PANNA: Made in the USA Does Not Mean Food Safety for Mexican Consumers

In early 2003, under the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico opened its market to free U.S. imports, which meant no trade tariffs to import agricultural products except maize, beans and powdered milk. A growing peasant movement criticizes this liberalization of agricultural trade and has organized massive demonstrations on the U.S.-Mexico border and in Mexico City, the likes of which have not been seen in Mexico for more than 20 years.

The peasant coalition movement, El Campo No Aguanta Más (Farms Can Take No More), has proposed a new state rural policy that includes an increased agricultural budget and renegotiation of the NAFTA agricultural chapter. The movement's proposal includes a food safety policy based on food sovereignty that ensures quality and healthy food for Mexican consumers. The growing number of complaints about foods imported from the U.S. that are of poor quality, contaminated, damaged or discarded and the clear risks of food contamination through industrialized and intensive agriculture (practices which the Mexican government views as an agricultural model) calls for a thorough consideration of the El Campo no Aguanta Más food safety policy.

The U.S. agricultural model of high productivity and specialization has concentrated power in a handful of agribusiness corporations and forced a large number of small-scale producers off the land. This model is made possible through government agricultural subsidies and by the assignment of associated environmental and health costs -- environmental contamination and the poisoning of workers and consumers -- as external to agricultural production. In addition, the model is forcibly applied through an aggressive policy of commercial penetration supported by free trade agreements through which surplus food products are exported at prices below the cost of production -- often referred to as food dumping. In addition to undermining local agricultural economies, dumping of U.S. agricultural products brings the transfer of associated health and environmental risks to other consumers.

It is a myth that importing U.S. food products will guarantee better quality for Mexican consumers. Recent reports from U.S. environmental and consumer organizations show some of the health risks resulting from food contamination in the U.S.

Persistent organic pollutants

A 2001 study by PANNA, based on government sources and university research, calculates that 20% of foods consumed in the U.S. are contaminated with residues of organochlorine pesticides prohibited in the U.S., especially dieldrin and DDE (a metabolite of DDT) and with dioxins (occurring as unintended pollutants).¹ These contaminants were found in fruits, vegetables, beef, chicken, and diary products such as milk, yogurt and cheese.

The organochlorine insecticides and dioxins constitute part of the group of chemicals called Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) that persist in the environment for decades and accumulate in the food chain.² Dioxins are carcinogenic and have been identified as hormone disruptors that can alter reproductive, neurological and immunological systems as well as fetal and infant development. The PANNA report shows that although the level of POPs contaminants found in each food source was small, when total daily dietary consumption of all foods was considered, the levels approached or exceeded those established as health protective thresholds by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. These findings, however are not sufficient for regulatory action, because levels of action established by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for removal of a product from the market are as much as 50 times the levels considered safe by other agencies.

Pesticides that cause cancer

The U.S. uses an estimated 33% of the world's synthetic pesticides.³ The primary use is in agriculture where hundreds of thousand of tons are used each year. California uses 25% of pesticides used in the U.S., which include pesticides that cause cancer, affect reproductive development, are hormone disruptors and neurotoxins, or are classified as restricted.

Hormones and antibiotic resistant bacteria

According to Union of Concerned Scientists calculations, 70% of the total antibiotic use in the U.S. -- 24.6 million of pounds -- is administered in low doses in the animal feed of healthy pigs, chickens and cattle, not for therapeutic reasons, but to promote growth and fattening in the over populated and unhygienic factory farms.⁴

The abuse of antibiotics as food additives can promote bacterial resistance to these medicines threatening the health of the animals and that of consumers. Many of the antibiotics used in industrial livestock facilities such as penicillin, tetracillin and erythromycin are the same or similar to those prescribed for treatment of a large number of human infections. The bacteria can develop resistance to one or more antibiotics creating a serious decrease in effectiveness in medical treatments for infected humans.

In October 2002, Pilgrims Pride -- the second largest U.S. poultry producer -- had to recall 27.4 million pounds of chicken and turkey meat because listeria contamination had caused at least seven deaths and 46 illnesses in the northeastern U.S. In 1999, more than 11,000 people were sickened after eating chicken contaminated with campylo bacteria resistant to fluoroquinolin -- one of the most frequently used antibiotics for human treatments. This represented an increase of eight thousand cases over the number reported for the previous year in the U.S.

U.S. laws do not require companies to notify health authorities of the destination of products known or suspected of being contaminated and considers this information confidential. For that reason, public alerts of contaminated foods are delayed until after the majority of the product has been consumed, as demonstrated by Steve Suppan of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

In 1997, the World Health Organization recommended the prohibition of the use of antibiotics as animal growth promoters. In 1998, the European Union prohibited use of human antibiotics as additives for animal feed. However, commercial interests of transnational veterinary pharmaceutical companies have superseded consumer protection.

Use of hormones is another method employed to increase livestock production. In the U.S., more than 90% of beef cattle receive hormone implants in their ears or hormones are added to feed in order to increase their metabolic efficiency and weight gain in the shortest possible time. Injections into cattle of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) are also common. This genetic engineering tool is used to increase milk production by 10% to 15% in a few weeks. Some studies suggest that consumption of rBGH milk threatens consumer health and may cause allergic reactions, prostate cancer, colon cancer or breast cancer. Critics also claim that rBGH increases the rate of mastitis (inflammation of teats) which in turn leads to greater use of antibiotics, requires greater investment in monitoring for drug residues in milk, and causes cows to die at a younger age.

In Europe rBGH is banned for use in milk production. Its use remains permitted in Mexico and the U.S., benefiting primarily its producer -- Monsanto. Furthermore, no labels are required to notify consumers if the hormone was used in the process of milk production or the production of other milk products.

New risks and uncertainties of consuming genetically engineered foods

The promotion of genetically engineered (GE) crops and other genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) create new uncertainties and health risks for consumers, as well as environmental risks, such as the genetic contamination of native maize varieties in Mexico. Risks of allergies, antibiotic resistance and possible immune system impacts of GMOs are the fuel for many heated debates. While many of these possible impacts still lack definitive scientific evidence, sufficient evidence exists with which to question the propaganda of corporations that present GE foods as innocuous or "equivalent" to foods produced using modern conventional agricultural methods.⁵

Protecting consumers in Mexico

Agriculture, health and customs authorities should establish clear mechanisms of coordination to verify and certify the quality and safety of foods consumed in Mexico. These steps should include regular public notification as well as the control and monitoring of pesticides, hormones, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and POPs contaminants in domestic and imported food supplies.

So far Mexican authorities have approached the topic of food safety by following U.S. standards, the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement and the UN's Codex Alimentarius Commission established jointly by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the WHO. However, international consumer organizations have warned that these agencies' main objective is to reduce protective measures that pose barriers to free trade, rather than to guarantee effective protection of health and the environment.

El Campo No Aguanta Más proposes a food safety policy that incorporates the precautionary principle to reduce risks to public health and the environment, and that supports alternative food production practices to prevent those risks. The El Campo policy advocates food sovereignty, or the right of each country to maintain and strengthen its own capacity for food production. Food sovereignty would remove control of the food production process from transnational corporations with their agribusiness emphasis on cash crops and support the food production of organized peasant and indigenous communities, based on biological and cultural diversity.

Mexico has a variety of successful organic producers and 45 organic products that demonstrate the feasibility of replacing synthetic pesticides and GE crops with ecological pest control and biological fertilizers. There are also commercially successful examples of dairy production without the use of hormones and antibiotics based on open pasturing, forage rotation and homeopathic veterinary medicine. The entire rural sector needs programs that support peasant agricultural production, develop agroecological pest control and livestock management, and assist peasant organic production to become accessible to Mexican consumers rather than only the export market.

Mexican agriculture authorities should remove subsidies for the purchase of GE cotton and soybean seeds and establish a moratorium on the cultivation of all genetically modified crops, especially maize. Authorities must also recognize consumers' right to know and require food labels that identify a food's source and whether it is produced with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics or genetically modified crops. Environmental authorities should implement the Stockholm Convention and include monitoring for POPs contaminants in food and prevention measures in the national POPs implementation plan.

A truly alternative agricultural policy for Mexico should strive for food sovereignty by renegotiating the agricultural chapter of NAFTA; supporting the peasant economy; and designing a food safety policy that focuses on prevention and transparency and guarantees the right to know and the right to eat safe food at accessible prices for the majority of the population. As free trade agreements and the expansion of industrial agriculture bring globalized risks to food security, a broad coalition of peasant, environmentalist and consumers organizations is needed to create a sustainable food system.

Fernando Bejarano González is Coordinator of PAN Mexico, Red de Acción sobre Plaguicidas y Alternativas en México (RAPAM), rapam@prodigy.net.mx. This article was originally published in the Masiosare supplement of La Jornada, Mexico, January 26, 2003.

Translated by Margaret Reeves.

Sources: For implementation of the Stockholm Convention and IPEN see http://www.ipen.org/; For a report on pesticides in Mexico see: La Espiral del Veneno, Guía Crítica Ciudadana sobre Plaguicidas, Fernando Bejarano, RAPAM, Texcoco, 2002

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