In 1990, the Burmese military regime, known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), ignored election results that showed 82 percent support for the National League for Democracy, headed by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The military placed Suu Kyi under house arrest and has violently repressed those seeking democratic reform in Burma. In a recent mop up, SLORC wiped out indigenous rebels to make way for an oil pipeline [see Blood in the Pipeline," Multinational Monitor, January/February 1995 ].
Business operations in Burma are a lifeline to the cash-strapped SLORC regime. It has been estimated that 70 to 90 percent of the profits from oil development, for example, directly flow to the junta. Bauer is the latest of a growing number of companies that have pulled out of Burma in response to a call by human rights activists to divest from the country. In May 1992, Levi Strauss & Co. pulled its operations out of Burma. In March 1994, Amoco announced that it, too, would abandon Burma.
"After months of researching the situation, we deemed that the political climate and growing opposition to trade in Burma posed a potential threat to our future manufacturing opportunities," an Eddie Bauer statement said.
The Bauer decision is "a sign that the growing campaign for corporate withdrawal from Burma is clearly having an effect," says Simon Billenness, of the socially responsible money management firm Franklin Research & Development.
The report, "Forbidden Fruit: Illegal Pesticides in the U.S. Food Supply," audited the results of 15,000 FDA tests and found 66 different illegal pesticides present in 42 fruits and vegetables that the FDA tested during 1992 and 1993. According to the report's findings, U.S. citizens eat 2 billion pounds of produce contaminated with illegal pesticides each year.
The report determined that the actual rate of illegal pesticides on 42 heavily consumed fruits and vegetables is 76 percent higher than the rate reported by the FDA.
"A disturbing number of fruit and vegetable growers routinely break the law," says Richard Wiles, vice president of the Environmental Working Group and co-author of the report. "The public is simply not protected from illegal pesticides."
The group says the FDA lacks the legal authority, testing methods and lab resources to police the food supply for over 900 different pesticides and pesticide by- products. Under the law, the FDA cannot hold food shipments while they are being tested and cannot assess civil penalties against growers who violate the law.
The Environmental Working Group report contains useful suggestions as well as two shortcomings, a written FDA response says. The limitations are that "it overstates the incidence of illegal pesticide residues in domestic and imported foods, and it fails to represent accurately the effectiveness of FDA's residue monitoring program," the agency release said. Specifically, the FDA said the report misinterpreted a slight "trace" or "blip" in FDA data that could represent a false positive as "intentional violations of U.S. pesticide tolerances."
What the FDA identified as "constructive recommendations" in the report include proposals to: control pesticide residues by checking "critical control points," as is practiced in the seafood industry; enhancing computer availability of EPA tolerance data; and improved FDA record keeping.
The half-built Kemano addition would have diverted water from the Nechako River in central British Columbia to add 285 megawatts of generating capacity to the existing Kemano hydro plant that was built in the 1950s. The prime user of the electricity would have been an Alcan smelter.
The project was approved in 1987, but the Canadian government granted Alcan an exemption from the required environmental assessment process in exchange for a fish- conservation program to be implemented by the company. The province has now permanently halted the project, however, concluding that it was economically unviable and would cause excessive harm to the Fraser River and its salmon population. "The project would've created a grand total of something like five jobs and threatened about 20,000 jobs tied to the commercial fishing industry in British Columbia," says David Boyd, a staff attorney with the Sierra Legal Defense Fund in Vancouver.
The project would have reduced the water level in the Nechako to 12 percent of its original flow. Area indigenous groups say the project would harm sensitive fisheries and the surrounding Native communities, already nearly wiped out by the first phase of the project. Cancellation of the project "was a cause of celebration by environmental, indigenous and fishing groups" in the province, Boyd says.
"We're moving to protect our valuable salmon forever," British Columbia Premier Mike Harcourt told the media.
The decision drew a harsh response from the business community. "This is just one more signal that business is not wanted in British Columbia," Gary Livingstone, president of the British Columbia Mining Association, told the Montreal Gazette. "I don't think Canadian and British Columbian people can afford these kinds of decisions." An Alcan statement said the company was "understandably disapointed."
- Aaron Freeman