Subject: Growing
Concerns
Date:
Wed, 19 Jun 2002
07:14:33 -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
cc: Christine Whitman
whitman.christine@epa.gov
Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought you might like to read an
article dated: June 17, 2002 entitled: Growing Concerns - Canadians buy millions
of dollars worth of Colombian-grown flowers yearly, but at what price? by Sarah
Cox.
A traveller flying into the Colombian city of Bogotá sees green fields give
way to swaths of white. It takes a few moments to realize that the incongruous
scene below is not snow-dusted farmland.
Soon, the eye discerns row upon row of greenhouses encased in chalky plastic.
Underneath the plastic are flowers - daisies, roses, carnations, chrysanthemums
- cultivated for export to Canada, the United States and Europe.
Colombia now exports more fresh flowers than any country except Holland.
Flowers have been raised on the Bogotá savannah since the mid-1960s, but in the
past 10 years the industry has experienced a phenomenal growth.
More than $45.5 million worth of Colombian flowers arrived in Canada in 1999,
double the value of a decade ago. Virtually all the carnations sold in Canada
are grown in Colombia. About half the roses
sold here are also imported, with the majority coming from Colombia and
neighbouring Ecuador.
The beauty of these fragrant blossoms belies their origins, for the story of
the Colombian flower industry is a tale of environmental degradation and human
exploitation.
Flowers are a voracious crop. They consume more pesticides than any other
agricultural product. They gobble up savannah farmland once used to grow local
dietary staples like potatoes. Their thirst for water is also prodigious. The
water table below the plains fell so low after four decades of flower production
that regional taps ran dry--until a water pipe was extended from Bogotá in the
late 1990s.
Just as flower cultivation is harsh on the environment, so is it unsparing on
the majority of Colombia's estimated 75,000 flower workers. Most, about 70 per
cent, are women who earn just (US) 58 cents an hour. They toil up to 60 hours a
week, often without full overtime pay, before special occasions like Mother's
Day and Valentine's Day.
The workers suffer from a myriad of health problems. Their ailments are
linked to exposure to the pesticide cocktails that are frequently applied to
guarantee beautiful, pest-free blooms.
Many workers are forced to re-enter greenhouses only one or two hours after
they are sprayed, says Laura Rangel, a 36-year-old Colombian lawyer. "There is
an atmosphere of pressure that is reinforced with contemptible or degrading
treatment. For example, calling workers 'animals' or threatening them constantly
with firing. In extreme cases, fumigation is done when workers are present."
Rangel is the coordinator of international work for Corporacion Cactus, a
non-profit group that provides legal advice and support for flower workers. She
says some of Colombia's 500 flower farms treat employees well and are improving
environmental practices. But many farms have such high quotas for planting or
picking flowers that workers are forced to "limit their meal and bathroom
breaks," says Rangel.
She cites other common practices, too, like illegal pregnancy testing of new
workers and refusal to renew pregnant workers' contracts; the use of casual or
subcontracted labourers who are dismissed after one to three months (even though
new employees are hired to take their places) and; the immediate firing of
anyone suspected of trying to organize a union.
The Bogotá savannah's warm, cloudy weather is well suited to growing
carnations. But along with the equatorial climate come tropical pests. There are
a multitude of mites, midges, flies, and fungi that nobody wants in North
America or Europe. So flower growers spray, to ensure their perishable wares
will not be turned back by border inspectors.
Of the 134 pesticides approved for use in the Colombian flower industry,
seven are considered by the Colombian government to be "extremely toxic." At
least 12 of the approved pesticides, including some on that "extremely toxic"
list, are named by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as possible or
probable carcinogens.
Like Aldicarb and Metomil, insecticides and nematicides that belong to a
class of pesticides known as N-methyl carbonates. Exposure "can cause sterility
or decreased fertility, impaired development, birth defects of the reproductive
tract, and metabolic disorders," according to the Pesticide Action Network North
America (PANNA).
In 1990, researchers from the Colombian National Institute of Health studied
pregnant flower workers and found a higher-than-average rate of miscarriages,
premature births, and congenital malformations among their offspring. In one
group of 1,320 children born to former flower workers, 222 (or 17 per cent) had
congenital malformations.
Flower farms have traditionally belonged to wealthy Colombians. The structure
of ownership began to change in 1998 when Dole Food Company Inc. bought 23
flower farms in Colombia and Ecuador.
Dole's flower subsidiary, Americaflor Ltda., is now the world's largest
grower of fresh flowers, employing 11,133 workers in Colombia and 1,028 in
Ecuador, according to Rick Harrah, Dole's Latin American president.
Dole trumpets its environmental and labour standards for flower farms. "Dole
and its subsidiaries are champions of environmental quality and worker welfare,"
Harrah told the U.S. Senate Finance Committee subcommittee on international
trade in August 2001.
Yet Harrah also underscored just how tenuous any improvements within the
Colombian flower industry are. Dole's voluntary programs to improve the lives of
workers will be reduced or cancelled, he said, if the U.S. Senate does not renew
the Andean Trade Preferences Act. (The act allowed flowers to enter the U.S.
duty-free for 10 years until it expired last December. A bill to renew it is
still stalled in the U.S. Senate.)
In Switzerland and Germany, shoppers can buy carnations and roses with a
"fair flowers" label. The label tells consumers the flowers were produced in
accordance with the International Code of Conduct for the Production of Cut
Flowers (ICC).
The ICC was established four years ago by European non-profit groups and
unions. Growers who sign the code agree to follow international rights
principles, basic environmental standards and international labour conventions.
These include a 48-hour work week, a living wage, and security of employment for
their workers. The code also includes detailed health and safety provisions.
Four dozen flower farms around the world have signed the code, including two
from Colombia. But "fair flowers" are not available in Canada. Rangel hopes to
change that: she is currently having
discussions with Canadian non-profit organizations, such as the Maquila
Solidarity Network , to determine how a fair flowers label could be created.
Last year, telephone threats forced Cactus to move its headquarters.
"Something bad is going to happen," the first male voice said last April. The
second caller, last July, announced that he was a member of the paramilitaries
of Cundinamarca, a savannah province where many flower farms are located. "Keep
fucking around with flower cultivation and you will pay," he warned.
Cactus subsequently lodged a complaint with the Colombian government, and the
Ministry of the Interior took undisclosed steps to protect Rangel and other
staff. A recent Amnesty International report, Colombia: Human Rights Under
Attack, points out that various Colombian paramilitary groups were responsible
for killing 170 people in January 2001 alone. More than 35,000 people in
Colombia have been killed during the past decade, the report notes. Human-rights
defenders, judicial officials, and trade unionists were among the main groups
targeted.
Asked if she ever fears for her life, Rangel responds by citing a verse by
Colombian writer Manuel Mejía Vallejo: "To be afraid is natural / says a tested
man / But to live in fear / is the worst death of all.”
Sarah Cox is an award-winning
freelance writer based in Victoria, B.C. She is a regular contributor to The
Georgia Straight, Vancouver's weekly newsmagazine, where a longer version of
this article first appeared. Her last story for rabble.ca, "Welcome Mat for
Wal-Mart," appeared March 26, 2002.
Well Mr. Helliker, President
Woodrow Wilson speaking in New York City, September 9, 1912 said: "Liberty has
never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of
government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of
liberty is a history of limitations of government power, not the increase of
it." "Some regulators" insist that only their dangerous "registered"
POISONS can be used/misused to "control" pest problems - no matter what the
cost! I have posted a free pest control book on the web that uses safe and
far more effective alternatives, it is entitled: THE BUG STOPS HERE.
You can download it for free at:
http://www.thebestcontrol.com. Respectfully, Stephen L. Tvedten
From Steve - Quotes to Ponder:
"The
first task is population control at home. How do we go about it? Many of my
colleagues feel that some sort of compulsory birth regulation would be
necessary to achieve such control. One plan often mentioned involves the
addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of
the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the
desired population size." — Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, p.135
"A
total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels,
would be ideal." — Ted Turner - CNN founder and UN supporter - quoted
in The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, June '96
"Childbearing
[should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a
government license ... All potential parents [should be] required to use
contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen
for childbearing." — David Brower - first Executive Director of the
Sierra Club; founder of Friends of the Earth; and founder of the Earth Island
Institute - quoted by Dixie Lee Ray, Trashing the Planet, p.166
"Truth
is not what is; truth is what people perceive it to be." -- Adolf Hitler,
Propaganda Maxim
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