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June 5, 2008
- Teenage farm worker dies of heat exhaustion
- Farmers expelled from Food Summit in Rome
- Atrazine disrupts human hormone activity
- Cancer Society to Alberta: Ban Pesticides!
- Evidence pesticides damage DNA
- Ugandan framers push for DDT ban
- Democrats offer chemical reform bill
Teenage farm worker dies of heat exhaustion
Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17-year-old farmworker, collapsed while working in a sweltering vineyard outside Stockton, California on May 14. Before Maria was taken to a clinic, a Merced Farm Labor company foreman instructed coworkers to tell doctors the teenager collapsed “because she was jogging to get exercise. Since she’s underage, it will create big problems for us.” Maria was also pregnant. Doctors said if Jimenez had arrived sooner, she might have survived. Ten farmworkers have died from heat exposure in the last four years. After three workers perished in summer 2005, California Governor Schwarzenegger issued new regulations to train workers on heat stress prevention. According to the Sacramento Bee, a 2007 state investigation found 36% of employers were ignoring the new regulations. June 4, 500 people organized by the United Farm Workers (UFW) completed a memorial march to Sacramento to appeal to lawmakers to increase protection for farm workers. “How much is the life of a farm worker worth?” asks UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez. “Maria had only one life and now it is gone,” but enforcement of effective safety laws “can help affirm that Maria’s life was important and that she didn’t die in vain.” The Associated Press reports: “On the day Vasquez Jimenez died, relatives say she was making $8 per hour on a 9.5-hour shift — more than four hours over the state limit for minors working during business days.”
shareMORE – Send condolence to Maria’s family — watch a memorial video| Digg This
Farmers expelled from Food Summit in Rome
On June 3, ten farmer and civil society leaders were forcefully removed from the FAO Summit on the Food Crisis in Rome. The activists were staging a peaceful action to protest the fact that corporate control and speculation — two leading causes of recent spikes in food prices — are not being discussed at the Rome meeting. “We are outraged that such fundamental aspects of the food crisis were nowhere on the agenda,” declared Paul Nicholson, a member of the International Coordinating Committee of Via Campesina, the global peasants’ organization. The people were arrested as they carried posters contrasting agribusiness’ record profits with a record 900 million people that cannot afford to eat. Profits for Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, were up 108 percent; Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, the world’s largest food traders, registered increases of 86 and 42 percent respectively; Mosaic, one of the world’s largest fertilizer companies, saw its profits rise 1,134 percent. At previous FAO events, civil society was given the opportunity to have a dialogue with the delegates. For this Summit, farmers, fisherfolk, agricultural workers and indigenous people were shut out of the discussion. “We are concerned that this Summit will only reinforce corporate control of the food system and lead to a further destruction of the way of life of Indigenous peoples and their survival,” said Saul Vicente Vasquez of the International Indian Treaty Council.
Last night, June 4, “Negotiations on a final text were due to go on until late in the evening but officials at [FAO]… said the talks were aimed at watering down the joint declaration to the point at which all delegations could accept it,” according to the Guardian. After agrofuel production was identified as a significant cause of the increase in world grain prices, and the U.S. was attacked for its biofuel policies, the U.S. responded by “leading resistance to a joint statement on the need to review the cultivation of crops for biofuels.”
shareMORE – For updates see IPC Food Sovereignty. |
Atrazine disrupts human hormone activity
shareMORE – read about pesticides and breast cancer |
Cancer Society to Alberta: Ban Pesticides!
More than 100 Canadian cities have some type of law prohibiting cosmetic (landscape) use of pesticides, and Quebec has imposed a province-wide ban. Alberta remains the only province without such pesticide restrictions. The Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) has called on Alberta to ban the sale and use of cancer-causing pesticides. A recent CCS poll found 87 percent of respondents supported restrictions on the use of cosmetic pesticides on public and private land. “We don’t want to wait until the science is 100 percent conclusive,” CCS spokesperson Lorie Boychuk told CBC News. “There’s enough evidence today there is a threat. The bottom line is they’re non-essential pesticides.” Boychuk said there are a number of healthier alternatives for lawn care — such as overseeding, aerating and fertilizing naturally — all of which allow a healthy lawn to choke out unwanted weeds. In an online response, Kim Leaman wrote: “Why are we so enamored with perfect lawns? Why are we willing to poison our homes and the entire planet just to make everything ‘pretty’? Get over it… let the dandelions feed the bees that make our gardens and crops grow.”
shareMORE – Home depot to pull pesticides in Canada |
Evidence pesticides damage DNA
shareMORE – read about alternatives to the Green Revolution |
Ugandan farmers push for DDT ban
Ugandan Government lawyers are battling farmers and agricultural exporters over the government’s use of DDT to fight malaria. According to the Australian Broadcasting Company, the farmers are arguing that organic production businesses are being destroyed because many western countries refuse to import food containing traces of DDT. After spraying began in northern Uganda in April, agricultural exporters complained that the government had failed to follow the World Health Organization’s strict guidelines on the use of DDT. Lawyers representing the exporters have received permission from Uganda’s High Court to mount a legal challenge to the Government’s use of DDT. The court has ordered a temporary ban on DDT spraying while the case is being heard.
shareMORE – PANUPS on DDT threatening Uganda’s organic farms |
Democrats offer chemical reform bill
On May 20, U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Reps. Hilda Solis (D-CA) and Henry Waxman (D-CA) introduced the Kid-Safe Chemical Act (H.R. 6100). The bill would require the EPA to conduct “safety determinations” on 300 commercial chemicals by 2012 and encourage the development of safer, “green chemistry” alternatives to existing chemicals. Inspired by the European Union’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) program, the bill requires companies to submit risk information before new chemicals can be produced or imported. The U.S. Toxic Substance Control Act is considered ineffective since it fails to consider and provide adequate information about chemical risks. Environmental Defense Fund Senior Scientist Richard Denison is pleased that Congress is taking action: “At last, we have a serious effort to bring U.S. chemicals policy into the 21st century. This legislation would close the gap between the policies of the U.S. and those of many other developed countries.”
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