Pesticides Book: Toxicity Specificity & Politics Chapter 7 Pesticide Book Chapter 7 Politics of Crop Production Pesticide Usage & Trade

CHAPTER VII



POLITICS OF CROP PRODUCTION,


PESTICIDE USAGE & TRADE


Discontinuation of chemical pesticides, proposed in the last chapter, is
not on the agenda and is also not likely to be an agenda item because their
production forms part of the politics of trade in chemicals of which
chemical pesticides have several billion dollars at stake. Pesticide use in
the USA is about 0.5 million tons each year, while in the rest of the world
it is about 2.25 million tons each year(PANNA). Pesticide production has
increased in developing countries like India and China. Likewise pesticide
use has not slowed down although it may be five years in the new
millennium. There are indications that the use of insecticides has
stabilized or decreased during recent years. The use of herbicides has
nevertheless increased. Country wise, the use of pesticides varies greatly,
depending on cropping patterns and intensity of production. USA, France,
Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States, Japan, the high-income
countries are also the high consumers with subsidized agricultural systems
or those producing commodities such as cotton, fruit and vegetables.

The multinational corporations, MNCs which are their manufacturers, are
engaged in their trade that involves over $30 billion globally. They, in
league with local and international bureaucracy, form the last community to
be convinced that the pathways adopted by potentially toxic chemicals to
reach the toxicity end point, are the routes by which several hundred
thousand persons have died and many more are likely to meet the same fate
in the not too distant future. They are not ready to recognize that the
scourge of cancer and endocrine disruption that were rare before the advent
of the second-generation pesticides, and are now being increasingly
reported, are the end points of the toxicity trails of their products, by-
products and waste products.

Politics of pesticide trade uses the long handle of social pollution to
protect the interests of the MNCs to continue the use of highly toxic
chemical pesticides. The network that operates the vicious circle for
perpetuation of pesticide use comprises the MNCs and international agencies
as its governors and the users all over the world as their passive
sufferers. The handle of social pollution is used to flout many of the
commitments made to the authorities with regard to maintenance of quality,
labelling and protection of the health of workers, applicators, and home
users.

The world pesticide market grew rapidly in value during the past decade.
During the 1980s, the growth was mainly seen in North and South America,
while the 1990s were witness to rapid expansion in Asia and Africa. The
usage doubled in India, for example, over the last five years of the
millennium. This growth was influenced by increasing commodity prices and
falling oil prices. Pesticide industry is still hoping future growth to be
linked with world economy, although the recent downturn in Asia economies
increased prices paid by farmers for imported pesticides. It is hoping that
their use will continue to depend on the economics (including subsidies) of
agriculture, on promotion by industry, and on the ability of farmers to use
integrated pest management (IPM).

It is claimed by International Agencies that there are signs in the
producer countries that the volume of pesticides used is falling, since
effective pest control is attainable with a lower application rate. Such
signs are, however, nowhere in sight in developing countries since they
continue to remain recipients of old stocks from their own markets as well
as foreign. The decline in application rates is mainly due to the products
being more potent and concentrated active ingredients; which in itself does
not make them any safer.

Contrarily, pesticide use has changed further through the development of
genetically modified products. The introduction of these products is
surrounded with controversy. Questions have been raised with regard to
their long-term safety since there is always the possibility that genes may
"jump" to other plants, including weeds, and their effect on bees and other
beneficial species. There is also disagreement concerning the need to label
genetically engineered products, the dependence these products create, and
especially, their effect on small-scale farmers in the developing world.
Advances have also been made to reduce toxicity and persistence, which
continues to be a major issue in pesticide use.

Prolonged biological activity increases effectiveness of products, but also
increases their side effects in the environment. Products (or their
metabolites) banned in the sixties in the mid-western United States, for
example, are still found in soil and water today, and some are still
released in water or into the air.

A major change that has occurred in agriculture in the last decade is the
rapid increase in the importance of consumers. Twenty years ago most
agriculture ministries would consider farmers as their main clients, but
things have changed and now, in Western countries particularly, consumers
are equally or even more important. This rise in consumers' power is the
result of a variety of factors, some of them being the various food scares.
The first food scare was the Kyushu rice contamination with PCBs in Japan.
This was followed by a number of other highly publicized mishaps, due to
either pesticides or to microbial contaminants as has been mentioned in the
earlier chapters. They also relate to better awareness, and information
exchange among consumers. Consumers are more vocal, and demand that policy
makers focus on food safety. Organic farming is still limited, but has been
expanding rapidly in Europe and the United States during the last decade.

Governments all over the world endorsed the use of chemical pesticides,
since it the chemical industry giants suggested to them that they offered
an easy, labor-saving tool for the control of pests and weeds. It was more
because the expanded use of pesticides allowed the expansion of their
chemical industries that till 1945 had served military (public health)
goals in Europe, Japan and the United States. Things changed completely
after the publication of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring". Very slowly, the
role of governments in the Europe and America shifted from promoting
pesticide use to safeguarding society against the risks of pesticides.
"P A N U P S - Pesticide Action Network Updates Service "
"Farmworkers Sue U.S. EPA for Allowing Dangerous Pesticides - "
"January 26, 2004 "
" "
"On January 13, 2004, farmworker groups filed a lawsuit in Seattle, "
"Washington, charging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with "
"ignoring important health data in 2001 when it re-approved use of "
"two pesticides extremely hazardous to farmworkers. The two "
"pesticides, azinphos-methyl (AZM) and phosmet, are highly toxic "
"organophosphate pesticides, derived from nerve agents developed "
"during World War II and among the most powerful neurotoxins "
"routinely used in the U.S. Acute exposure to organophosphates (OPs)"
"can cause dizziness, vomiting, seizures, paralysis, loss of mental "
"function, and death. "
" "
"AZM and phosmet are used extensively in orchard crops such as "
"apples, peaches and pears, and are registered for use on 32 food "
"crops. Annually about 60 million pounds of OPs are applied to crops"
"in the U.S. The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) "
"Agricultural Chemical Database reports 1.5 million pounds of AZM "
"and phosmet were applied agriculturally in 2001. Although the two "
"pesticides are used across the nation, Washington, Oregon and "
"California growers are responsible for approximately half of all "
"AZM and phosmet agricultural use in USA. "
" "
"In addition to occupational exposures to OPs, migrant and seasonal "
"farmworkers and their families often live where pesticides drift "
"and settle, and are also exposed through "take-home" exposures on "
"clothing, cars, and skin. Tests of dust in farmworker homes in "
"Washington reported in Environmental Health Perspectives found 85% "
"contained AZM residue, and a study published in Environmental "
"Research found four to five times more chemicals in the bodies of "
"farmworker children and people living within one quarter-mile of "
"agricultural fields in Washington state than in the general "
"population. "
" "
"The lawsuit charges US EPA has continued to allow uses of these "
"pesticides without considering the risks posed to workers, their "
"children, and communities. "It is outrageous that US EPA authorized"
"the use of these pesticides, putting thousands of workers at risk "
"of serious illness every year," said Erik Nicholson of the United "
"Farmworkers of America (UFW). "These two pesticides can poison so "
"many farmworkers that EPA found the risks unacceptable, but the "
"agency still allowed them to be used." "
" "
"US EPA, while acknowledging that agricultural pesticide poisonings "
"are severely underreported, has estimated that between 10,000 and "
"20,000 agricultural workers are sickened each year by pesticides. "
"No national system exists to track pesticide poisoning incidents, "
"and attorneys report that officials in California, Oregon and "
"Washington have all expressed concern for the adequacy of their "
"state reporting systems. "
" "
"A 2003 survey of farmworkers by the Washington Department of Health"
"found 75% of workers surveyed reported a job-related pesticide "
"exposure. That survey also noted that workers often do not seek "
"care for symptoms out of fear of employer reprisals, and a belief "
"that doctors downplay symptoms due to state and employer pressures."
"The pesticide AZM is the fourth most frequent pesticide associated "
"with poisoning complaints in the state of Washington. According to "
"UFW, about 30,000 workers in Washington's apple industry are "
"potentially at risk from exposure to AZM and phosmet, with "
"thousands more working in pear and cherry crops also at risk. "
" "
"The lawsuit argues that U.S. EPA analyzed the estimated economic "
"value of using these two pesticides to farmers but failed to "
"quantify the risks to people and the environment, discounted the "
"use of safe and proven alternatives to these dangerous substances, "
"and used industry-generated data without subjecting it to public "
"comment, even though a federal law allows public input. "
" "
"AZM and phosmet also pose risks to wildlife, can poison fish, "
"beneficial insects, and contaminate water supplies. USGS data "
"indicate AZM is one of the pesticides most frequently exceeding "
"levels for aquatic safety in U.S. surface waters. "
" "
"The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Seattle by "
"attorneys with Earthjustice, Farmworker Justice Fund, California "
"Rural Legal Assistance, and the Natural Resources Defense Council "
"on behalf of Sea Mar Community Health Centers, UFW, Pineros y "
"Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), Beyond Pesticides, and "
"Frente Indígena Oaxaqueña Binacional. "
" "
"Sources: Earthjustice Press Release, January 13, 2004, Fact Sheet, "
"Protect Farmworkers from Pesticide Poisonings, "
"http://www.earthjustice.org/news/display.html?ID=757 "

In many countries particularly in Asia and Africa that stage has not
reached yet and governments, knowingly and unknowingly, support the use of
pesticides. Pesticide use tends to be promoted through both direct and
indirect measures. Lack of strong environmental policies prevents
governments from reorienting their policies towards more sustainable
development strategies.

Despite increasing realization by governments on the need to avoid
laborious efforts to minimize risks to users and consumers, discontinuation
of chemical pesticides, proposed in the last chapter, is not in sight since
as said earlier the production of chemical products including the deadly
toxic chemicals and the genetically modified forms are part of the politics
of trade of which chemical pesticides have several billion dollars at
stake. There may be available a lot many measures that the governments
could take to encourage environmentally sound and economically rational
pest management practices but as will be seen in the following pages the
MNCs have a long handle of social pollution to operate their businesses
with success.


Chemicals in Crop Production


Crop production requires fertilizers, pesticides and seeds, which together
offer products that provide essential support to modern agriculture. These
three components are fundamental to agricultural productivity improvements
that have enabled food production to increase alongside population and
economic growth. These improvements have come almost entirely from
increasing crop yields and not from increase in area under cultivation,
which expanded very little in recent years in the industrialized countries
but did so substantially in developing countries.

Taking a glance at the historical development of modern agriculture one
finds that while the mechanical era of 1920-1950 led to significant
increase in agricultural production and dramatic decrease in the need for
farm labour, the chemical era of 1950-1980 boosted productivity through the
use of chemical fertilizers, feed additives, and pesticides to save crops
from pests. It is estimated that during a 20 year period from 1964 to 1985
global fertilizer use increased from 34 to 86 kg/ha of cropland. In the USA
it increased from 63 to 101, in Bangladesh from 6 to 60 and in Pakistan
from 5 to 64 kg/ha of cropland. The average annual pesticide use was
394,629 tons in the first five years of the 1980s in USA while it was 673
tons in Bangladesh and 232 tons in Pakistan during the same period. The
index of production of all crops increased in Pakistan from 100 in 1959-60
to 298 in 1985-86 (Pakistan Economic Survey, 1995-96), in Bangladesh from
80 in 1964-66 to 114 in 1984-86 and in the USA from 74 to 103 (World
Resources, 1988-89). Although this production rise was due largely to
increased use of plant fertilizers, new plant hybrids, and irrigation,
pesticides contributed equally to the increase. Consequently the use of
pesticides in industrialized countries recorded considerable rise during
the period.

It did not take long after World War II for the negative impact of the
downside of widespread use of man made materials to surface up in the
environment. The consequences of using agricultural chemicals without
assessment of the impact on the health of users were waiting only for the
critical limit to arrive. Degradation of the environment as a result of
excessive use of hazardous chemicals, including pesticides was realized in
the 1960s with the publication of the Silent Spring. Warming of the earth
as a result of excessive use of fossil fuel and emission of carbon dioxide
was realized in the mid-1970s when the CO2 concentration doubled from the
level observed in the earlier half of the century. Thinning of the ozone
layer and appearance of the ozone hole over the Antarctica was observed in
the late 1980s and attributed to the extensive use of chloroflurocarbons,
CFCs.

The application of agrochemicals on crop for protection as well as
production had serious negative impact on the physical and human
environment. Initially the accidents due to use of chemicals in crop
protection and production did not matter since the tragedies such as the
killing and intoxication of spraymen in Pakistan in 1976 and the Bhopal MIC
leakage in 1984 were reported from the developing countries. They have now
become very important since the negative impact on health is being reported
from the manufacturing countries. As will be seen in the following pages,
reports of damages done to the environment are pouring in incessantly from
America and the industrialized countries.

The worst is the case of pesticides of repute whose negative impacts were
not adequately reported when introduced. Agricultural pesticides are
chemical poisons. They are sprayed onto crops at certain times of the year
and during application people living near sprayed fields get a sudden dose
of these chemicals through their lungs, skin and drinking water. Receiving
shock doses of poisons results in endocrine disruption leading to
abnormalities. Recently a study of 4 and 5 year-old children exposed to
pesticides in Mexico specifically noted a decrease in mental ability and an
increase in aggressive behavior among children, indicating thyroid
dysfunction. Functionally, the exposed children demonstrated decreases in
stamina, gross and fine eye-hand coordination, 30-minute-memory, and the
ability to draw a person. Behavior of pesticide-exposed children was
described as abnormal. Some valley children were observed hitting their
siblings when they passed by, and they became easily upset or angry with a
minor corrective comment by a parent. These aggressive behaviours were not
noted in the foothills. In humans, as in dogs, behaviour and learning
disabilities are seen long before any clinical signs of thyroid dysfunction
are manifest.

Despite the fact that pesticides are a key factor in food and fibre
abundance in USA, the public is concerned that they have excessively
adverse effects on human health and the environment(Ragsdale and Sisler,
1994). During the 1960's there was also a documented rise in pest (insect)
resistance to many pesticides. The resistance issue still continues to
demand attention and includes plant pathogens(Sanders, 1990). Today,
concerns exist in the USA about the environment, health, nutrition, and
safety of food supply. In particular, a great deal of concern is expressed
on the effects of pesticide chemicals on the health of infants and young
children.

The success in application of chemicals in crop production and protection
was the driving force in the growth of agribusiness, which led to the
emergence of scores of chemical enterprises. Consumption of chemicals had
an explosive rate of growth. Prompted by the determination to increase
their control over the world supply of food and agricultural chemicals, the
Agrochemical MNCs invested heavily in research and development. About 3
new synthetic chemicals were introduced each day during the 1960-80 period.
The cost of developing a marketable product from the research laboratory to
the field jumped from $20 million 20 to 25 years ago to more than $100
million as of now. Almost nothing was known about the long-term health and
environmental effects of new synthetics, so the humanity was ambushed again
and again by discoveries and claims of winning the war against pests. The
chronic effects that mattered were sidelined and so was the issue that the
evolution of pesticide-resistant pests was accompanied by a simultaneous
increase in pesticide use. This is of no major concern to the MNCs, which
on having invested such large amounts, consolidated their gains during the
last half century to remain in business.

85,000 chemicals were registered with the Environmental Protection Agency
for commercial use in America although almost 99% of them did not exist
before World War II. None of the thousands of chemicals were tested for
their effect on mankind. In a rush to develop and incorporate new chemicals
adequate testing was left behind. Only about 43% of the roughly 3,000 high-
production-volume chemicals is estimated to have been tested by 1998.
Thousands of chemicals were commercialized without adequately testing them.
The number of children that paid a price for getting rid of lead in
gasoline must be in millions and those who have died as a result of use of
untested industrial chemicals that did not even exist a half-century ago
will never be known.

Pesticides are widely used for non-agricultural as well as agricultural
purposes. Pesticides include chemicals applied to prevent, control, or
destroy destructive pests and disease causing microbes. These pest control
chemicals are integral tools of modern agriculture (Jennings, 1991).
Pesticides are directed toward the control of bacteria, fungi, insects,
rodents, nematodes, roundworms, and weeds. Pesticides are also used in
disinfectants, fumigants, and plant growth regulators. Biological control
agents must also be registered as pesticides under the Federal Insecticide,
Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act as amended, known as FIFRA. Some of the
bacteria and fungi that attack food plants and their harvests actually
produce detectable levels of potent toxins and carcinogens if not held in
check by pesticide action. For example, fungal aflatoxins are a food
contaminant and risk because of their well-documented potency as liver
carcinogens(Busby and Wogan, 1984; Wogan, 1992). Aflatoxin producing fungi
are effectively controlled by fungicidal action.

A dramatic rise in U.S. food and fibre production occurred during the
1950's and 1960's. Compared with most other countries, Americans enjoy a
highly varied diet of reasonably priced food. The American food industry
claims and is supported by the government agencies in making the claims,
that its food supply is among the safest and most abundant in the world and
pesticides are one of the important tools that have made that abundance
possible. But there is a common and growing perception by the public that
the American food is not as wholesome as desired and as claimed because of
pesticide residues. This will be discussed in a subsequent chapter on Case
History of the Disasters of Pesticide Usage.

Pesticide usage in the USA has been relatively stable at about 0.5 million
tons of active ingredients during recent years. Pesticide use increased
there steadily throughout the 1960s and 1970s, primarily because of
herbicide applications. Recently, this trend has slowed due to the
introduction of more potent pesticides, more efficient pesticide usage, and
lower farm commodity prices. The estimates for US pesticide user
expenditures totaled about $8.5 billion in 1993, and $8.2 billion in 1992.

Of the 0.5 million tons of active ingredient used as conventional
pesticides, there are about 21,000 pesticide products and 860 active
ingredients registered in the USA under federal pesticide law. Twenty new
active ingredients were registered for use as pesticides under FIFRA in
1993, and 11 in 1992(Aspelin, 1994). If wood preservatives and
disinfectants are included, total US pesticide usage in 1993 was about 1.0
million tons of active ingredients.

It is an abhorrent practice for US pesticide manufacturers to export
illegal dangerous pesticides to other countries, knowing that no
regulations exist in those countries. This should be considered a crime
against mankind.

The World Health Organization estimates that all of the 220,000 annual
pesticide related deaths occur in the developing countries, where 80
percent of the world production of pesticides is used. Agricultural workers
are rarely, if ever, given sufficient information on the risks involved and
thus do not take proper protective measures when using pesticides.
Pesticide poisoning is thirteen times higher for Latin American workers
than for US workers. The data for Pakistan and India would suggest many
times more since the lack of information at the grass root level is so
tragically suppressed that the sprayman who may look diseased and may be
diseased does not admit that he was coughing due to suffocation in an
environment of deadly methyl parathion. Each year there are tens of
thousands of farmers intoxicated during the sowing and early spray periods
and a similar number of women suffer during the cotton picking stage.



Pesticides are in fact the potentially toxic chemicals that have helped the
industrialized countries win wars. In crop production they have worked as a
tool to obtain the surplus food supply that allows them to dictate terms
and/or use food as a tool to oblige and then subjugate other economies,
mostly developing. The abundant food supply in Australia, Canada and USA
has enabled each of them to attain high standard of living which may not
have been possible without fertilizers and pesticides. Pesticides have on
the other hand done such immense damage to the living environment that many
people around the world are led to believe that they are potentially
dangerous to man and the living environment. There is so much concern about
the consequences of their usage that it will be in public interest that
facts are made known to the people in general and knowledgeable people i.e.
opinion makers in particular. The origin, chemical classification,
toxicology and health impact along with the risk and benefits from their
usage, and the regulatory process adopted by governments to regulate their
trade and use should be made public. With the provision of all the relevant
information and fact sheets, it should be possible for the public to draw
its own conclusions. The detailed information should be used as the basis
for formulation of pesticide policies.

The damages done to the environment are real and the benefits from their
usage in Pakistan and other countries, which do not themselves produce them
are outweighed by risks involved in doing so. The growing concern about the
risks has a number of decision makers wondering if a total ban on use of
pesticides and the chemicals should be imposed. However, it is a fact that
termites are hard to exterminate without chemicals that are highly toxic,
and so are the fleas in carpets, mold in vegetables, toxins in food. The
risks of food shortage and soaring prices are imminent, and outbreaks of
long-forgotten diseases are quite certain.

The risks of pesticides as poisons and hazardous chemicals are real and
several agencies in the industrialized countries themselves are working to
inform the government agencies about the dangers and about the damages
already done by scores of chemicals and are also constantly reducing the
risk of using pesticides by producing "safer" chemicals, pest-specific
pesticides, better application methods, and tougher pesticide laws.
Indiscriminate use of pesticides continues and accidents involving
pesticides are occurring with the earlier frequency. And even when used
correctly, some pesticides can harm the environment and non-targeted living
organisms. The risks and benefits of pesticides usage are both real and
therefore utmost caution is needed to improve pest control methods.

There are a number of ways by which, crops and mammals can be protected
against the attack of insects, fungi and weeds. The use of agro-chemicals
has proved very effective in the control of pests and several plant
diseases. All pesticides have to be potentially toxic chemicals in order to
be effective on the pests. Whatever is toxic to pests is also toxic to the
humans and the living environment. These chemicals have toxicity of the
highest degree. It is in the toxic nature of these compounds that the risks
are heavy, but they have to be weighed against the benefits they render. It
is essential to contain the impact of these substances within the area of
application. The long-term effect of pesticides is such as to reduce the
life span of a person exposed to the risk by periods ranging from a few
days to a few years.

The entire chain of chemicals used in the manufacturing process of the
pesticides, in their formulations, and application in the field, are
reactive by nature and hence toxic to human health and the environment,
with their toxicity varying only in degree. Their selection for use in crop
protection has to be judicious otherwise they can be catastrophic.
Catastrophes, which have taken the toll of several lives, are only too
numerous. They have occurred during the manufacturing process e.g. in
Bhopal, in the application on the field e.g. the herbicides in Vietnam and
during the sprayings e.g. application of Malathion in Pakistan. A number of
these chemicals e.g. DDT are proved carcinogens while there are others,
which are candidates in the list of carcinogenic and teratogenic compounds.
They have been creating hazards through their entry into the air, water
bodies or the food chain and have been causing occupational and
environmental health hazards.

Pests account for 35% of the crop losses. There is therefore a need to
protect the crops from the pests. In trying to protect the crop from the
pests by using pesticides, which as just stated have to be potentially
toxic, immense damage is being done to the human as well as animal health
and the environment. A cautious estimate suggests 375,000 sufferings in
Pakistan are due to pesticide poisoning resulting from direct use or
contact or indirect use e.g. contamination of food or the food chain.

It is known that white fly serves as the vector of the leaf curl disease.
It is felt that the white fly should be eliminated. However, it is also
being felt and increasingly so that the indiscriminate and unsystematic use
of pesticides is equally responsible for contributing to the virulence of
the disease which has been playing havoc on the cotton crop in Pakistan. An
aspect that bothers the cotton croppers is that the white fly has become
immune to the pesticides. It has been reported that there are over 500
pests that have developed resistance to pesticides. Some of those for which
resistance has been noted are cypermethrin and monocrotophos. Use of
pesticides has also brought about resurgence of pests, outbreak of
secondary pests as well as destruction of beneficial species, including
predators and parasites.

The Chemical era in which use of chemicals ruled supreme did, at its very
inception, revolutionize agriculture in many different ways. Application of
marketing forces to trade and application of pesticides on crops led to
excessive use of some potentially toxic chemicals. In order to get the
desired results in crop protection and production, their unforeseen impacts
were not given due consideration and that brought disrepute to many of
them. The problem was aggravated by the disposal of toxic wastes, which
accompany each process of chemical production. The US Department of
Agriculture and the countries faced with the menace of pests destroying the
crops and affecting the health of people were, in 1952 eulogizing the
virtues and advantages of chemicals in crop protection and in enhancing
agricultural production.

Just when farmers and the public were getting accustomed to the lower
toxicity of the chlorinated hydrocarbons and were beginning to forget the
high toxicity of the arsenicals and dinitro compounds used before the war,
the new organophosphate and carbamate insecticides were introduced and the
attitude of the users changed. The organophosphates are much more acutely
toxic than the chlorinated hydrocarbons. All organophosphates inhibit the
activity of cholinesterase, and the regulation of nerve transmission in the
body. The result as observed on experimental animals is over stimulation of
the nervous system; they cannot run, they cannot walk, they cannot breathe
and that is the way the pests are killed. With the introduction of these
compounds in the early 1950s, a sudden surge of pesticide poisonings
occurred. The consequence was that pesticide poisonings increased for a few
years in the early 1950s. When farmers and the public became aware of the
hazards of the new pesticides and began to take precautions, incidents of
poisoning dropped back to a lower level, but the long term health hazards
took a little more time for emergence.

Farmers, foresters, and public health officials had been spraying DDT
across the country to control pests such as Mexican boll weevils, gypsy
moths, and suburban mosquitoes since the 1940s. The publication of the
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in 1962 denounced the gains of the
pesticides in general but DDT in particular. It warned the producers of the
consequences of the use of pesticides which have the capacity to poison the
food supply of animals and to kill birds and aquatic animals in addition to
contaminating the food supply to large section of human users. It was this
initiative that has moved the chemical industry to regulate its stance on
production of pesticides with appropriate assessment of the impact on
health of the user and consumer to avert massive degradation of the
environment. The book had a devastating effect on the marketing and use of
pesticides, particularly DDT. By 1968 several states in the USA had banned
the use of DDT. Public pressure was so high on the US EPA, established in
1968, that the marketing forces could not work and DDT had to be banned in
USA in 1972.

The claimed success in application of pesticides in farming, if accepted,
is at enormous costs and sacrifice of environmental values. Pesticides
brought only short-term gains. Recent studies and the several case
histories do not support the views that the benefits from pesticides
outweigh the damages done to humanity and the environment. Pesticides,
particularly DDT saved the lives of millions by preventing the population
from contracting malaria, bubonic plague and typhus since the late 1940s.
That, however, was short-term gain. Now people are scared of its
persistence and scourge of cancer. The forceful lobby of the manufacturers
led the users to believe that pesticides work faster and are more effective
than the alternatives. This is no longer true; their application even at
very low concentration compared to the older products, does more harm than
the latter.

What has happened despite the strong lobby of the agribusiness, which has
been producing around 40 times more pesticides since their introduction 50
years back, is that the insects did not stop breeding nor were they
exterminated. Contrarily they quickly developed resistance to the
insecticides. Additionally, broad-spectrum pesticides killed natural
predators, which are useful in keeping the pests at bay. The present
position is that while the use of synthetic pesticides, which include
insecticides, rodenticides, fungicides, herbicides, and others has
increased more than 40 fold in the last half century, the food supply lost
to pests in the USA has according to estimates ironically increased to 37%
as of now, compared with 31% in the 1940s (Pimental, David, et al. 1992.
Environmental and Economic Cost of Pesticide Use, BioScience, Vol.
42,No.10, 750-60 Pimental, David and Hugh Lehman, eds. 1993. The Pesticide
Question: Environmental, Economics and Ethics. New York : Chapman & Hall).
Total crop losses from insect damage alone have nearly doubled from 7% to
13% during that period. This is regardless of the consumption of around 75%
of the pesticides in USA on cultivation of four main crops viz. soybeans,
wheat, cotton and corn.

Despite the warnings by Carson, MNCs engaged in chemicals and
pharmaceuticals production consolidated their hold during the chemical era
through forceful marketing of pesticides. The warnings could not restrain
the emergence of new chemical manufacturers all over the industrialized
world and also did not constrain them from producing pesticides that were
not registered or banned. The MNCs operated through their subsidiaries in
the developing and underdeveloped countries for the sale of their products.
Pesticides manufactured in donor countries were supplied under financing
through aid and also by the government sponsored finance and insurance
agencies such as the US sponsored Eximbank and the OPIC. This secured the
status of the MNCs and other chemical manufacturers, besides allowing them
a free hand in marketing products that were not registered or were even
banned for use in the exporting country.

The MNCs have their own trait of marketing through massive advertising.
They had a role in aggressively promoting the sale and use of pesticides in
developing countries. This was, however, without observing the simple norms
and code of conduct that whatever is banned for usage in their own country
should not be offered for use in a developing country. So strong is the
lobby of the MNCs that it has found its way through into working in close
collaboration with the UN Agency, FAO in matters of their interest in
agriculture.

Industry Cooperative Programme, the organization of agribusiness
corporations had a direct involvement in FAO for 12 years from 1966. Their
efforts at making the developing countries dependent on the indiscriminate
application of pesticides supplied by them is one of the distinct ways of
inducing social pollution to which developing countries are silent
spectators. In this game of inducing social pollution, the international
banks, government agencies of the industrialized countries and MNCs are
equal partners and ensure that corporate investments are secure.

Led by public pressure in the USA the use of pesticides is now being
condemned all over in the industrialized countries because of the risks of
exposure to health of the workers and the non-agricultural users. The
health of workers and children has been of great concern after the
publication of Silent Spring. Public pressure on the Government was
effective in getting DDT banned in the USA in 1972. The same kind of
pressure is now being exerted on the use of pesticides being applied on
lawns and on those traded and exported to developing countries. Several
groups are actively engaged in the industrialized countries to bring in a
total change and switch over to safe alternatives. The marketing forces
that are there to keep the enterprise active have, however, the backing of
the governing hierarchies of the country as well as that of the
multilateral financial institutions on their side.

The realization that the above forces of marketing are inducing the use of
pesticides on their crops has yet to come among the decision makers in
developing countries. The pesticides have to be applied here in realization
that if the pests attack can render a whole population hungry it would be
better to kill the pests by all means. Cotton crop failure due to pest
attack has been occurring in Pakistan since 1992 but it was worst in 1994.
The damage done by the cotton leaf curl virus to the economy of the country
was of the order of over Rs 50 billion during the last few years. Cotton is
the mainstay of the economy of the country and the crop was saved using the
deadliest poisons, particularly because there was no other alternative. It
is known that the pesticides are poisons and also that each sowing season
and the following three months require spraying that intoxicates thousands
of agricultural workers. It is also known that a similar number of women
cotton pickers suffer from pesticide related diseases after the male labour
force has been through the ordeal.

The feudal system, poverty and pressure of salesmanship induced by the MNCs
are the components of social pollution that do not allow any priority
consideration of the negative impact of pesticide usage in the developing
countries.

The dependence on chemical pesticides introduced a new health hazard, which
has been there to stay ever since World War II. This has had serious
negative impact on modern agriculture, public health, and pest control of
household as well as lawns and home gardens, public parks, along highways
and public thoroughfares. Most pesticides produce little risk when used
according to label directions. However, some are extremely toxic and
require special precautions. No new technology for crop protection has been
able to replace the chemical pesticides but that is no reason to continue
with use of poisons. In the event of incidences of massive poisoning by
them and the hazard of pesticide related illnesses growing with every
passing day, as will be apparent from the following sections, alternatives
already available need to be adopted.

In order to reduce the serious negative impact of the use of pesticides, an
integrated pest management, IPM is being advocated. This management system
aims at combining biological methods of control with the chemicals and to
use the chemicals only sparingly, or when absolutely necessary. The main
objective of the use of IPM is to utilize all available techniques to
reduce and maintain pest population at levels below those causing injury of
economic importance to agriculture and forestry.


Promotion of Agribusiness


The dawn of the change in economic order witnessed the escalation of
industrial activities, consolidation of the gains of the earlier changes in
world economic orders to assume and maintain leadership role by the
industrial economies all over, and their inducement of physical and social
changes in the environment of the developing countries. Industrialized
countries of group of higher Corruption Perception Index ranking/social
pollution order have, during the same period, been polluting the physical
and social environment of their own group as well as that of developing
countries with still higher Corruption Perception Index ranking/social
pollution order. Additionally they have been creating scares and then
offering a road map to defuse them. They for example created the scare of
population bomb during the first 20 years and have tried to defuse it in
the next 25 years, by claiming that it was the pace set by them in
voluntarily lowering the birth rate that resolved the issue. It may be so
but the scare prompted their extensive participation in introduction
followed by capturing the market for vaccines, antibiotics, fertilizers,
insecticides, high-yielding variety seeds, contraceptive technology, mass
communication, and women's rights, in addition to improvement in water
supply, sanitation, and transportation networks. It was thus possible to
control the high fertility rates that had led to an annual growth exceeding
3.1%, a rate that doubles population size in 23 years in many developing
nations, declining to 2.0% and decreasing still further to attain zero
growth.

Industrialized countries provided domestic support and export subsidies for
sustenance of their agriculture sector initially in view of food shortage
experienced at the end of World War II, when the use of chemicals and man
made materials was introduced extensively in almost every walk of life and
the natural products were ruthlessly sidelined. The respective governments
effectively protected the producers and cared little if the ecosystem of
the disadvantaged developing countries would be permanently unbalanced. The
resulting technological developments towards the use and production of
fertilizers, insecticides, and antibiotics led to the growth and expansion
of industrial agriculture and agribusiness. Developments in the agriculture
sector combined with superiority in trade enabled the agribusiness of USA
to export the surplus production at favourable terms and subsequently as
food aid that turned out to be a mechanism for finding new markets in the
developing and least developed countries. This was in total disregard of
the interest and need of billions of farmers in the latter region.

Agriculture is the mainstay and way of life for a large majority of people
in developing countries. They all have more than 50% of the people living
on the farms, in contrast with the industrialized countries, which have
mechanized their agriculture e.g. European Union, EU having 4% and USA with
2% people on the farms. The low income developing countries employ 70% of
labour force, middle income countries employ 30% while high income
countries employ only 4%. The share of agriculture in GDP as of 1990-96 was
34% for low income countries, 8% for middle income and 1.5% for high income
countries, while its earning in foreign exchange as of 1995-97 was 34%,
27.3% and 8.3% for the three sets of countries respectively. The developing
and least developed countries are at the disadvantage that the yield per
hectare is seriously constrained by the high cost and reduced availability
of inputs including water, fertilizer and pesticides and have to depend on
import and aid of inputs as well as food.

When first offered, food aid was confused with charity and hence did not
sound odd. It soon became apparent to the recipients that the aid was not
free but a long handle of social pollution, offered as a loan at low
interest rate. When the USA sent wheat to India and Pakistan during the
1960s, it was under the US PL-480 programme, which required the cost to be
paid in rupees and those rupees could be utilized towards another project
preferably related to agriculture. Indonesia received the food aid during
the 1999 crisis and that was a loan to be paid back over a twenty-five-year
period. Thus the food aid was a tool of social pollution to help the USA in
taking over grain markets in India, Korea, Nigeria, Pakistan and elsewhere.
The same tool was used for achieving political objectives for example in
North Korea, where famine conditions were deliberately allowed to aggravate
so as to bring the country to its knees before food assistance was sent.

The agribusiness enjoys having its handle of social pollution extended to
disbursement of food aid since that is how it sells its products and cashes
on its investment. For business promotion it does not care if it renders a
whole community starved. During the famine of the 1980s in Somalia and
Ethiopia aid of grains arrived on having been procured from large MNCs in
Canada and America. It was great disappointment for the Ethiopian farmers
since the grains arrived after the rains were over and crops were ready.
They were deprived of their livelihoods as their produce was dumped in the
market at low price, and also for the people who were forced to buy
imported food at high price, which not many could pay. What the food aid
predominantly did and keeps doing is to destroy local agricultural
infrastructure as its central function. Once the local farmers have been
driven out of business, the people of the region become dependent on the
aid donor for survival.

The story was repeated in Mexico where the agricultural sector was
liberalized under North America Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. Maize is a
source of livelihood for its 3 million people, which accounts for 40% of
its agriculture sector. US maize is also grown on large farms. A massive
influx of US maize often results in large reduction in the prices and the
local farmers are in great anxiety. On the other hand there are no input
subsidies or government support. Therefore native farmers have to face
serious problems. They have minimized their production for their domestic
need only. Most of the farmers are migrating to urban areas for employment
or planning to sell their land to MNCs on cheap rates.

The case is not much different in Pakistan whose national economy depends
largely on its agriculture sector. More than 74% of the population of the
country lives in rural areas of which 93% are small farmers, with
agriculture as their main source of income. Its share in GDP in the year
2001 was 26.4%. These small farmers work with conventional methods of
farming. They do not have financial capacity or government support to use
new technology for cultivation of their crops. The small farmers have
already had the taste of marginalization by the food aid and with the
disastrous consequences already noted for Mexico, they are apprehensive of
the trade liberalization in agriculture sector, which because of the
structural adjustments suggested by IMF, seem to be around the corner.

The industrialized countries, it is apparent from the above cases, have
nothing to lose since they are already advanced in their methods of
cultivation and crop yields and with a long handle of social pollution,
they are in a position to dismantle the domestic production system and
enhance food insecurity. What has become more disturbing in recent years is
the apprehension that MNCs are determined to increase their control over
the world supply of food by marketing genetically engineered, GE crops and
agricultural chemicals, including pesticides and fertilizers.

Politics of Food Production

Food is required for maintaining personal life processes but during and
after World War II it has been used more for gains in trade and politics.
The French Revolution, for example was not driven just by the ideals of
liberty, freedom, and egalitarianism, but by the fact that there was not
enough bread in Paris. There were riots in Peru in the 1970s because the
World Bank had suggested adjustments that included an increase in the price
of bread. The Zapatista uprising and the protests in Bolivia were spurred
in the 1990s by food shortages and privatization of basic necessities of
life. The same has been true in Pakistan and India. In 1995, villagers in
Mexico stopped trains to loot corn and not gold.

Food riots and famine are, however, not because of crop failure and food
shortage but because of politics of food production, and serve as a fact
sheet of social pollution. The fact of the matter is that global food
production has always remained generally adequate to meet human nutritional
needs all over. Adequate wheat, rice and other grains are grown each year
to easily feed every human being with 3,500 calories a day, much more than
the average of 2250 calories required for healthy living. However, since
the distribution system has never been equitable, over a quarter of the
world population remains undernourished. Yields of the major grain crops
may have enhanced, though not in Pakistan, but post-harvest losses have
remained high, soil degradation from erosion and poor irrigation practices
have continued to harm agricultural lands and have put the production
system in developing and least developed countries at risk. In general, the
farming practices have continued to remain resource-inefficient and the
industrialized countries, in order to create a market for their products
such as agricultural machinery, pesticides and fertilizers have been
transferring their methods to keep their agro industries in business.

The USA grows 40% more food every year than it needs. France, Canada and
Australia had increased their net cereal export in 1985-86 by 65% over
1975, while the number of cereal exporting countries in Europe increased
from four to ten during the same period. In the mean time the net cereal
imports increased in all the developing countries. USA, Canada and the
European countries were among the largest donors of food during this
period. The food surplus countries, however, would prefer to offer the
surplus in aid rather than making it available to famine areas on
humanitarian grounds, mainly because the latter mode of disbursement
requires sharing the surplus with the needy and does not bring cash that is
needed by the farmer to feed his stomach. Providing food to the hungry is a
philosophical and social issue, which from the growers and traders point of
view demands that there should be more and hungrier people to buy their
produce. For the grain exporting industrialized countries it would require
that crops should fail in grain importing countries so that hunger should
perpetuate among the poor and malnourished majority in the impoverished
countries.

Feeding the hungry on humanitarian grounds is, according to performance of
agribusiness in USA and other industrialized countries, more a game of
politics than a human rights issue. This is why 46% of food aid given in
1985-86 was for sale in the indebted countries for domestic sale to enable
them to earn revenue to meet the adverse balance of payment situation. This
is also the reason that countries like Indonesia where people do not eat
wheat are given wheat in aid. Interestingly 24% of the food aid was given
as a component of agriculture, for rural development and nutrition projects
besides creating food security reserves.

The industrialized countries, their MNCs and the institutions run by them
viz. World Bank and IMF are the main actors in the game of politics of food
production to collectively decide as to who should be fed and who should
starve. Farmers in the poor countries are, despite global plenty,
abandoning agriculture because they just cannot compete with the heavily
subsidized foods which are flooded by industrialized countries under
agreements aiming at liberalization of trade. In Pakistan, many farmers
have to burn their harvests since the price they may fetch is too low
compared with the cost of picking and transportation, leave alone the high
cost of agricultural input. In Indonesia the government imports rice from
Vietnam while its own farmers are bringing in their rice harvest to the
market.

It may be seen that perpetuation of hunger is the tool of social pollution
that favours the corporate sector to remain in food business. It is only
under such conditions that the corporate sector is able to market its
products and earn profits. Hunger is the type of social pollution, which
when imposed takes away the ability to think, to perform normal physical
actions, and to be a rational human being. This form of social pollution
has its linkage with poverty. Of the 830 million hungry people worldwide,
about 250 million live in India but the socially diseased Indian governing
hierarchy did not distribute the surplus 10 million tons of food grains in
1999 to alleviate poverty. The surplus increased in the year 2000 to 60
million tons, most of which was allowed to rot in the granaries in the hope
of exporting the commodity. The government also did not buy grain from its
farmers. The farmers, who had gone into debt to purchase expensive chemical
fertilizers and pesticides on the advice of the government, were forced to
burn their crops on their fields. In the mean time India imported grains
from USA and is continuing as the largest importer of the same grain that
it exports.

Indonesia achieved food self-sufficiency in 1985 but by 1998, it was the
largest recipient of food aid in the world. It is not that there were no
more crops in Indonesia. The reason was that the USA and Australia were to
unload their surplus wheat under the conditions agreed to by Jakarta to get
food aid. This, as noted earlier, was despite the fact that Indonesians do
not eat wheat.

Transfer of technologies or extension of resource intensive economic model
to developing nations, or offering food aid instead of building capacity to
grow food, as is occurring on a global scale, amounts to inciting social
pollution of high order and should not be regarded socially and
environmentally viable. Of particular concern are the farming practices
that are not resource-efficient and the industrialized countries, in order
to create a market for their products such as pesticides, fertilizers and
genetically engineered seeds have been transferring their products as well
as methods that are in innumerable cases neither socially sound nor
environmentally viable.


Poverty and Impoverishment of Resources


Land for growing staple grain crops has shrunk in the developing countries
during the last five decades owing to impoverishment of resources including
loss of agricultural land due to pressure of urbanization. What was needed
was to bridge the gap between the urban and rural development so that the
rural poor were less inclined to migrate to urban areas in search of food
and employment, which was not there. The structural adjustment politics
that goes hand in hand with the strategy to liberalize the market economy,
has strained the poor, robbed him of the capacity to grow his food and has
impoverished the rural areas to the extent that hunger prevails all over.

Poverty has been induced in developing countries including Pakistan by
impoverishment of resources in the rural areas. In Pakistan it has forced
rural-urban migration but urban centres have not provided the migrants what
they were looking for. A stage has reached where an average Pakistani finds
himself poorer with every passing day. Poverty doubled from 17.3% in 1987-
88 to 32.6% in 1998-99. The household income of the lowest quintile or 20%
of the population remained static during the last 33 years at around 7%. It
was 6.4% in 1963-64 and after touching 8.4% a year later, came to 7% in
1996-97. The income of the middle 60% dropped from 48.3% to 43.6% in the
mean time. The share of the top quintile, however, rose from 45.3% to
49.4%, suggesting the creation of a wide gap between the top quintile,
which monopolized half the income and the bottom quintile that had to
remain contented with a meagre 7% of the total income.

By the end of July 2000 the number of people living below the poverty line
in Pakistan had shot up four times in two decades as a result of persistent
decline in economic growth caused by the gradual depletion of
resourcefulness resulting from absence of good governance of the system of
distribution of resources, misappropriation of national wealth and
operation of the forces of social pollution. The population was 84.25
million in 1981 and was growing at a rate of 3.2% per annum and
decelerating to 2.7% thereafter had reached a figure of 134 million in
1998, and is 152 million in 2005. Poverty was estimated by the Centre for
Human Development to be afflicting 40% in 1998 as against 21.2% in 1980-81,
28.6% in 1986-87and 35.9% in 1992-93. A projection of these figures to the
present situation, which is painted with nothing but gloom, suggests that
the poverty line has dragged 10 to 12% more people from the lower middle
class and it stands at above 55%. Development activities were obviously too
inadequate to improve the quality of life and the basket of basic needs
comprising food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education, transport,
potable water and energy was exhausted and could not be made available to a
major section of population.

In contrast with the impoverishment noted above, the consumption of natural
resources by modern industrial economies remained very high at 45 to 85
metric tons per person annually when all materials, including soil erosion,
mining wastes, and other ancillary materials are taken into consideration.
At the end of the last century it required almost 300 kg of natural
resources to generate one hundred dollars of income in the most advanced
economies. Use of such high volume of materials indicates how resource
intensive are the technologies developed to meet the needs of the enjoy-the-
richness syndrome of the industrialized countries that are placed high in
social pollution order, besides suggesting the massive environmental
degradation resulting from them.


Politics of Pesticide Trade


Multinational corporations, MNCs, which are the manufacturers of the deadly
chemicals used as pesticides, are engaged in their trade that involves over
$30 billion globally. They, in league with local and international
bureaucracy, form the last community to be convinced that the pathways
adopted by potentially toxic chemicals to reach the toxicity end point, are
the routes by which several hundred thousand persons have died and many
more are likely to meet the same fate in the not too distant future. They
are not ready to recognize that the scourge of cancer and endocrine
disruption that were rare before the advent of the second-generation
pesticides, and are now being increasingly reported, are the end points of
the toxicity trails of their products, by-products and waste products.

Politics of pesticide trade uses the long handle of social pollution to
protect the interests of the MNCs to continue the use of highly toxic
chemical pesticides. The network that operates the vicious circle for
perpetuation of pesticide use comprises the MNCs and international agencies
as its governors and the users all over the world as their passive
sufferers. The handle of social pollution is used to flout many of the
commitments made to the authorities with regard to maintenance of quality,
labelling and protection of the health of workers, applicators, and home
users.


"Bob Martin, EPA's independent ombudsman, "I used to"
"think that the government "
"mistreated only Indians," he said at the time. "I "
"now know they mistreat all Americans." "
"Feature: 05/24/02 Whacked by Whitman BY LOUIS "
"DUBOSE "
" "
"Environmental Protection Agency Administrator "
"Christine Todd Whitman-whom Secretary of State "
"Colin Powell once called "wind dummy" because of "
"the way she gets blown around at cabinet "
"meetings-finally got her feet on the ground and "
"made a decision. She got rid of Bob Martin. For "
"more than a decade, Martin served as the EPA's "
"independent ombudsman, the public's last line of "
"defense against bad decisions made by the nation's "
"environmental bureaucracy. It was Martin who in "
"1992 put a halt to the EPA's plan to incinerate "
"245,000 tons of toxic sludge that Monsanto and "
"others had left in a pit situated between an "
"elementary school and a residential subdivision, "
"about 20 miles from downtown Houston. The EPA was "
"just 10 days away from beginning incineration at "
"the area, known as the Brio Site, when Martin's "
"report, which among other alarming findings "
"revealed that the agency had not even been aware "
"that mercury was in the pits, shut the project "
"down. "
" "
"There will be no more last-minute rescues by "
"Martin. The several months-long effort by Whitman "
"to rein in the power of the ombudsman ended in an "
"April 22 raid on Martin's offices, followed closely"
"by his resignation. This may be more than a case of"
"an industry-friendly Republican appointee "
"undercutting the EPA's enforcement authority, "
"however. At the time of his departure, Martin was "
"investigating a Superfund site owned by a company "
"closely connected to John Whitman, Christine Todd "
"Whitman's husband. "
" "
"For months Whitman had been trying to muscle Martin"
"into the inspector general's office, an "
"investigating arm of the agency that answers to "
"Whitman herself. But in January he went to court "
"and got a temporary restraining order to keep him "
"out of Whitman's line of authority. In April, the "
"clock ran out. Federal district Judge Richard "
"Roberts refused to extend the order, ruling that "
"Martin hadn't exhausted all his administrative "
"remedies. As Martin returned to the administrative "
"process, Whitman made her move. While Martin was "
"out of town on agency business on April 22, Whitman"
"had her inspector general seize Martin's files and "
"computers and remove the telephones from his "
"office. To ensure that Martin could not soldier on "
"with his cell phone and laptop, the raiders from "
"the IG's office changed the locks on the "
"ombudsman's office door. "
" "
"Rather than report as ordered to his new "
"assignment, answering a hotline (at the same rate "
"of pay, $118,000) in the inspector general's "
"office, he submitted his letter of resignation. Now"
"under the supervision of the inspector general, the"
"ombudsman's office no longer has its independence. "
" "
"That means the new ombudsman will not control the "
"office's budget and staff. "
"The moral authority derived from that independence "
"will be gone as well. "
" "
"Martin said that he simply could not surrender the "
"independence of the office. ("Never, never, never, "
"never," was his exact quote.) "I would not accede "
"to that, so they had to resort to a bold power "
"move." "
" "
"Martin is a Makah Indian from Washington State, "
"hired by the EPA at the end of the Bush I "
"Administration. Early on, he got a sense of how the"
"agency worked, Martin said last month in an "
"interview at a restaurant close to the EPA offices "
"in Washington, D.C. Two weeks into his job, he was "
"in Pennsylvania responding to complaints about an "
"EPA clean-up. He was disturbed by the agency's lack"
"of concern for the local community. "I used to "
"think that the government mistreated only Indians,""
"he said at the time. "
" "
""I now know they mistreat all Americans." The day "
"after that line made the papers, Martin was visited"
"by an EPA official who handed him a letter of "
"retraction to sign. "I told him that was exactly "
"what I said. I can't retract it." His refusal to "
"sign the letter was a small gesture. But it "
"reaffirmed the independence of the ombudsman's "
"office, which Congress established in 1985. "
" "
""There are things you can do when you have power," "
"Martin's longtime investigator Hugh Kaufman said, "
""but you don't do them because of the harm they can"
"cause a year, two years, or five years down the "
"line." Kaufman has been an EPA employee since "
"Richard Nixon was president, and his whistleblowing"
"while Ronald Reagan tried to dismantle the "
"Superfund program sent one EPA official to jail. "
"According to Kaufman, Whitman's restructuring of "
"the ombudsman's office is precisely the sort of act"
"a public official with power can, but shouldn't do."
"The federal law that established the Superfund also"
"established that once the EPA approves a clean-up "
"plan for a contaminated site, the plan cannot be "
"challenged for 10 years. "It's one of the very rare"
"instances in this country where a decision is not "
"subject to judicial review," Kaufman explained. "
" "
"The sole lever on the process is-or was-the "
"independent office of the national ombudsman. For "
"that reason, the constituent service calls the "
"ombudsman answers are often from Congressmen and "
"senators who realize they cannot alter the course "
"of a clean-up plan gone bad. Conservative bete noir"
"Helen Chenoweth, then a Congresswoman from Idaho, "
"called Martin into that state after it became "
"evident that an EPA clean-up of a mine site was "
"doing more harm than good. It was Wayne Allard, the"
"Republican U.S. Senator from Colorado, who "
"contacted Martin about the Shattuck Superfund "
"site-the clean-up he was investigating when Whitman"
"seized his files. "
" "
"Martin found the same contempt for the people "
"living around the Shattuck site, situated a few "
"miles from downtown Denver, that he had seen in "
"South Houston a decade earlier. Martin "
"characterized most of the EPA's poor decisions as "
"bureaucratic mistakes. But in Denver, the EPA held "
"secret meetings with Shattuck's ownership and "
"agreed to leave tons of radioactive waste in the "
"middle of a working-class neighborhood. Shattuck "
"was one of a dozen Denver Superfund sites where "
"radioactive metals had been processed. "
" "
"Yet it was the only site where the EPA agreed to "
"leave the radioactive waste on site. "
" "
"Martin issued a report, which is the only final "
"action the ombudsman's office can take, "
"recommending that the material be moved to a "
"radioactive waste disposal site in Utah. As he had "
"done when he forced the agency to do the right "
"thing in Houston, he prevailed. The radioactive "
"waste was moved out of the Overland Park "
"subdivision, a real victory for neighborhood "
"activists. "
" "
"Then Martin began to question Whitman's possible "
"conflict of interest. From 1972 to 1987, Christine "
"Whitman's husband, John Whitman, worked for "
"Citigroup, the company that now owns the Shattuck "
"site. According to court filings Martin made in his"
"fight to keep his job (as well as a related story "
"in the Denver Post), John Whitman still holds as "
"much as $250,000 in Citi stock and works for a "
"venture group spun out of Citigroup Capital. He "
"also received a substantial bonus from Citigroup "
"last year. "
" "
"Citigroup, Martin alleges in Martin v. the EPA et "
"al., is getting a sweet deal on the clean-up. The "
"company will pay $7 million of the estimated $35 "
"million cost to remove soil contaminated by a "
"half-century of processing radium, as well as "
"chemicals that contained uranium, molybdenum, and "
"rhenium. Martin estimates that the cost will be far"
"greater than $35 million. In the suit he filed he "
"alleges that the clean-up agreement the EPA "
"approved could save Citigroup from $30 million to "
"$100 million. Citi's gain will be the taxpayers' "
"loss. "
" "
"Before Martin resigned, FBI agents had already "
"visited his office to inquire about the conflict of"
"interest charges. When they finally came to review "
"Martin's files, it was too late. Whitman had "
"already taken them. "I told them they would have to"
"go to the inspector general's office and ask for "
"them," Kaufman said. "
" "
"Seven years ago a call from Marie Flickinger in "
"Houston dragged a reluctant ombudsman into the "
"hottest sludge pit in the nation's Bermuda Triangle"
"of Superfund sites. (Brio is a thirty minute drive "
"from the French Limited Site, the Sikes Disposal "
"Pits, and the Highland Acid Pit.) Flickinger is a "
"maverick publisher who never quite understood that "
"the function of a small-town weekly is to comfort "
"the comfortable while they afflict the afflicted. "
"When her campaign against the EPA's plan to clean "
"up the Brio Superfund site was losing momentum and "
"her South Belt-Ellington Leader advertisers were "
"grousing about the "bad publicity" the paper was "
"creating, Flickinger called Bob Martin. She had "
"already struck out with his predecessor and tossed "
"his phone number in the trash. But she arrived at "
"the Leader one morning, and lying in front of the "
"office dumpster was a slip of paper with the EPA "
"ombudsman's phone number scrawled on it. She "
"decided to give it one more try. Bob Martin "
"answered the phone. "
" "
"Flickinger said that without Martin, on the job for"
"only a few weeks when Flickinger called him, there "
"was no way to stop an EPA plan to burn vinyl "
"chloride, dioxins, PCBs and a host of other toxins "
"catalogued as "tentatively identified compounds." "
"There was also mercury, which the agency didn't "
"know was in the pits until Flickinger put Martin "
"onto a Monsanto paper trail that led to a mercury "
"waste stream. "You can't burn mercury," "
" "
"Flickinger said. "You change it to a gas, but you "
"don't destroy it." "
""They were going to do this in the middle of a "
"community of 70,000 people, near a hospital, near "
"schools. We were going to have to close the college"
"[San Jacinto Junior College] down," Flickinger "
"said. "Waste Management had built an incinerator. "
"And when Bob issued his report, that sucker was ten"
"days from starting to burn waste. And they didn't "
"even know what was in the waste they were going to "
"burn." "
" "
"Today, the Brio Site is sealed off behind a "
"50-foot-deep concrete wall, covered with a gas "
"containment layer, and studded with air-monitoring "
"devices. Standing water is pumped and treated, in "
"an attempt to lower the volume of contaminants in "
"the bodies of fish caught in Clear Creek-the "
"highest trace amounts of volatile substances ever "
"detected in fish tested in the U.S. The incinerator"
"is dismantled. A public school and 677 homes that "
"were also contaminated have been abandoned. "
" "
""In nine years here, I've never heard anyone at the"
"agency say 'We screwed up,'" Martin said on the day"
"after he submitted his letter of resignation. "
" "
""But the record shows that they do. Without "
"judicial review of Superfund decisions, the "
"American people live in a chasm between the EPA's "
"belief that it can do no wrong and those bad "
"decisions. The ombudsman's office occupied that "
"chasm. Now, that office is no more." "
" "
"Former Observer editor Louis Dubose is the author "
"with Molly Ivins of Shrub The Short But Happy "
"Political Life of George W. Bush. "

Politics of Pesticides Trade

Politics of pesticide trade has its roots in the politics of crop
production and manufacture of chemicals for crop protection. Food crops are
required for maintaining personal life processes but during and after World
War II they have been used increasingly for gains in trade and politics.
The French Revolution, for example was not driven just by the ideals of
liberty, freedom, and egalitarianism, but by the fact that there was not
enough bread in Paris. There were riots in Peru in the 1970s because the
World Bank had suggested adjustments that included an increase in the price
of bread. The Zapatista uprising and the protests in Bolivia were spurred
in the 1990s by food shortages and privatization of basic necessities of
life. The same has been true in Pakistan and India where famine is caused
not because of crop failure but by its restrained availability. In 1995,
villagers in Mexico stopped trains to loot corn and not gold.

Food riots and famine are the result of politics of crop production, and
serve as a fact sheet of social pollution. The fact of the matter is that
global food production has always remained generally adequate to meet human
nutritional needs all over. Adequate wheat, rice and other grains are grown
each year to easily feed every human being on the earth with 3,500 calories
a day, much more than the average of 2,250 calories required for healthy
living. However, since the distribution system has never been equitable,
over a quarter of the world population remains undernourished, and the tall
claims of poverty alleviation unachieved. Farming practices in the
developing countries have generally remained resource-inefficient and the
industrialized countries have capitalized on this deficiency and created a
market for their products such as agricultural machinery, pesticides,
fertilizers in addition to seeds and have been transferring their methods
to keep their agro industries and mass production systems, in business.

Application of aggressive marketing forces by the MNCs to trade and
application of pesticides on crops led to excessive use of some potentially
toxic chemicals. In order to get the desired results in crop protection and
production, their unforeseen impact were not given due consideration and
hence their aftermath brought disrepute to many of them. The problem was
aggravated by the disposal of toxic wastes, which accompany each process of
chemical production. The US Department of Agriculture and the countries
faced with the menace of pests destroying the crops and affecting the
health of people were, in 1952 eulogizing the virtues and advantages of
chemicals in crop protection and in enhancing agricultural production.
Their use was being promoted as prescription to save crops all over the
world through marketing forces and also as commodity aid.

Farmers, foresters, and public health officials had been spraying DDT
across the USA to control pests such as Mexican boll weevils, gypsy moths,
and suburban mosquitoes since the 1940s. Just when farmers and the public
were getting accustomed to the lower toxicity of the chlorinated
hydrocarbons and were beginning to forget the high toxicity of the
arsenicals and dinitro compounds used before the war, the OCs, OPs and
carbamates were introduced and the attitude of the users changed. The OPs
are much more acutely toxic than the OCs. A sudden surge of pesticide
poisonings occurred with the introduction of these compounds in the early
1950s and it continued to increase for a few years in the mid-1950s. When
farmers and the public became aware of the hazards of the new pesticides
and began to take precautions, incidents of poisoning were reduced to a
lower level. Impact of their chronic toxicity and the long-term health
hazards, however, had to wait for at least a decade for their emergence.

Publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in 1962 turned the table just
in time and induced the realization about the negative impact of the
pesticides in general and DDT in particular, by denouncing their gains and
highlighting the ill effects that had surfaced up till then. It forewarned
the producers of the grave consequences of the use of pesticides that would
have come true any way as has been shown by the mechanism of their
interaction described in the last chapter.

Silent Spring did upset the smooth-sailing enjoyed by the chemical
industry, but instead of reading the writing on the wall, the industry
dared her and asked for convincing evidence, which was at that time hard to
come by. In the mean time the food chain was poisoned and there was
significant loss to biodiversity, which the USA is committed to protect by
law. It was largely due to this initiative that the chemical industry was
moved to regulate its stance on production of pesticides with appropriate
assessment of the impact on health of the user and consumer to avert
massive degradation of the environment. The book had a devastating effect
on the marketing and use of pesticides, particularly DDT. By 1968 several
states in the USA had banned the use of DDT. Public pressure was so high on
the US EPA, established in 1968, that the marketing forces could not work,
and DDT had to be banned in USA in 1972.

In the mean time Japan had taken serious notice of the outbreak of
epidemics like the minimata disease due to mercury poisoning and also the
rise in the cases of poisoning of pesticide sprayers which had reached a
high rate of 1000 pesticide sprayers a year in 1958. A total ban was
therefore imposed there in 1970 on the use of such highly toxic pesticides
as parathion, TEPP, and organomercury compounds. Measures were adopted to
ensure the use of less toxic pesticides and also to protect the health of
sprayers. This had positive effects and by the early 1980s fatalities due
to pesticide poisoning in Japan had dropped to less than 100 persons a
year(S. Matsushima and T. Wakatsuki, Abstract VId-4, Fifth International
Congress of Pesticide Chemistry, 1982, Kyoto). The incidence of acute
poisoning by pesticides, and the emergence of symptoms due to chronic
toxicity took their time and have been reported in that country at almost
the same rate as the USA and other industrialized countries.

In France, likewise the OCs were first detected in dairy products in 1964
and their origin was traced in the treatment of cattle sheds. When the use
of these pesticides was phased out between 1969 and 1972, their level
started to decrease from 1975 onwards and was within the permissible levels
of 30 ppb on lipid content basis(A.Venant and L.Richou-Bac, Abstract VIIe-
27, Fifth International Congress of Pesticide Chemistry, 1982, Kyoto).

Quite apart from the warnings by Silent Spring, the agribusiness has been
able to expand its market by a factor of 40 during the last 50 years. The
billions of litres of pesticides sprayed have nonetheless not been able to
exterminate the pests nor have they been able to stop them from breeding!
Contrarily they quickly developed resistance to the poisons used on them.
Additionally, broad-spectrum pesticides killed natural predators, which are
useful in keeping the pests away. The present position is that while the
use of synthetic pesticides, which include insecticides, rodenticides,
fungicides, herbicides, and others has increased more than 40 fold in the
last half century, the food supply lost to pests in the USA has according
to estimates ironically increased to 37% as of now, compared with 31% in
the 1940s(Pimental, David, et al. 1992. Environmental and Economic Cost of
Pesticide Use, BioScience, Vol. 42,No.10, 750-60 Pimental, David and Hugh
Lehman, eds. 1993. The Pesticide Question: Environmental, Economics and
Ethics. New York : Chapman & Hall). Total crop losses from insect damage
alone have nearly doubled from 7% to 13% during the same period. This is
regardless of the consumption of around 75% of the pesticides in USA on
cultivation of four main crops viz. soybeans, wheat, cotton and corn.

Extermination of termites is brisk business all over the world. The
chemical industry has been prescribing poison after poison to exterminate
them but without any success. The poor creatures have been able to survive
despite all the chemical tricks, which have done more harm to the humans
than the pests as may be evident from a recent letter to the Editor of
Guelph Mercury(Guelph Mercury, May 15, 2003) by Joe Crozier. 30 million
homes in USA had been sprayed with chlordane before it was banned in 1988.
This country uses 1.5 billion litres of termiticide solution for spray into
about one million homes every year and another 15 million homes would
contain 20 billion litres of chlorpyrifos solution by the time this
pesticide is banned at the end of 2005. The owner of the home prior to the
purchase by Crozier in 1997 in Arizona, had hired termite control
professionals who had sprayed it with 2,800 litres of three termiticides
during nine visits. In Arizona, it is mandated by law to spray homes of
about 200 m2 with 1,630 litres of solution containing 17.5 kilograms of
such chemicals as chlorpyrifos, ethyltoluene, trimethylbenzene and xylene.
The huge quantity sprayed on the home was like killing the termites with a
hammer, but it did not exactly do that either; instead it hit the Crozier
family hard by making it sick, driving it out and to abandon home six
months after its purchase.

According to the letter to the editor(Guelph Mercury, May 15, 2003), the
Crozier home was soaked from top to bottom with chemicals to the extent
that its air contained 2000 nanogram/m3 of chlorpyrifos. The health of the
family was destroyed and its finances devastated. Yet when Crozier
revisited the home a year after he vacated it, he was surprised to find a
termite tube up at the master bedroom ceiling. So, the use of massive
quantities of pesticides did not exterminate the pests but drove the owner
out besides making a serious negative impact on the living environment.

The Crozier family is not a solitary example of the damages done to its
microenvironment. A large majority comprises persons who have weakened
immune systems, or have a history of having been injured by chemicals or
having been poisoned by pesticides, or are vulnerable to pesticides and
other nerve agents. As said earlier all pesticides are biocides designed to
kill or harm living organisms. They act by one of the several mechanisms
outlined in the earlier chapter. They are in fact chemical warfare agents
that act by damaging the immune system. Their applications in the homes, on
yards in the neighbourhood or golf courses or the farms are by definition
chemical attacks. The aftermath of their application is the toxicity trail
culminating into dysfunction of the targeted microenvironment. Chemical
vapours seep into homes, despite closed doors and windows in the same
manner as they do in chemical warfare. They can and do affect all persons
over time by taxing their immune system, or by contributing to cancer or
respiratory disease, or by disrupting their endocrine systems, besides
damaging the developing foetuses. These damages however do not count for
the producers who would do any thing to keep their business running.

"April 29 2003 - Sydney Morning Herald, Australia "
"- Pest treatment ruined our home, family tells "
"court By Allison Jackson. "
" "
"Four years ago the Hargreaves family hired the "
"pest control company Flick to spray their house "
"for cockroaches, ants and spiders. A short time "
"later, the family of four became ill. Russell, 41,"
"Sue, 37, and their sons, Guy, 12, and Cody, 6, "
"experienced breathing difficulties, vomiting and "
"diarrhoea. The family yesterday launched legal "
"action against Flick in the District Court, "
"claiming the chemical used in their house, "
"diazinon, an organophosphorous pesticide banned in"
"the United States, poisoned them and forced them "
"to move out of their brick house near Glen Innes. "
" "
"There is no doubt about two things: diazinon "
"should not have been sprayed inside the house ... "
"it is contrary to Flick policy, and two, it "
"appears an excessive amount of chemical was "
"applied," said Richard Royle, the lawyer for the "
"family. "
" "
"Mrs Hargreaves and Guy are each seeking $750,000 "
"in damages, the maximum amount that can be awarded"
"in the District Court, on the grounds that Flick "
"failed to take reasonable precautions to avoid "
"contaminating the family's house; provide a "
"competent, qualified and experienced person to "
"spray their house; warn of the risk and dangers "
"associated with diazinon; and treat the house "
"according to industry standards and practices. "
" "
"In a separate claim, the family is seeking almost "
"$400,000 in compensation to cover the cost of "
"demolishing their house, rebuilding on a different"
"site and rent they have paid since moving out of "
"their house in May 2000. "
" "
"Flick has admitted liability and has settled the "
"damages claims of Mr Hargreaves and Cody. But the "
"pest controller disputes the damages claims of Mrs"
"Hargreaves and Guy and the family's claim that "
"they cannot live in their house. Lawyers for Flick"
"told the court the company was prepared to pay for"
"the cost of cleaning the house, sealing porous "
"surfaces and replacing some contents. Mr Royle "
"told the court that Flick sprayed the Hargreaves' "
"house for insects in February 1999, impregnating "
"the walls, floors and carpet with a "noxious "
"chemical". "
" "
"After developing breathing difficulties, vomiting "
"and diarrhoea, the family moved out of the house "
"for a week. "Their health improved within a couple"
"of days. After returning home they noticed the "
"same smell and experienced the same symptoms [and]"
"realised there may be a link between Flick's "
"pesticide and the symptoms," Mr Royle said. "
" "
"He said that after the family made "numerous" "
"phone calls to Flick complaining about the smell "
"in their house and their health problems, Flick "
"hired two professional cleaners to remove the "
"stains and odour. They could not. "
" "
"Flick has stopped using diazinon. "
" "
"Mr Royle said an expert in immunology and "
"allergies would give evidence that the family "
"would not be able to live in the house again as a "
"result of their exposure to high levels of "
"diazinon. "Although the levels [of the chemical "
"inside the house] are lower now, exposure to the "
"chemical, even at lower levels, will continue to "
"be a problem for the Hargreaves," Mr Royle said. "
" "
"The lawyer for Flick, Simon Kerr, said the company"
"was considering settling the matter. "

"More than 50,000 kg of diazinon alone were applied"
"to California lettuce crops in 2000 according to "
"the Department of Pesticide Regulation. Government"
"agencies often detect diazinon in rivers, the "
"conservation groups charge, and the EPA has "
"determined that diazinon exceeds levels of concern"
"for toxicity and risk to endangered species. "
" "
"BOISE, Idaho, July 15, 2002 (ENS) - Diazinon, a "
"common pesticide being phased out of residential "
"use in the United States and Canada due to its "
"toxic effects, has been found in samples from one "
"of Boise's wastewater treatment plants. "
" "
"Due to its toxicity to children and the risks it "
"poses to workers, drinking water supplies, birds "
"and other wildlife, the producers of diazinon "
"products have agreed to completely eliminate "
"diazinon for residential use by December 31, 2004."
" "
" "
"Between 1994 and 1998, diazinon was responsible "
"for more bird kill incidents in the United States "
"than any other pesticide. Residential use of "
"diazinon accounted for over half of these "
"incidents. "
" "
"Diazinon can enter the wastewater system through "
"illegal dumping into toilets or drains. Boise's "
"treatment plants are not designed to remove "
"substances such as pesticides. Improperly used or "
"discharged pesticides eventually flow into the "
"Boise River and threaten aquatic life. "
" "
"It is also illegal to discharge pesticides or "
"other toxic materials into storm drains which are "
"designed solely for the conveyance of natural "
"storm water and lead directly to the Boise River "
"or underground water supplies. Lawn irrigation "
"water, for example, should not be allowed to flow "
"into storm drains because it conveys any "
"pesticides on the lawn through the drain system. "






"Labels on pesticides containers explain the "
"requirements for their legal use and disposal. "
"Diazinon is currently sold under the Ortho, "
"Spectracide, and Real-Kill brand names. Package "
"labels provide information on the environmental "
"risks of improper use or disposal. "
" "
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is urging"
"consumers to investigate alternatives to diazinon."
"Pyrethroids are currently being used for most of "
"the bug problems for which diazinon has been used,"
"as they degrade faster than diazinon when exposed "
"to air and sunlight. Look for permethrin as the "
"active ingredient on the chemical label. "
" "
"The US Natural Resources Defense Council released "
"in 1992 a list of pesticides that had been "
"classified by the US EPA as potential carcinogens "
"but used on food crops. The list has been growing "
"in volume. In 1992 it contained 68 pesticides "
"which comprise all the groups viz. herbicides, "
"fungicides, and insecticides, including some that "
"are frequently used. Atrazine, alachlor, "
"metolachlor, and 1,3-dichloropropene, the four "
"most commonly used pesticides in the USA were on "
"the list. EBDC or the ethylenebisdithiocarbamates "
"fungicides, several triazine herbicides, the "
"fumigant Telone®, and many others including the "
"seven of the EPA list of twenty most commonly used"
"pesticides were potential carcinogens with an "
"estimated total use of 165 thousand tons annually."
"Regulations that prohibit the existence of any "
"residue of food additives that induce cancer in "
"man or animals are operative in the USA and the "
"industrialized countries. Such regulations include"
"the Delaney Amendment to the Federal Food, Drug, "
"and Cosmetic Act. Similar standards have been "
"enforced for the concentration of pesticides above"
"the levels found in processed food and raw "
"commodities. In the USA this was against the EPA "
"policy which had until 1992 been regulating use of"
"pesticides in food and was based on a negligible "
"risk standard rather than the zero risk standard "
"of the Delaney Amendment. Researches now being "
"undertaken with improved version equipment are "
"bringing to fore unmistakable long-term health "
"effects linked to chronic, low level exposure to "
"pesticides. "
" "
"According to the Health, Labor and Welfare "
"Ministry of the USA, the recently revised law "
"allows the government to impose import bans on "
"foods from specific countries or regions if a "
"considerable number of violations by foreign "
"producers, including hygiene management failures "
"or inadequate pesticides control, was verified. "
"The USA is consequently considering a ban on "
"import of spinach from China (September 2002) "
"since the same has been found to contain pesticide"
"residues. The USA is pressing on the Chinese "
"government to show its willingness to implement "
"clear preventive measures against such violations."
"Standards regarding pesticides used on food products"
"differ among countries and there are no unambiguous "
"rules when safety of imported food is under "
"consideration. Friction between USA and Japan "
"regarding imported foods has been continuing since "
"the late 1980s. The Japanese government has, on the "
"basis of data recorded for presence of pesticide "
"residues in food products imported from the USA, "
"accused the latter for using too many pesticides on "
"oranges before exporting them to Japan. USA has "
"contrarily denounced the recent tightening of "
"quarantine on apples by Japan and accused it of "
"using it as a form of trade restriction. Japan has "
"recently revised its Food Sanitation Law and is "
"expected to establish a Food Safety Commission, both"
"of which may trigger further friction. "
"Japanese contention about the citrus fruits being "
"loaded with pesticides may not be unfounded since "
"that by far is the largest primary industry product "
"of Florida state which in 2000, sold $1.67 billion "
"worth of oranges, grapefruit, and other citrus "
"fruits and generated 24% of the agricultural cash "
"sales. Agriculture is the mainstay of economy of "
"Florida, but its warm climate and multitude of crops"
"make it a pleasant sanctuary for the tiny medfly, "
"because females can lay their eggs in more than 250 "
"different crops. If discovered in an agricultural "
"area, an immediate quarantine results, and growers "
"are prevented from selling their fresh produce to "
"restrain the medfly from becoming established. This "
"has to be done since it is not just the question of "
"losing the European market but every market is at "
"stake. The detection of 70 medflies in and around "
"Tampa within a week of May 28, 1997, when the first "
"medfly was found, put Florida agriculture officials "
"on the highest alert. Malathion spraying began on "
"June 5, 1997. "
"The European Union also has rules and regulations "
"concerning imported foods. The EU called for "
"preventive principles during the WTO agricultural "
"committee meeting held in Geneva in September 2002, "
"arguing that governments should be allowed to impose"
"restrictions on imported foods if there were safety "
"concerns. Japan has demanded that food safety "
"concerns should not be excluded from agricultural "
"trade talks. Developing countries including "
"countries engaged in large agricultural products, "
"including USA and Australia, view the stance taken "
"by Japan as supporting non-tariff barriers and they "
"may not favor such a position, in the near future. "
" "
"It is, however, hard to see consumers compromising "
"on food safety in Japan, where food is largely "
"imported. Japan is likely to stick to its stance "
"that the revised Food Sanitation Law aims to protect"
"public health and does not violate WTO rules. "
"Despite a ten-fold increase in the use of "
"chemical insecticides since WW2, the loss of"
"food and fibre crops to insects has risen "
"from 7% to 13%. "
" "
"In 1985, the WHO estimated that there are 3 "
"million acute, "
"severe pesticide poisonings and 20,000 "
"accidental deaths each year. In 1990, the "
"WHO revised their estimates to 25 million "
"cases of acute occupational pesticide "
"poisoning in developing countries each year."
" "
"An International Labour Organisation report "
"of 1996 draws attention to dangers in the "
"agricultural sector, where 14% of all known "
"occupational injuries and 10% of all fatal "
"injuries are caused by pesticides. "
" "
"60 pesticide active ingredients have been "
"classified by "
"recognised authorities as being carcinogenic"
"to some degree. 118 pesticides have been "
"identified as disrupting hormonal balance. "
" "
"In 1996, ten companies controlled over 80% "
"of the global "
"agrochemical market, valued in 1995 at US$30"
"billion. 25% of agrochemical sales are in "
"developing countries and "
"this is increasing. "
" "
"The quantity of obsolete pesticides in "
"Africa alone is more "
"than 20,000 tonnes, which will cost up to "
"US$150 million "
"to destroy. "


Role of MNCs in Toxicity Trade

On the one hand there are increasing reports of the ill-effects of the
pesticides and their negative impact on the health, safety and environment
and on the other hand there are reports that the manufactures have no
regrets. They are continuing to produce the same volume of pesticides as
before and are not concerned with either the ill effects on their own
workers or the environment. It is unfortunate that the chemical producers
are among the largest organizations that even control the politics of the
nations, and for that matter the largest democracy, the USA.

Trade Secrets, A Moyers Report was hosted by journalist Bill Moyers, and
aired on March 26 2001 by the Public Broadcasting System, PBS. It examined
some of the chemical industry documents that were released and the
interviews held with medical experts and chemical plant workers, to expose
the anti-social practices of the US chemical industry over the past half
century. It documented the systematic effort by the industry to conceal the
toxic effect of many of its products from its workforce as well as the
general public.

The chemical industry has expended millions of dollars to fight regulations
on the manufacture of its products. The industry contributed over $6
million dollars to more than 200 political action committees to back Ronald
Reagan, the petrochemical favourite, in his 1980 presidential bid. Within a
month of assuming office in 1981, Reagan signed an executive order
transforming the battle over chemical safety(Trade Secrets, A Moyers
Report, March 26, 2001).

Reagan directed the US EPA to delay proposing or finalizing any regulations
on the chemical industry until it could be proven that they were cost-
effective. In other words, the EPA, instead of being a watchdog
organization to protect workers, the general public and the environment
from the dangers of toxic substances, was more and more transformed into an
agency that calculates the minimum number of workers who can be poisoned
and killed while still allowing the companies a return of profit(Trade
Secrets, A Moyers Report, March 26, 2001).

Over the last two decades, chemical companies have spent millions of
dollars to frustrate the implementation of Toxic Substances Control Act,
TSCA and the US EPA agency that was established to regulate the
introduction, registration and marketing of toxic chemicals. Trade Secrets
referred to the case of the class of chemicals known as phthalates, which
are widely used in such products as shower curtains and children's toys. As
early as 1980 the National Cancer Institute had determined that one
phthalate, DEHP, causes cancer in animals. The US EPA held numerous
meetings with chemical industry representatives and their attorneys, but
the agency could not take any action to either ban or limit the use of
phthalates(Trade Secrets, A Moyers Report, March 26, 2001).

The chemical companies also fought against the imposition of restrictions
on the manufacture of DBCP, a nematicide produced by Dow, Occidental and
Shell. An internal and confidential report on DBCP from Dow Chemical
Company Biochemical Research Laboratory dated July 23, 1958 reads:
"Testicular atrophy may result from prolonged repeated exposure. A
tentative hygiene standard of 1 part per million is suggested." However,
Dow did not reduce exposures to the chemical, and many workers became
sterile as a result(Trade Secrets, A Moyers Report, March 26, 2001).

An inter-office memo written by an engineer at Occidental on the impact of
DBCP reads: "We are slowly contaminating all wells in our area and two of
our own wells are contaminated to the point of being toxic to animals or
humans. This is a time bomb that we must defuse." Despite this knowledge,
the companies kept the pesticide on the market for eight more years(Trade
Secrets, A Moyers Report, March 26, 2001). More on DBCP will be presented
in a subsequent section.

The earlier pages have shown that pesticides have only brought short-term
gains. The claimed success in application of pesticides in farming, if
accepted, was at enormous costs and sacrifice of environmental values.
Recent studies and the several case histories do not support the views that
the benefits from pesticides outweigh the damages done to humanity and the
environment. Pesticides, particularly DDT saved the lives of millions by
preventing the population from contracting malaria, bubonic plague and
typhus since the late 1940s. The claimed achievement is, however, ad-hoc,
at best. Now people are scared of their persistence and their being related
to the scourge of cancer, chemical intolerance and several sets of symptoms
attributed to syndromes that have emerged of late. The forceful lobby of
the MNCs led the users to believe that pesticides work faster and are more
effective than the natural products offered as alternatives. This, as seen
in earlier pages, is no longer true; their application even at very low
concentration compared to the older products, does just as much harm as
done by the latter.

Despite the warnings by Silent Spring, MNCs engaged in chemicals and
pharmaceuticals production consolidated their hold during the year
following its publication through forceful marketing practices. The several
warnings that followed Silent Spring could not restrain the emergence of
new chemical manufacturers all over the industrialized world and also did
not constrain them from producing pesticides that were not registered or
banned. The MNCs operated through their subsidiaries in the developing and
underdeveloped countries for the sale of their products. Pesticides
manufactured in countries that became donors after World War II, were
supplied against finances provided under an aid and also by the government
sponsored finance and insurance agencies such as the US sponsored Eximbank
and the OPIC. This secured the status of the MNCs and other chemical
manufacturers, besides allowing them a long handle of social pollution for
marketing products that were not registered or were even banned for use in
the exporting country. The governance system in USA, while taking
cognisance of the ban in their own country introduced the Prior Informed
Consent, PIC through the UN Agencies so that the MNCs were not held
responsible for an act of dual standards. However, the MNCs knew how to
manipulate the PIC for trade in developing countries, particularly those
addicted to aid.

The Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent, PIC, Procedure for
Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade was
finalised in 1998. It allows importing countries to publish decisions to
exclude chemicals they cannot manage safely. Currently, 31 chemicals are
covered by the Convention ; 21 of them are pesticides, 5 are industrial
chemicals and 5 severely hazardous pesticide formulations which have been
shown to cause problems under conditions of use in developing countries
(PCUs). The Convention will enter into force after the 50th ratification by
March 2003 there were 73 signatories and 41 parties to the Convention) [see
http://www.pic.int].

Such are the forces of social pollution that DDT, despite its having been
banned by the US EPA in early 1973, was still recommended by the WHO for
mosquito control. There were a number of defenders, who argued that a
decline in its use would raise the death rate from malaria and other
mosquito borne diseases. WHO kept waiting for another 20 years for
convincing evidence of the toxicity trail of DDT in breast milk, and
linking it with breast cancer(Moses, Marion, 'Pesticides and Breast Cancer'
(a review of evidence), Pesticides News, No 22, December 1993). It was in
1993 when WHO changed its recommendations and banned all its uses. It
nevertheless is till being manufactured in India, which claims to be the
fourth largest producer of pesticides in the world and is the largest
producer outside OECD. Although the use of DDT has diminished considerably,
its availability is not restrained. The year 2000 witnessed an outbreak of
malaria in Bangladesh; India came to the rescue of the Bangladeshis by
supplying the needed quantity of DDT. It is worth noting here that 16
organochlorine pesticides, 12 organophosphorus pesticides and 4 synthetic
pyrethroides, because of their easy availability, are all commonly used in
India as insecticides, in agricultural fields as well as at
home(IndiaTimes.com VOL 12 ,NO 6 Monday, August 04, 2003). The Indian
manufacturers are impressing upon their government not to ratify the
Stockholm Convention on POPs, which shows reluctance on the part of
manufacturers to discontinue the production of the pesticides that have
been banned elsewhere in the world.

The pesticide parathion provides another example of the chemical remaining
in the market despite the damages done to the environment. This pesticide
has been a leading cause of occupational pesticide poisonings from the time
it was introduced in the markets of USA in 1948. It is an acutely toxic
pesticide, which falls in the WHO Class Ia. It is now banned in over 14
countries. It is among the highly toxic and persistent pesticides in the
waste sites around the world; others being aldrin, chlordane, DDT,
dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, and malathion.

Parathion is a potent neurotoxin that is easily absorbed by the skin into
the body and has also been linked to a wide variety of severe acute and
chronic health effects including reproductive and endocrine disrupting
effects. It was cause for 22 accidental deaths in California between the
mid-1960s and mid-1990s, all the deaths having been caused by illegal home
use of methyl parathion or ethyl parathion, with some of the victims being
children who died after drinking pesticides from unmarked containers or
after crawling on floors that had been sprayed with this deadly
pesticide(PANUPS, February 21, 1997).

Unlicensed pest control operators sprayed over 1,500 homes and businesses
in Mississippi with methyl parathion over a two year period ending in
November 1996. Approximately 2,000 tons of this pesticide was being sprayed
in California alone in the mid-1990s when these cases of poisoning were
being reported. The only legal uses of methyl parathion were for
agricultural crops but under restricted conditions; all indoor uses have
been prohibited.

The spraying in Mississippi resulted in the temporary relocation of over
1,100 people. Additionally, local veterinarians reported deaths of
household animals due to exposure to methyl parathion. Eight day-care-
centres, one restaurant and two hotels that were sprayed had to be closed,
and extensive cleanup operations started as part of the US EPA Superfund
programme. Cleanup costs reached more than $50 million. Nine individuals
were arrested and criminally charged with misuse and/or illegal sale of the
pesticide(PANUPS, February 21, 1997).

Two similar events had occurred in the previous years. In 1994, homes and
businesses were sprayed with methyl parathion in Lorain County, Ohio. US
EPA had to decontaminate 232 homes to bring them to habitable conditions at
a cost of more than $20 million. Four residences, including a homeless
mission, required decontamination and restoration, costing approximately
one million dollars in April, 1995, in a similar incident discovered in
Detroit, Michigan(PANUPS, February 21, 1997). In another event in the same
year methyl parathion flowed from cotton fields into Big Nance Creek in
Lawrence County, Alabama, during heavy rains and killed an estimated
250,000 fish.

US EPA negotiated with Cheminova Agro, the sole manufacturer of parathion
and principal registrant in USA after the illegal spraying in Mississippi
to recall all unopened containers of the emulsifiable concentrate of
parathion from distributors, retailers and users throughout the USA. In
order to ensure that the pesticide is not illegally sprayed in homes the
manufacturer was required to add an odour agent to make indoor uses
extremely disagreeable, before the recalled products could be put back in
the market. The manufacturer had agreed to inform distributors, retailers,
growers and consumers on proper uses of the pesticide. Mixtures and micro-
encapsulated formulations of methyl parathion were, however, not included
in this recall agreement.

The lukewarm attitude of US EPA in handling the parathion legacy in the
USA, according to PANNA Program Coordinator only highlights the fundamental
weaknesses of the pesticide regulatory system. Failure in effectively
controlling pesticide use even in a country like the USA which boasts of
elaborate regulations, especially when an extremely hazardous pesticide is
involved, only demonstrates the power of the pesticide manufacturers.

The trait of marketing through massive advertising used by MNCs is so
aggressive in promoting the sale and use of pesticides all over the world
that the authorities responsible for controlling the misuse find themselves
helpless. In the meanwhile people working in farm fields, and children at
school have been constantly exposed to these chemicals and violations of
the state and federal laws in USA have been persistent during all the years
that they have been in use(Dan Gunderson, Minnesota Public Radio - February
17, 2003).

It is more than apparent that the politics of crop production governs the
massive push of the chemicals into the field and the environment according
to the desires of the pesticide manufacturers i.e. the MNCs and hence
violence instead of being punished is protected and ignored. Additionally,
attempts are made by the MNCs to block legal action.

Parathion has been sold by Bayer Peru, a subsidiary of the German MNC for
many years after publicly promising to withdraw them in 1995. Bayer has
been found responsible for poisoning of 42 children in village Tauccamarca
in Peru in October 1999. The children were stricken after eating a school
breakfast contaminated with methyl parathion. Twenty-four children died
before they could reach medical treatment, 18 others survived with
significant long-term health and developmental consequences. The pesticide
was heavily marketed under the name of Folidol to small farmers throughout
Peru, the great majority of whom speak Quechua only and are illiterate.
Bayer packaged the pesticide, a white powder that resembles powdered milk
with no strong chemical odor in small plastic bags, labeled in Spanish and
displaying a picture of vegetables. The labels provided no usable safety
information, such as pictograms, for the majority of users in remote
villages, and little indication of the danger of the product(PANUPS, August
30, 2002).

The families were unable to take any action because of threats from the
autocratic governance system of the time. Bayer's legal machinery had
nevertheless moved swiftly to have the case of the affected families
dismissed on procedural grounds. The system also did not share the results
of laboratory analysis conducted on the milk and the deceased children. 
Only in August 2001 when a new government was installed, did the families
receive a response on allowing them to proceed with legal action. The
Tauccamarca families feel that Bayer did not take steps to warn or protect
the illiterate users by adequately labelling and packaging, providing
indications of the danger of the product and thus to prevent the misuse of
this extremely toxic product, given the severe health risks presented by
methyl parathion and the well known socio-economic conditions in the
Peruvian countryside.

Peruvian Congressional Subcommittee concluded in 2002 that there is
significant evidence of administrative and criminal responsibility on the
part of Ministry of Agriculture, and of criminal responsibility on the part
of the agrochemical company Bayer. The report recommended that the
government and Bayer indemnify the families of the dead children. It also
named the Ministry of Agriculture for failure to enforce pesticide
regulations in controlling the sale of restricted-use pesticides including
parathion, which are commonly available throughout Peru(Press Release 
- Caso Tauccamarca, Stephen Tvedten, e-mail communication, January,03).

The above action by Bayer in Peru was not considered a violation of human
rights and did not call for condemnation by the UN Agencies. Contrarily
Bayer was invited to the UN Global Compact in the World Summit on
Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002. The Global Compact,
it may be added is a UN partnership with corporations that pledge to abide
by human rights and environmental principles. In having invited Bayer the
UNO has committed an act of social pollution since it amounts to supporting
an MNC that allowed methyl parathion to be sold in a region where it knew
that the people would not be able to read the label instructions.

There are scores of cases of the above kind but the Bhopal chemical
disaster provides a unique example of the unethical role of the MNCs. On
December 2, 1984, a toxic gas methyl isocyanate, MIC leaked at an
insecticide plant, belonging to an Indian Unit of Union Carbide
Corporation, UCC a USA based MNC, manufacturing Sevin. The plant had a
pressure valve of one of its units broken. This caused the toxic MIC gas
stored in a large tank to leak out and spread all over the densely
populated industrial town of Bhopal. The resident population was caught
totally unaware at midnight of a cold winter. The casualties were heavy.
2500 persons died on the same night. Some 6,000 have died since then and
nearly 40,000 were seriously injured due to exposure to the gas. The final
count of the injured is put at nearly 500,000, while the death toll stands
at 20,000 after years of sufferings and is rising every day. In 1989, the
Government of India and Union Carbide Corporation struck a settlement
whereby the compensation amount was brought down from $3.3 billion to a
mere $470 million.

The plant established at Bhopal had a number of deficiencies, which were
known to the concerned persons of the UCC. The plant, for example had quite
a few design differences from the UCC plant at Institute in Virginia, USA;
it had to have a large storage tank for storage of methyl isocyanate (this
was the tank which leaked); it lacked the provision of safety equipment and
was based on unproven technologies(www.bhopal.net). The UCC is consequently
also facing accusations of racist double standards in transfer of
technology. In February 2000, UCC merged with Dow Chemical Company. The
merger, as against the norms of such deals, inherited just the assets and
not the liabilities of UCC and Dow says that they are not responsible for a
factory they did not operate. The survivors say Dow should own the
liabilities and should be held responsible for all pending medical and
environmental liabilities in Bhopal. Dow Chemical Company is so far not
inclined to do so.

According to a report published by New scientist, the Indian government
had, under a policy of forcing foreign companies to invest, requested Union
Carbide Corporation, UCC to make insecticides such as Sevin in India
instead of importing it. It also insisted that the company raise at least a
quarter of the investment from local shareholders. This latter clause
induced UCC to reduce the amount of investment to $20.3 million from $28
milion. This had to be done, according to New
Scientist(http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993140), through
unproven technologies.

The chemicals have leaked for 18 years into the soil and ground water in
and around the factory site and have been poisoning people who survived the
gas leak. No one has accepted responsibility for the waste or has cleaned
up the site. Children born to survivors are suffering health problems and
150,000 people are in urgent need of medical attention, The International
Campaign for Justice in Bhopal is calling on Dow to clean up the site,
provide people with clean drinking water, long term medical care and full
compensation.

The above noted tragedies including the one at Bhopal expose the minds of
the MNCs. They do demonstrate that MNCs leave aside the observation of
simple norms and code of conduct that whatever is banned for usage and
whatever design, plant, equipment and material is not acceptable in their
own country should not be offered for use in a developing country. The main
objective of the MNCs in ruthlessly employing their market forces is to
continue in the trade of pesticides. In doing so, their selfishness can
even go beyond national interests. They have, for example traded many such
pesticides as Agent Orange and other herbicides that were applied as
chemical weapons and caused mass destruction. The Herald-Tribune has
reported that in the mid-1980s, the Commerce Department of USA approved the
export of various insecticides to Iraq, and in December 1988, Dow Chemical
sold $1.5 million worth of pesticides to Iraq, despite concerns having been
shown by the government of USA that they could be used as chemical warfare
agents(Feb 23, 2003 - Herald Tribune).

The psyche of the MNCs is also exposed by their attempts to dilute the
Chemical Safety Bill, S. 1602, which requires chemical plants to develop
prevention and response plans to respond to the September 11th event and
also requires companies to consider use of safer materials and processes to
reduce the possibility of explosions, such as the accident in Bhopal. This
was at the instance of the warning by the US EPA, US Army, Brookings
Institute and others that took cognizance of the frightening ease with
which chemical plants in USA could be turned into weapons of mass
destruction and could threaten millions of people there, and also in view
of the recent grading of various sectors of government and industry on
their response to September 11th by the Washington Post, which gave the
chemical industry grade D. Seven Republican members of the Senate Committee
were seeking an amendment to weaken the Act, while the chemical industry
moguls like Dow and Dupont were lobbying strongly against the
legislation(PANUPS, September 17, 2002).

So strong is nevertheless the lobby of the MNCs that it finds its ways into
the working of the local governments, as seen above in the case of Peru,
and the following sections will reveal that they have found their way
through into working in close collaboration with the UN Agencies: FAO in
matters of their interest in agriculture and WHO in matters related to
health.

Role of International Agencies in Toxicity Trade: To put it simply the
international agencies are active components of the network of social
pollution. They aid the operation of the vicious circle. Industry
Cooperative Programme, the organization of agribusiness corporations, for
example, had a direct involvement in FAO for 12 years from 1966. Their
efforts at making the developing countries dependent on the indiscriminate
application of pesticides supplied by them is one of the distinct ways of
inducing social pollution to which developing countries are silent
spectators. In these acts of social pollution, the international banks,
government agencies of the industrialized countries and MNCs are equal
partners and they are there to ensure that corporate investments are
secure.

This is amply demonstrated by the Staff Exchange, or "Share" Programme
initiated by the World Bank in 1995. This programme, according to Pesticide
Action Network North America Update Service(PANUPS, June 24, 2002) provides
opportunities for World Bank staff to work at private corporations and MNCs
and for staff of these corporations or organizations to work at the World
Bank to "develop closer partnerships and long-lasting relationships with
other organizations operating in the global development arena", according
to the World Bank Web site. Assignments usually last for two years.

The partnerships of World Bank with MNCs includes, according to PANUPS some
of the most notorious polluters and violators of human rights of the world.
This was displayed at the Staff Exchange Programme Conference & Expo from
June 19-21, 2002 in Washington, DC. Those outside the social pollution
network are organizations like the Pesticide Action Network North America,
PANNA and other NGOs. The latter, in recognizing the role of the two
partners have called for an end to the partnership with unethical MNCs such
as Dow Chemical Company, the pesticide and biotech magnate, Rio Tinto the
mining company, and ExxonMobil the oil and gas mogul. Environmental and
human rights organizations at the conference expressed their concern that
the companies were using it to clean up their tarnished public images.

Staff Scientist at PANNA, San Francisco was very vocal in saying that "Dow
is using the World Bank's Staff Exchange Conference as a platform for green-
washing and as an opportunity to promote its products and make backroom
deals. The fact that the World Bank has invited Dow, the producer of napalm
and the defoliant Agent Orange, to give a presentation on sustainable tree
planting is outrageous"(PANUPS, June 24, 2002).

The history of unethical behaviour by Dow Chemical Co. according to
PANUPS(PANUPS,June 24, 2002), includes testing its chemicals on humans and
continuing to make and export the nematicide nemagon, DBCP on banana
plantations long after it was banned in the USA. DBCP use has caused
permanent sterility of thousands of workers in Latin American Countries.
Union Carbide, acquired by Dow in 1999, owned the chemical plant in Bhopal,
India, that released methyl isocyanate and other chemicals in 1984, causing
one of the worst industrial disasters in history. Dow has refused to take
responsibility for cleaning up the site or for providing health care to
thousands of survivors, who continue to suffer from the effects of chemical
exposure.

The mining company Rio Tinto which also featured a presentation, according
to the agenda of the Staff Exchange Program Conference on June 20, 2002, is
a serious polluter of the environment and violator of human
rights(PANUPS,June 24, 2002). According to a case study on the PT Kelian
mine of the company in Kalimantan, Indonesia by Project Underground, a
California-based NGO, the National Human Rights Commission of the
government of Indonesia found that the Rio Tinto security and Indonesian
military had forcibly evicted traditional miners, burned down their
villages, and arrested and detained protestors since the mine opened in
1992. Mine employees have also been named in several incidents of rape and
violence against local women. Community members say they can no longer
drink or bathe in the river, which has been contaminated by the gold
leaching process(PANUPS, June 24, 2002).

ExxonMobil is not far behind the other two MNCs in leaving a trail of
environmental and human rights abuses that stretch far around the world. It
has been found supporting human rights violations of the Indonesian
military to protect oil drilling operations in Sumatra, in bulldozing a
town in Colombia in order to expand a coal mine and releasing toxic
emissions from oil refineries and chemical plants in Louisiana, USA. In
1998, the Department of Justice of the USA accused Exxon of approximately
200 violations of the Clean Air Act. In the same year, over 40,000 barrels
of oil spilled from a ruptured Mobil pipeline off the coast of Nigeria,
affecting roughly 500,000 people in 120 coastal communities(PANUPS, June
24, 2002).

World Bank has in spite of the above observations, identified the MNCs as
key partners in the newly drafted Rural Development Strategy but has
ignored the impacts of their role on communities and the environment. In
April, PANNA led an international delegation to Washington, DC to lobby the
Board of Directors of the World Bank to reject the draft Strategy. The
delegation, which included NGO representatives from Ecuador, Senegal and
Indonesia, advocated that the Bank shift its private sector partnerships in
the agricultural sector from pesticide and biotech companies to biological
pest control and crop production and marketing organizations that have an
interest in providing clean and healthy food(Action Alert on the World
Bank's Rural Development Strategy,
http://www.panna.org/campaigns/worldBank.html;Sources: World Bank Staff
Exchange Program Web site,
http://www.staffexchange.org/Info/StaffExchange.asp; Ishii-Eiteman, M. and
J. Hamburger, Pesticide and Biotech Companies: The Wrong Partners for the
World Bank, PANNA, April 2002,
http://www.panna.org/resources/documents/badPartners.dv.html; Kennedy, D.,
Rio Tinto: Global Compact Violator, July 13, 2001,
http://www.corpwatch.org/campaigns/PCD.jsp?articleid=622; Partnerships with
the Private Sector: Assessment and Approval, Business Partnership &
Outreach Group, The World Bank Group, Washington, DC,
http://www.worldbank.org/business/03assessment.html#guidance; Stop
ExxonMobil Alliance Web site,
http://www.stopexxonmobil.org/static/agm_statement.html; Dubious
Development: How the World Bank's Private Arm is Failing the Poor and the
Environment, Friends of the Earth, Washington, DC, 2000).

The article "Poison for Profit – What a Business
Plan!"(http://www.mercola.com/2002/may/29/poison_profit.htm) by Ashley
Simmons Hotz highlights the role of the MNCs. According to the article the
'huge transnational companies profit not only from the sale of toxic
chemicals found in pesticides, herbicides and industrial and household
products, which they produce but also from the symptoms and chronic
illnesses that they can trigger. This is because the same chemical
companies that produce toxic chemicals also produce prescription drugs,
veterinary medicines, a wide array of medical products and imaging
technologies, besides holding cancer treatment and medical device patents,
and producing a staggering assortment of over-the-counter palliatives. It
is needless to say that the vast majority of chemicals found in pesticides
and other products, have undergone little or no testing for chronic, low
level exposures and for chronic health effects. The author of the article
claims that this circle of profit is not conspiracy theory, but an easily
provable fact.


MNCs View: Where would the United States Be Without Pesticides?


The following articles appeared in "MEDICINE Vol. 17, No. 3 (1990), pgs.
349-355, by G.P. Sechi, "Acute and persistent Parkinsonism after use of
diquat,"; in NEUROLOGY Vol. 42, No. 1 (January 1992), pgs. 261-263, by K.M.
Semchuk and others, "Parkinson's disease and exposure to agricultural work
and pesticide chemicals," NEUROLOGY Vol. 42, No. 7 (July 1992), pgs. 1328-
1335.

These articles speak of the MNCs psyche, besides the American aims as the
sole super power and trader. According to the articles that appeared in the
early 1990s, some of the best studies of the benefits of pesticides have
estimated the economic consequences of a ban on pesticide use. These "what
if?" studies deal with extreme-case possibilities, but they serve as a
starting point for putting pesticides or toxicity trade in perspective.

A study by Knutson and others referred in the articles describes possible
effects on US society of a hypothetical ban of herbicides, insecticides and
fungicides. Without pesticides, US food production would drop and food
prices would soar. With lower production and higher prices, US farmers
would be less competitive in global markets for major grains, cotton and
peanuts. USA corn, wheat and soybeans exports would drop 27 percent, with a
loss of 132,000 jobs. A pesticide ban in the United States would decrease
year-ending supplies of corn, wheat and soybeans 73 percent, trigger price
instability, slow US food aid programs to poor countries, and increase
worldwide hunger.

The articles suggest that a ban on pesticide use would help the environment
may not be true. Under a pesticide ban, the number of farmed acres would
have to be increased to make up for reduced per-acre yields, which would in
turn cause widespread loss of wildlife habitat. Without herbicides, farmers
would probably have to cultivate fields more frequently to control weeds,
which would lead to increased soil loss from erosion. Other countries, many
with lower standards of environmental concern that ours would increase
pesticide use to boost crop production and take advantage of reduced US
food exports.

Effects on US farmers would vary. Incomes of food plant growers would more
than double, but most of this increase would be offset by new land
purchases because growers would need to cultivate more land to make up for
lower yields. Incomes of livestock producers would drop 50 percent because
of higher feed prices. Without pesticides, southern farmers would fare
worse than their northern counterparts, because southern climates promote
higher pest populations.

Another study cited by the articles focused only on the consequences of a
fungicide ban. These chemicals control plant disease fungi that, if
unchecked, kill crop plants and sometimes produce lethal natural food
poisons. A US ban on fungicides would reduce production of fruit 32
percent, vegetables 21 percent, peanuts 68 percent, and corn and wheat 6
percent each. These figures are even more grim when we consider that the
consumption of fruits and vegetables help prevent heart disease and some
cancers. Without fungicides, per capita consumption of these healthy foods
would decrease 24 percent, with negative consequences for our nation's
health.

A ban on fungicides would increase consumer food prices by 13 percent,
reduce the gross national product by about $28 billion, and eliminate
235,000 jobs, including 125,000 jobs in the farm sector, which represents 4
percent of total agricultural employment.

A fungicide ban would have greatest economic and health impacts on the
poor, because this group spends a higher percentage of income on food. For
example, the annual food bill for a family at the poverty level would
increase $362, or 3 percent of their yearly income. Because of higher
prices and lower production of fruits and vegetables, consumption of these
healthy foods would shrink most among the nation's poor, forcing this group
to bear the greatest health consequences of a deteriorating U.S. diet.

But even without these "what if?" studies, the benefits of pesticides are
obvious. Using carefully timed pesticide applications, farmers have nearly
eradicated the cotton boll weevil in large areas of the southeast; this
pest devastated the cotton-based southern farm economy at the beginning of
the twentieth century. Worldwide, herbicides have provided a 10 to 20
percent yield increase in bread grains, enough for 15 loaves of bread for
each person on the Earth. In the poorest countries, 95 percent of the
population produces the food to feed itself and the remaining 5 percent. In
developed countries, the reverse is true; 3 to 5 percent of the population
produces enough to feed the rest, in addition to exporting the surplus.
This incredible efficiency in food production in the developed countries
would not be possible without pesticides.

The value of pesticides goes beyond agriculture. Many tick and insect-borne
diseases: yellow fever, encephalitis, plague, typhoid fever, malaria, dog
heartworms and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, are held in check today by
insecticides. By controlling fleas, cockroaches and flies, insecticides
improve the sanitation and comfort of our homes. Long-lasting soil
pesticides protect millions of US homes against termites.

Sometimes pesticides can restore balance to ecosystems harmed by the
invasion of exotic species. For example, the sea lamprey, a parasitic eel,
invaded the Great Lakes after a shipping canal around Niagara Falls was
built in 1829. The eels attacked native species of fish and, by the 1950s,
populations of lake trout were decimated. The pesticide TFM was used to
control the lamprey, and today the lake trout population is recovering.

With regard to the question, "Where would the United States be without
pesticides?", the articles suggest, "These chemicals improve food quality,
quantity and variety. They improve human health by con-trolling natural
food poisons, increasing production of fruits and vegetables, and helping
to control long-forgotten diseases. They protect our homes and property.
They let US farmers compete profitably in an increasingly global economy.
Truly, the standard of living we take for granted in the United States
would not be possible without the benefits of pesticides."

Another View Of Pesticide Use(Chem&Eng News 2002, Vol 80, No. 44 p. 3)

The following is a response from Jay J. Vroom, President of CropLifeAmerica
to the advertisements funded by the Rockefeller Family Fund appearing in
the New York Times from the Mount Sinai Center for Children's Health & the
Environment (CCHE) on the deleterious effects of chemicals in our everyday
life. CropLifeAmerica member companies produce, sell, and distribute
virtually all the crop protection and biotechnology products used by
American farmers. The Article appeared as follows:

No matter how many advertisements that Mount Sinai Center for Children's
Health & the Environment publishes in the New York Times, its claims
concerning links between pesticides and children's health will never be
anything other than speculation, innuendo, and in some cases bold-faced
lies couched behind waffling wiggle-room phrases such as "may explain" and
"appear to suggest".

None of the current scientific literature has shown anything other than
purely speculative linkage between legitimate pesticide use and childhood
health problems such as neurodevelopment, endocrine disruption, or brain
cancer. Many other potential factors such as socioeconomic status,
childhood disease and nutrition, and substance abuse or poor nutrition
during pregnancy are powerful and proven predictors of these and other
health problems.

It is irresponsible to use fearmongering and concern for children to
manipulate the truth with antichemical rhetoric to obscure sound science. I
see these recent New York Times ads for what they are: CCHE's self-serving
agenda to eliminate pesticides altogether, regardless of their benefits.

Pesticides help safeguard public health by controlling or eliminating pests
such as cockroaches, associated with asthma; mosquitoes, which carry West
Nile virus, encephalitis, and malaria; ticks, which transmit Lyme disease;
fire ants, which send more than 60,000 Americans to the emergency room
every year; rodents, which bite more than 45,000 people yearly and transmit
numerous diseases; and termites, which cause nearly $1 billion in U.S.
property damage each year.

Pesticide crop protection reduces losses from damaging pests, competing
weeds, destructive fungi, and devastating diseases. Crop protection with
pesticides increases crop yields, improves food quality, and lowers
production costs. These benefits contribute to the supply of safe,
nutritious food.

It is pesticide use that guarantees the abundance of enough fruits,
vegetables, and high-fiber grains, which may reduce the risk for cancer,
heart disease, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and other chronic diseases,
to meet the recommended daily servings suggested by the National Cancer
Institute at the National Institutes of Health.

Moreover, without pesticide use, the Department of Agriculture estimates
that production of many crucial crops, such as carrots, rice, and tomatoes,
would drop by 36 to 48%. Lower yields would force farmers into ploughing
under more pristine land for farm acreage. To produce the amount of food
currently grown based on the per-acre yields of the 1940s before synthetic
pesticides, we would have to plough under about 300 million acres more than
is currently being used, equal to the size of Texas, New Mexico, and
Arizona combined, and double the amount of cropland currently being
harvested.

Pesticide production is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the
United States of America. The Environmental Protection Agency requires
pesticides to pass up to 120 toxicological analyses, chemical studies, and
environmental evaluations to ensure product safety. The tests evaluate each
pesticide's potential to adversely affect humans, wildlife, and endangered
species. Special attention is given to the pesticide's possible effects on
human health, including acute reactions such as poisoning and long-term
chronic health effects. The process takes an average of nine years. Only
one in 20,000 chemicals actually survives this rigorous scrutiny to become
a commercial product.

Do not be scared by half-truths and misinformation. Challenge CCHE to show
you sound-science proof to support its claims, and contact the Rockefeller
Foundation and demand to know why they funded such outrageously misleading
ads.

Then give your kids an apple--or a carrot or a peach--and know you are
helping to reduce their risk for cancer(Jay J. Vroom, CropLifeAmerica).


Rejoinder


It is nevertheless known that a number these MNCs have merged with each
other. For example, CibaGeigy, Sandoz and other multinational
chemical/pharmaceutical companies merged to become Novartis, while Novartis
Agribusiness merged with Zeneca (Astra-Zeneca) Agrochemicals to form
Syngenta(http://www.syngenta.com/en/syngenta/facts.asp)

Despite the environmental and health hazards that the products pose, these
MNCs have been aggressively marketing them to the farming communities of
India and other developing countries and are thus directly responsible for
adversely affecting millions of farmers and consumers of these countries.

In India they continue to create markets for pesticides like Methyl
Parathion (Metacid), Oxydemeton-Methyl (Metasystox), Monocrotophos
(Bilphos), Cypermethrin (Cybil and Bilcyp) and Edifenphos (Hinosan 50EC)
all of which fall in the Class 1 category. These pesticides are responsible
for several cases of poisoning. In addition, they have other deadly
pesticides crippling the farmers of the country: Butachlor, Quinalphos,
Fenvalerate, Endosulfan, Mancozeb, Fenthion, Dicofol, Acephate,
Fenitrothion, Carbaryl, Triazophos etc.

The above sets of pesticides contain chemicals that are cancer-causing,
that disrupt human hormonal functions are endocrine disrupting chemicals,
that create birth deformities in foetuses in the womb are teratogens, that
cause embryo-toxicity, that cause liver and kidney damage, that wreck the
nervous system, and that generally suppress human immunity to diseases.

The world knows that many of the above pesticides had to be withdrawn by
the MNCs in their home country. But they continue to practice corporate
racism and profit from continuing to sell these poisons in India.

Pesticides and Concern of USA Governing Hierarchy

The governing hierarchy of the USA has been facing considerable problems in
keeping its head high while still maintaining its support to chemical
industry, of which the pesticide industry is an important component.
Establishment of US EPA coincided with conclusion of the public debate over
DDT. Farmers, foresters, and public health departments all over the world
were using this pesticide since the 1940s to control pests such as Mexican
boll weevils, gypsy moths, and mosquitoes. Although highly effective, it
was soon found to be extremely persistent. The debate was prompted by the
publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. She, while reporting the
effects of DDT on wildlife, exposed the risks induced by DDT by
demonstrating that the pesticide not only infiltrated all areas of the
ecological system but was also exponentially concentrated as it moved to
higher levels in the food web. The book was effective in getting the use of
DDT banned in several states by 1968.

A tribunal of the US Court of Appeals in District Columbia had ordered
Ruckelshaus in January 1971 to begin the process of suspending the
registration of DDT with immediate effect. At the end of a sixty-day review
process, the administrator reported that he had found no good reason to
suspend DDT registration immediately. Several other pesticides, including
2, 4, 5-T (Agent Orange), Dieldrin, Aldrin, and Mirex, according to this
report also did not appear to constitute imminent health threats. This
action was bound to and did infuriate many environmentalists.

By 1971, the Environmental Defense Fund had mobilized effective public
opposition to DDT. The furore created by the refusal by Ruckelshaus to stop
DDT use prompted many to look for sinister political motivations. There
were some who suggested that he had been influenced by Mississippi
Congressman Jamie Whitten using his position as chairman of the
agricultural appropriations subcommittee of the House Appropriations
Committee to make Ruckelshaus conform to the interests of the agrochemical
lobby. It was, however, the staff that designed the pesticide registration
process and in the first place preached the advantages of effective
pesticides and minimized discussion of debatable health risks, that was at
the root of the advice, and that should have been held responsible for the
arguments.

Between March 1971 and June 1972, newspapers in USA reported both sides of
pesticide debate. Some articles recalled the glory days when pesticides
saved thousands of lives in World War II; how they had increased
agricultural productivity and allowed relatively few farmers to feed the
world's growing population; and how the most besieged insecticides, such as
DDT and Mirex, had little human toxicity. Other journalists praised
alternative approaches to pest management such as biological controls
(predator introduction, sterile males, and pheromone traps), integrated
controls (crop rotation and carefully delimited pesticide use), and
refinement of other, less persistent chemicals. Some reported the near
panic of North-western fruit growers facing beeless, and therefore
fruitless, seasons. They attributed the lack of pollinating insects to
pesticide use.

Throughout the spring of 1972, Ruckelshaus reviewed the evidence EPA had
collected during the agency's hearings on DDT cancellation and the reports
prepared by two DDT study groups, the Hilton and Mrak Commissions. Both
studies suggested that DDT be phased out due to the chemical's persistent
presence in ecosystems and noted studies suggesting that DDT posed a
carcinogenic risk to humans. In June, he followed the route already taken
by several states he banned DDT application in the United States. Though
unpopular among certain segments of EPA's constituency, his decision did
serve to enhance the activist image he sought to create for the agency, and
without prohibitive political cost.
The DDT decision was important to EPA for several reasons. While it did not
stop the debate over what constituted appropriate pesticide use, DDT
demonstrated the effectiveness of public pressure on EPA policy decisions.
It also made very visible the tightrope act that a regulatory agency
performs when it attempts to balance the demands for protection of human
and environmental health against legitimate economic demands. Furthermore,
EPA's decision set a precedent for regulatory decision-making. As an
advocate of the environment, Ruckelshaus and the agency chose to risk
erring on the side of protecting human health at the expense of economic
considerations, a course that would bring the agency under heavy criticism
before the end of its first decade.

As the Nixon administration broke up in the Watergate storm, Ruckelshaus
agreed to become acting FBI chief and then the Deputy Attorney General
before resigning along with Elliot Richardson in the "Saturday Night
Massacre". Russell Train, the Chairman of the Council on Environmental
Quality (CEQ), succeeded him as head of EPA. Train would see the first
significant reversal in the fortunes of environmental movement as
inflation, unemployment, and the energy crisis forced the nation to re-
prioritize its goals.

Train became head of an agency with credibility and an activist image. In
the area of water pollution, its efforts forced industries and
municipalities to take responsibility for their wastes. EPA became a
"gorilla in the closet" for local and state enforcement officials.
Sometimes the gorilla became a formidable adversary of states and
municipalities when it targeted them for enforcement. In its effort to
clean up city skies, the agency successfully encouraged clean air
technology development. It also forced the American public to face the
personal cost of pollution prevention, considered too costly by many in the
1970s.

EPA policy makers and others in the governing hierarchy of the USA, on
encountering conflicting scientific opinions regarding toxic chemicals in
the environment, chose to minimize the potential, long-term injury to
environmental and human health at the expense of concerns that had figured
prominently in traditional decision-making equations. EPA developed a
strong, diverse constituency that enabled it to continue to direct national
policy in a manner consistent with its mission i.e. protection of
environment by abating pollution, thereby enhancing the quality of American
life. This is the policy that the governing hierarchy of USA is still
following.

The governing hierarchy of USA that directs national policies on
environment has to withstand political pressure from the MNCs as well as
the public. The MNCs have to be listened to because they fund the
elections, while the public concern is overriding because that is the way
democracy works in the USA.

Public Concern

Led by public pressure in the USA the use of pesticides is now being
condemned all over in the industrialized countries because of the risks of
exposure to health of the workers and the non-agricultural users. The
health of workers and children has been of great concern after the
publication of Silent Spring. Public pressure on the Government, it may be
recalled, was effective in getting DDT banned in the USA in 1972.

The ban on organochlorines, OCs subsequently had a marked improvement in
the level of the pesticides in the food chain. Prior to 1973 over 80% of
domestic livestock and poultry in the USA had detectable levels of one or
the other OCs; over 96% of all broilers contained DDT and 59% of cows had
detectable levels of dieldrin. The trend changed after the ban was applied
and 80% of individuals of all species contained less than detectable levels
of OCs and 9% of cows had detectable levels of dieldrin. It however, took
six years for the environmental levels and tissue levels to strike a new
balance(J.E. Spaulding, Abstracts VIIe-26, Fifth International Congress of
Pesticide Chemistry, 1982, Kyoto).

The kind of pressure that worked in the case of OCs is now being applied on
the use of pesticides that are applied on the lawns, parks and golf
courses, and on those traded and exported to developing countries. Several
groups such as PANNA, the Rachael Carson Foundation and Stephen L. Tvedten
are actively engaged in the USA along with Green Peace and other NGOs in
the industrialized countries to bring in a total change and switch over to
safe alternatives. The marketing forces that are there to keep the
enterprise active have, however, the backing of the governing hierarchies
of the country as well as that of the multilateral financial institutions
on their side.

At this point it would be useful to describe the Proceedings of the
deliberations of the First International Peasant-Scientist Conference held
in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in late September 2002(PANUPS, Pesticide Action
Network Updates Service, Forging a Science for the People October 18,
2002).

Its Participants included representatives from the most significant
peasants movements in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Nepal,
scientists from Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, and
local and regional NGOs, including representatives of consumer
organizations. Discussions were centred on the premise that agricultural
science and technology is now often used as a tool to increase profits
rather than as a way to achieve food sovereignty. Many MNCs portray
pesticides and genetically engineered crops as the scientific means to
increase yields and farmers' incomes. However, these costly inputs often
lead to serious health and environmental impacts and force small farmers
into bankruptcy. At the same time, research at public institutions,
including the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
(CGIAR) {CGIAR is an association that supports agricultural research and
related activities carried out by sixteen autonomous research centres,
including the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)} increasingly
reflects the interests of private funding agencies at the expense of
research for the public good. In contrast, people-centered science includes
research that helps small farmers increase productivity and improves the
economic well being of rural communities e.g. research into biological
control, organic production systems and other agro ecological approaches.

Most innovations in agricultural biotechnology to date have, according to
participants of the above conference, been profit-driven rather than need-
driven. It was observed by the Director of PAN Asia and the Pacific that
the real drive behind developing these crops is not to make Third World
agriculture more productive, but rather to create more profits for MNCs.
The Director explained by giving the example of transgenic crops being
grown in recent years that have a majority comprising so-engineered as to
be resistant to the proprietary herbicides of the agrochemical company, and
not to increase yields. Peasant groups from Thailand, Indonesia and the
Philippines, as well as Pakistan, have protested the field-testing of
genetically engineered crops in their countries because they view these
technologies as merely an extension of the Green Revolution, a revolution
that essentially bypassed small farmers throughout Asia and benefited large
landowners.

The conference concluded with a unity statement in which the participants
pledged to challenge corporate-dominated science and the proliferation of
agrochemical and genetic engineering technologies. "We are committed to
unmasking corporate propaganda and tactics of domination, harassment, and
repression. We challenge our institutions and universities to be free from
corporate control; to develop genuine people-centered science curricula and
programs; and to promote and develop community-based research."

The realization that the above forces of marketing are inducing the use of
pesticides on their crops has yet to come among the decision makers in
developing countries. The pesticides have to be applied here in realization
that if the pest attack can render a whole population hungry it would be
better to kill the pests by using all available means. This is exactly what
the MNCs and the US psyche would like to inculcate in the minds of the
growers in the developing countries.

Cotton crop failure due to pest attack has been occurring in Pakistan since
1992 but it was worst in 1994. The damage done by the cotton leaf curl
virus to the economy of the country was of the order of over Rs 50 billion
during the few years after 1994. Cotton is the mainstay of the economy of
the country and the crop was saved using the deadliest poisons,
particularly because there was no other alternative. It is known that the
pesticides are poisons and also that each sowing season and the following
three months require spraying that intoxicates thousands of agricultural
workers. It is also known that a similar number of women cotton pickers
suffer from pesticide related diseases after the male labour force has been
through the ordeal.

The feudal system, poverty and pressure of salesmanship induced by the MNCs
are the components of social pollution that do not allow any priority
consideration of the negative impact of pesticide usage in the developing
countries. That is how the politics of toxicity governs the trade in
pesticides.