...
...But the problem with this convenient justification is that agricultural companies have enormous influence in these countries—in some countries there is a rotating door between the head of the national CropLife group and the ministry of agriculture...
...He says the group found that four of the 14 pesticides that are officially banned in Bolivia—Aldrin, DDT, Folidol and Endrin—continue to be sold in the country...
...Using the investor rights provisions in Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a U.S...
...This is no secret...
...The present ecological, social and cultural conditions of the region make it impossible to have safe or appropriate management of such pesticides,” she says...
...Mejías never thought working on a farm— near the medium-sized agricultural city Rancagua, located in the Central Valley, Chile’s principal fruit-growing region where most of the pesticides in the country are used—would result in a mother’s nightmare...
...Other studies in the country have racked up similar results...
...Constanza Cerda, a Chilean grandmother, founded a group in 2001, after jumping through bureaucratic hoop October to February each year...
...That, says health researchers, is also leading to an increased chance of birth defects and developmental problems among the children of farm workers as well as an increased likelihood of skin disease, miscarriages, sterility, and cancer amongworkers.AccordingtotheFAO, whiledevelopingcountriesworldwide use only about 20% of the pesticides used each year, its farm workers suffer 99% of pesticide poisonings...
...What is happening is a race to the bottom in regulatory standards...
...In July, five lawsuits over the use of cant improvement over These powerful crops are increasingly of the foundation’s findcorporations often the GM variety, and are in ings in past years...
...In a Los Angeles Times exposé published in April, the investigative journalist T. Christian Miller found that the company essentially specializes in buying up the rights to produce dangerous chemicals discontinued by their original manufacturers...
...pesticide maker,theChemturaCorporation(formerly the Crompton Corporation), has sued Canada for $100 million stating that country’s ban of the chemical lindane on canola crops was tantamount to an expropriation of its investment...
...The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that 1,500 new ones are introduced each year—an astounding regulatory challenge for governments...
...They aremoreeffective,andalsocheap...
...Pesticide use is increasing each year in the region, which is scrambling to boost its agricultural exports in a globalized economy...
...I scan the shelves and find at least a dozen of the world’s most toxic chemicals...
...Unlike in the United States, where many restricted-use pesticides must be applied from within a ventilated cab, or only by licensed personnel, in the South these products are routinely applied in the field by workers with no training, no protective equipment, and little or no ability to even understand warning labels...
...In court papers, Glenn Wintemute, an owner of Amvac, said the company issued safety recommendations to Dole and that it continuedtosellthechemicalbecause “it was a product that was profitable...
...laws have banned or severely restricted many of the pesticides and UN conventions have come into force...
...Most everyone I speak to agrees that the UN conventions are important contributions to curtailing the trade in the most hazardous pesticides...
...helen hughes NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update plantationsandsmallfarmers—which then export back pesticide-laced fruits and vegetables...
...This complements their pesticide business...
...Hetellsmehe has no formal training or much experience with the chemicals...
...The second UN treaty, known as the Rotterdam Convention, implemented in 2004 and ratified by 119 nations, requires that countries importing any of39listedchemicals(29ofwhichare pesticides) be informed of any bans or severe restrictions on them in the exporting country...
...Bayer aciflourfen, aldicarb, azinphos-methyl, carbofuran, endosulfan, fenthion, lindane, mancozeb methamidofos, methomyl, methyl parathion, triazophos Syngenta ametryn, atrazine, methidathion, monocrotophos, paraquat BASF aciflourfen, captan, carbofuran, chlorfenapyr, chlorfenvinphos, methamidofos, methomyl, monocrotophos, permethrin, terbufos, tridemorph Dow 2,4,5-t, carbofuran, atrazine, chlorpyrifos, ethylene dibromide, mancozeb, monocrotophos, pentachlorophenol, phosphamidon Monsanto butachor DuPont mancozeb, methomyl, hexazinone Sources: Web sites of companies list-ed here...
...And in November, the first of these cases resulted in a jury award of $3.3 million to six Nicaraguans...
...This is the exact legal term for what many people would say is a banned chemical...
...This is especially so in a blue or “slightly toxic” very dangerous” the case of the WTO’s de-label...
...pesticide export policy assumes that the importing government is the best suited to make pesticide import decisions...
...But their demands for cheaper access to adequate medical attention for those suffering the hidden costs of Chile’s agricultural export boom has so far fallen on mostly deaf ears...
...One of the most striking examples is the insecticide mevinphos, which Amvac bought from DuPont in 1989 and now sells to Mexico and other coun JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 update DBCP on Central American banana plantations began hearings in a U.S...
...Rosenthal says the EPA’s pesticide exportpolicyisdownrightnaive.“The U.S...
...But the Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions pertain only to a few of the chemicals used in agriculture...
...by jimmy langman I n santa cruz, bolivia, a booming lowland city near cattle ranches and thriving soy fields, I visit Campo Verde, a small, unassuming shop catering to small farmers at the Abasto Market...
...What’s missing is a fundamental respect for all life...
...Environmental Pro-tection Agency, www.epa.gov/oppfead1/ international/piclist.htm...
...Even though lindane is also banned in the United States, the company ar tarius Commission...
...Vroom of CropLife, on the contrary, says the treaties have been a success...
...The study used statistical models showing that because of pesticide use, the chances of children being born with birth defects is 40% greater for people living in the region than elsewhere in Chile...
...Today,Dole,Amvac,Dow,andShell are facing lawsuits from many thousands of banana plantation workers in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama...
...Evelyn’s tale continues to be repeated many times over, says Alicia Muñoz, secretary-general of the Chilean group National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women...
...There are a lot of good, rational drivers on why a product may not be registered in a country where it is produced but perfectly legitimate and safe to use in another country with different kinds of crop pest infestations and climate conditions...
...Places like Campo Verde, where small farmers with little or no pesticides training can buy the most hazardous chemicals with ease, are widespread in Latin America...
...These powerful corporations, with revenues often surpassing the income of the nations where they do business, are increasingly setting their sights on Latin America...
...Manolis Kogevinas, an expert on occupational epidemiology based in Barcelona, says of the Rancagua study, “It would be reasonable to find such effects, because we have enough experimental data to support such a hypothesis...
...GM soy, that U.S...
...agency officials in theseharmonizationbodiesagreeingto rules that are weaker than those of the U.S...
...If you look at our laws and regulations in the U.S., there is no such regulatory process as banning a pesticide chemical,” Vroom says, arguing that some pesticides have simply had their registrations canceled...
...No appropriate precautions were taken to protect nearby workers and residents...
...We need a much more radical change at the international level,” she says...
Vol. 41 • January 2008 • No. 1
