Circle of Poison

Year by year, the Third World pesticide marketing tragedy deepens, as chemical companies from the industrialized countries sell developing nations products banned from the marketplace at home as too dangerous.

In the July 1980 issue, Multinational Monitor presented excerpts from the forthcoming Institute for Food and Development Policy study on the problem: Circle of Poison: Pesticides and People in a Hungry World. These selections provided an overview on the size of trade, the companies involved, and the trade's impact on the health and safety of Third World workers.

The following excerpts focus on the critical link between the sale of banned pesticides and the growth of export-oriented agriculture. David Weir and Mark Schapiro, the investigative journalists who spent more than a year completing the study, present convincing evidence that skyrocketing pesticide sales do not contribute to the nutritional status of the hungry in developing countries, and may do much to harm it.

A final section completes the circle: Weir and Schapiro describe how, in one of the ironies that demonstrate the mutuality of interests between First World and Third World citizens, these exported hazards come back to haunt U.S. consumers-as the poisonous pesticide residues on crops imported from overseas.

Weir and Schapiro are members of the Center for Investigative Reporting, and their work on Circle of Poison was financed, in part, by the Fund for Investigative Reporting.

In keeping with the format of the Monitor, footnotes have either been dropped or incorporated into the text. Complete citations, as well as further sources of information, can be obtained by writing the Institute at the address below.

We see nothing wrong with helping the hungry world eat," says an executive of the Velsicol Chemical Corporation, defending his company's overseas sales of Phosvel after it was banned in the United States because of its links to nervous disorders. And many would agree with his logic: since we need pesticides to produce more food for the hungry, pesticide dangers are a necessary evil-part of the price of averting famine. "Men will not starve because there, are hazards in killing pests," is the way a Rohm & Haas official makes the same point.

But in the course of our investigation, we came to a startling conclusion: over half, and in some countries up to 70 percent, of the pesticides used in underdeveloped countries are applied to crops destined for export to consumers in Europe, Japan and the United States. The poor and hungry may labor in the fields, exposed daily to pesticide poisoning, but they do not get to eat the crops protected by pesticides.

In Central America a staggering 70 percent of the total value of agricultural production-mainly coffee, cocoa and cotton-is exported, despite widespread hunger and malnutrition there. Cotton is one of the biggest. pesticide users. In tiny El Salvador, cotton production absorbs one-fifth of all the deadly parathion used in the world. Twenty-four hundred pounds of insecticides are used each year on every square mile of cotton fields in the country. Yet cotton contributes to the global food supply only in processed cattle feed for Latin America's burgeoning beef production, almost half of which is exported to the United States and Europe. The meat remaining for local consumption is eaten by the rich and the middle classes, not by the hungry.

Herbicides like 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D (the basic ingredients of the infamous Agent Orange) are also used to help clear huge amounts of forest for grazing land in Latin America. Both herbicides leave residues of dioxin in the soil and water. Dioxin, ' one of the deadliest poisons ever developed, shows up later in birth defects, skin rashes and miscarriages.

In Indonesia, estate-style farms growing export crops-coconuts, coffee, sugar cane and rubber-consume 20 times the quantity of pesticides used by, the small holders growing food for local markets. This, despite the fact that small holders cultivate seven times more acreage than the estates.

Some might argue that although export crops do not directly feed hungry people, at least the foreign exchange earned benefits them indirectly: it is used to import economic necessities for development. But even a superficial look at development in most Third World countries belies this assumption. Foreign exchange earned by agricultural exports does not return to improve the lives of the workers through better wages, housing, medical care, or schools. Instead the foreign exchange is most often plowed into luxury consumer goods, urban industrialization, tourist facilities, and showy office buildings-all geared to the budgets and tastes of the top 10 to 20 percent living in the cities.

One reason pesticide use is so much more intense on export crops than on subsistence food crops is that the multinational corporations which control the production and marketing of exports demand a blemish free product. Nothing less, they say, will meet the discriminating standards of the consumers in Europe, North America or Japan.

"The Japs eat with their eyes" is how the manager of a Philippine banana_ plantation explained why they went to such lengths to produce a blemish-free fruit to ship to Japan. In the United States, too, it is estimated that 10 to 20 percent of insecticides used on fruits and vegetables serve only to improve their appearance.

Most people think of multinational food corporations in the Third World as big plantation owners. But over the last 20 years, corporations have become leery of owning land directly. As the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation warns, the possibility of "expropriation, revolution or insurrection [makes] plantations a poor risk." Multinational food producers and marketers such as Del Monte, United Brands (formerly United Fruit), and Castle & Cooke (Dole brand) have hit upon a safer strategy-contract farming. Rather than own land directly, these companies now often contract with large local landowners to produce crops for export to consumers in the industrial countries.

A contract farming boom hit southern Mindanao, the Philippines, in the late sixties. Before that time there were no bananas growing on its rich. coastal plains. Small farmers and tenant farmers grew rice and coconuts. Then came the multinational corporations, seeking contracts with local entrepreneurs to produce bananas for the lucrative Japanese market. Within ten years the entire area was transformed: now 21 giant plantations cover 57,000 acres, and bananas have become one of the country's top agricultural exports. In order to fulfill their banana contracts, the local entrepreneurs had to push small holders, tenants and "squatters" off the land. (Some of the so-called squatters had worked the land for mote than a generation.)

Although the multinational corporation may not own the land, it still calls the shots. When the corporation signs a local entrepreneur under contract, it specifies not only the amount of fruit or other commodity to be produced but also the amount of fertilizers - and pesticides to assure high yields and blemish-free products.

Once locked into the banana export contract, the plantation owner is totally dependent on the multinational firm. "Money is deducted from the banana grower's earnings to pay for things like pesticides and irrigation," explains Father Jerome McKenna, a U.S. missionary who worked in the area. "It's part of the contract. Those banana growers will be in debt to the pesticide companies for the rest of their lives."

Typically, pesticides are applied at three stages in the banana production process. Workers with heavy tanks strapped to their backs (and no masks or protective covering) routinely spray every tree. Twice a month a pesticide plane passes over the plantation, blanketing everything, including the drinking water supply. A group of banana workers recently petitioned Castle & Cooke to stop heavy pesticide spraying after local studies showed that . the workers have dangerously low oxygen levels in their blood, making them more susceptible to disease.

In the packing sheds, the bananas are dumped in long water-filled troughs to' remove some of the pesticides. "What bothers me most," says McKenna, "is that these people have very little protection from the chemicals they come in contact with. The women have their hands in the water up to their elbows all day long. They don't wear any gloves. Their only protection is plastic-type aprons they fashion for themselves." Finally, to protect the fruit during its long ocean voyage, women workers in the packing sheds spray every bunch of bananas with a fungus-killing agent.

McKenna checked at two nearby hospitals for reports of pesticide poisonings. One, run by Castle & Cooke, "didn't have any cases." But the other hospital, run independently of the company, had "reports all around of people poisoned by pesticides."

The contract farming system also gives the multinationals an easy way to avoid responsibility for pesticide poisoning. They can simply blame the local plantation owner for being careless.

The examples of cotton in El. Salvador or bananas in the Philippines tell us that. in large measure, pesticides in the Third World actually feed the well fed. but endanger the poor and the hungry.

Pesticide pollution does not respect national borders. As one of the world's largest food importers, We in the United States are not escaping hazardous chemicals simply by banning them at home.

Approximately 10 percent of our imported food contains illegal levels of pesticides, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But that 10 percent is deceptive. The FDA's most commonly used analytical method does not even check for 70 percent of the almost 900 food tolerances for cancer-causing pesticides. (A tolerance is the amount of pesticide allowed in our food.)

In addition, the FDA frequently finds mysterious, unknown chemicals in imported foods. Government investigators believe that some of these fugitive chemicals come from the millions of pounds of "unregistered" pesticides the EPA allows U.S. manufacturers to export without divulging any information about their chemical makeup or their effects on people or the environment.

Knowing how little we know, we suspect these statistics from the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO)* probably represent only the tip of the iceberg:

• Over 15 percent of the beans and 13 percent of the peppers imported from Mexico, during one recent period, were found to violate FDA pesticide residue standards.
• Nearly half the imported green coffee beans contain levels (from traces to illegal residues) of pesticides that are banned in the United States.
• The pesticide residue problem has escalated to such a level that all beef imports from Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala have been halted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Farming practices in those countries, including heavy pesticide use on crops near cattle-grazing land, have backfired on ranchers raising beef for the U.S. market.

Despite the widespread contamination of imported food, FDA inspectors rarely seize shipments or refuse them entry. Instead, a small sample is removed for analysis while the rest of the shipment proceeds to the marketplace . , . and the consumer. The rationale is that perishable food would spoil if held until the test results were known. But by the time the test results are availableshowing dieldrin or parathion or DDT in our food-it has already found its way into our stomachs. Recalls are difficult.

During one recent 15-month period, government investigators found that half of all the imported food identified by the FDA as pesticide-contaminated was marketed without any penalty to the importers or warnings to consumers! Even products from importers with repeated violations were routinely allowed to pass. Two examples:

• USDA officials in Dallas noticed a strong "insecticide-like smell" in a batch of cabbage from an importer with a record of shipping contaminated products. Despite USDA's complaint, the FDA allowed the cabbage to go to market. A sample that had been removed for testing later revealed illegal levels of BHC, the dangerously carcinogenic pesticide whose registration was cancelled in 1976 at Hooker Chemical's request.
• Pepper from a shipment that was sent on to supermarkets turned out to have 29 times more pesticide residue than allowed by U.S. law.

In a world of growing food interdependence, we cannot export our hazards and then forget them. There is no refuge. The mushrooming use of pesticides in the Third World is a daily threat to millions there-and a growing threat to all consumers here. Therefore we and Third World people are allies in a common effort to halt the production of hazardous pesticides and contain all pesticide use to safe levels. El

* "Better Regulation of Pesticide Exports and Pesticide Residues in Imported Foods is Essential." U.S. Government Accounting Office. June 22, 1979.

The Institute for Food and Development Policy is a not-for-profit research, documentation and education center. It attempts to examine the root causes of world hunger, with a particular focus on policies of corporations and governments that lead to "hunger in a world of plenty." Circle of Poison is available from the Institute for $3.95. For further information about the Institute, or to purchase a copy of the book, write:

IFDP
2588 Mission Street San Francisco, Cal. 94110