How Big Tobacco fixed its problem with pesticide "regulators"
The warning bells had started ringing in 1989, when the Environmental Protection Agency called into question the whole family of EBDCs by concluding that the chemical byproduct they generate is probably a highly potent human carcinogen.
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Subject: How Big Tobacco fixed its problem with pesticide "regulators"--
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 19:44:31 -0400
From: Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State of
California, Department of Pesticide Regulation
Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought you might like to read an
article entitled: How Big Tobacco fixed its problem with pesticide regulators By
ROBERT JAMES PARSON - Aug. 11, 2000 ©2000 San Francisco Examiner - either read
below or see the URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/2000/08/11/NEWS7457.dtl
IN ITS continuing war against Big Tobacco, the World Health
Organization has just fired another round. Although the war is far from over,
the WHO's recent report about how Big Tobacco has tried to subvert it will lower
yet further the tobacco industry in the eyes of the general public.
The product of a blue-ribbon investigating committee led by
Swiss Surgeon General Dr. Thomas Zeltner, "Tobacco Company Strategies to
Undermine Tobacco Control Activities at the World Health Organization"
makes interesting reading, but in view of what came out of the Minnesota trials
in 1998, much of it is predictable - with one chilling exception.
Chapter Eight, in what first appears to be a strange
digression, deals with standard-setting for pesticides. In fact, the pesticides
in question, grouped together under the acronym EBDC, have been a lifeline for
the tobacco industry for many years. Their classification as safe by the WHO has
had widespread ramifications throughout the world, most likely negative on all
counts - except the tobacco companies' balance sheets.
The high stakes were summed up in a 1992 memorandum by
scientist Helmut Rief, in the employ of Philip Morris, writing for the company
executives: "(1) Fungal diseases are among the most severe problems for
tobacco and other crops around the world; (2)
the most menacing disease - blue mold - can only be controlled by a constant
application of fungicides; (3) EBDCs are the most widely used fungicides which
do not create resistant fungus strains."
Rief then points out that the classification decision of
WHO's Joint Meeting on Pesticide Residues would be critical to the future of
these chemicals, and, by extension, to the financial health of the tobacco
industry. (The joint meeting is sponsored by the WHO and the U.N.'s Food and
Agricultural Organization and deals with safety levels of pesticides.)
The warning bells had started ringing in 1989, when the
Environmental Protection Agency called into question the whole family of EBDCs
by concluding that the chemical byproduct they generate is probably a highly
potent human carcinogen.
There were two big problems. The first was that the
byproduct seemed to be genotoxic: It damaged genetic material in such a way that
would open the door to cancer formation. The second was even more alarming: The
EPA could not come up with a "threshold" level below which the
byproduct would not cause cancer.
Thoroughly dismayed at the news, Big Tobacco hired a
consultant with long ties to the WHO and its international standard-setting
bureaucracy, Gaston Vettorazzi, none other than the former head of the WHO's
pesticides division. Vettorazzi immediately set about cranking out a series of
scientific monographs that essentially denied the EPA's findings - when they
didn't simply ignore them.
Exploiting his reputation as former section head,
Vettorazzi then went back to the WHO, explained that he had numerous clients
interested in pesticides (his successor, John Herrman, was led to believe that
these were pesticide manufacturers) and that this had led to his doing the
monographs as clarification papers.
Herrman, whose division is chronically strapped for funds,
like most of the WHO, gratefully took on Vettorazzi as a volunteer, the
monographs were liberally distributed to the members of the joint meeting group,
and Vettorazzi was eventually made a temporary expert at the joint meeting.
Big Tobacco's umbrella lobby group, not wishing Vettorazzi to be out of pocket, managed to come up with $100,000 for each of his two 18-month stints with them, and Philip Morris graciously contributed $7,000 per month pocket money plus expenses. At no time did Vettorazzi reveal to anybody at the WHO his connection to Big Tobacco.
The climax came when Vettorazzi, as "temporary
expert," was invited to participate in the joint meeting session that would
review the EBDCs. Rief's claim that the decision was critical was no
understatement. If the byproduct was genotoxic and there was no threshold, the
chemicals would be withdrawn from the market, and there was no comparable
replacement product (POISON). Period.
The WHO investigating committee found almost no paper trail
for much of Vettorazzi's interactions
with the joint meeting people, but the meeting's conclusions mirrored his
monographs' contentions, and the EPA evidence was similarly either dismissed
offhand or ignored. But that was only the beginning.
The meeting's conclusions were then passed on to the Food
and Agriculture Organization's Codex Alimentarius Commission and incorporated
into general international standards. These standards are enforced by the World
Trade Organization. Thus, if any country were to try to ban the use of EBDCs, it
could be brought before the Trade Organization's tribunal and penalized until
the ban was lifted and compensation for lost sales paid. (It is indicative of
the status of the United Nations standard-setting system that no country has yet
challenged the Joint Meeting's decision on the EBDCs, notwithstanding the EPA's
findings.)
But there is yet another dimension, beyond the specter of
hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic chemicals being sprayed on the good Earth
over the years simply because it is profitable to tobacco companies. The use of
EBDCs is not limited to tobacco. They are also widely used on food crops and
they leave residue (CONTAMINATION) on those crops.
Not surprisingly, the investigating committee - and Zeltner
personally - has called for a thorough review of the procedures that led to the
joint meeting's decision that the use of EBDCs is safe. There is a further
warning about Vettorazzi's dealings with the Codex Alimentarius Commission
(which, being beyond the committee's mandate, was not investigated) and the
whole way international pesticide safety standards are set.
But there remain other serious problems at the WHO, such as
a disclosure policy for those working there, both paid and unpaid. (The
committee has suggested the EPA disclosure policy is an example of how to do it
right.) In fact, the chapter closes with some 20 recommendations, many quite
specific, to avoid in the future such infiltration and devaluation of the WHO's
work.
The WHO head, former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem
Brundtland, has duly taken delivery of the committee's work and thanked its
members for much hard work well done. What the WHO does with the recommendations
remains to be seen.
Robert James Parsons is a Geneva-based journalist who has written previously on depleted uranium.
©2000 San Francisco Examiner
Page A23
Well Mr. Helliker,
What is not done for love is done for money. Your dangerous "registered" POISONS are obviously
done for money/profit. Someday
everyone has to answer why they did what they did - what will you say then?
Respectfully, Stephen L. Tvedten
TOP
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