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Poisoning Peruvian kids (Friday, Sept. 06, 2002 -- CropChoice news) -- The following items come courtesy of the Agribusiness Examiner.
CBG NETWORK: Following a nine-month investigation, a Peruvian
Congressional Subcommittee has issued its final report on the poisoning
deaths by the organophosphate pesticide methyl parathion of 24 children
in the remote village of Tauccamarca in October 1999.
The Subcommittee concluded that there is significant evidence of
administrative and criminal responsibility on the part of Ministry of
Agriculture, and of criminal responsibility on the part of the
agrochemical company Bayer. Headquartered in Germany, Bayer has been a
principle Peruvian importer and distributor of both methyl and ethyl
parathion.
The report recommends that the government and Bayer indemnify the
families of the dead children. The Commission was formed in response to
an appeal made by the parents of the deceased children and of eighteen
other children who were also poisoned but survived.
Initial medical analysis indicates that several of these children will
suffer significant long-term health and developmental problems as a
result of the poisoning. Bayer widely promoted its methyl parathion
formulation, know as "Folidol," throughout Peru, targeting its marketing
on use in Andean crops cultivated primarily by small farmers, the great
majority of whom speak Quechua only and are illiterate.
Bayer packaged Folidol, a white powder that resembles powdered milk and
has no strong chemical odor, in small plastic bags, labeled in Spanish
and displaying a picture of vegetables. The labels provided no
understandable safety information, such as pictograms, for the majority
of users in these remote villages, and little indication of the danger
of the product.
The families had previously brought suit against Bayer asserting that
the company should have taken steps to prevent the foreseeable misuse of
this extremely toxic product, given the severe health risks presented by
methyl parathion and the well known socio-economic conditions in the
Peruvian countryside.
The suit seeks justice for the children that perished, guarantees of
medical monitoring for the surviving children, and regulatory reforms to
prevent future tragedies. It also names the Ministry of Agriculture for
failure to enforce pesticide regulations: uncontrolled sales of
"restricted use" pesticides including parathion are common throughout
Peru.
The suit was filed on October 22, 2001. In a uncharacteristically fast
judicial turnaround, two days later the judge of the Superior Court of
Lima issued a resolution finding the case inadmissible on procedural
grounds, and concluding summarily and illegally --- that the plaintiffs
had not adequately made out the underlying substantive case.
Under Peruvian law, in the initial stage of litigation the judge is
authorized only to review the completeness of the filing papers, and may
not decide substantive matters of law. The families successfully
appealed the resolution, and are currently waiting for a hearing date to
be set for later this year.
The efforts of the Tauccamarca families and allied Peruvian
nongovernmental organizations have been backed by a wave of public
support over the poisonings, and have won important regulatory changes.
On February 18, 2002, the Peruvian National Agrarian Health Service
issued a resolution (RJ 039 2002) suspending the imports of all
pesticides classified by the World Health Organization as Ia (extremely
hazardous) or Ib (highly hazardous).
The families have also written to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
requesting that he exclude Bayer from the UN Global Compact, a UN
partnership with corporations who pledge to abide by human rights and
environmental principles, based on Bayer's actions and inactions with
regard to the children's deaths and poisonings in Peru.
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES: Nearly three decades after lead paint was banned in
the U.S., eight companies [went] on trial Wednesday in the first attempt
by a state hold manufacturers accountable for lead poisoning in
children.
The companies named in the lawsuit are American Cyanamid Co.; BP PLC's
Atlantic Richfield unit; ConAgra Foods Inc. ; Cytec Industries Inc.;
DuPont Co.; Millenium Inorganic; NL Industries Inc.; and
Sherwin-Williams Co.
Other states are watching the potentially multimillion-dollar case
closely and may bring lawsuits of their own if Rhode Island prevails.
Opening statements before a six-member civil jury will be held in state
court in the landmark lawsuit brought by Rhode Island's attorney general
on behalf of thousands of children who may have swallowed or inhaled
paint chips or dust.
First, prosecutors must prove that lead paint makers created a public
health hazard. If they win that round, the case will move to another
phase that will decide if the paint companies should pay millions in
damages. "We are looking at both present and threatened harm," said
Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse, also a Democratic candidate for
governor. "Even lead paint that's not yet exposed is still potentially
subject to such litigation."
Lead paint was banned nationally in 1978, after studies showed it can
cause neurological damage and even death to children. The paint
companies deny they are directly responsible for the chipping and
flaking of lead paint. They argue that landlords should be held
responsible for allowing the properties to deteriorate.
They also say the lead paint in most homes cited by the attorney general
is buried under several coats of paint and isn't a threat. The attorney
general estimates that 330,000 properties --- from the gilded, early
20th century mansions in Newport to deteriorating triple-decker
apartment houses in poor neighborhoods --- have lead paint.
Rhode Island children routinely test above the national average for
blood-lead levels. A state Health Department study showed 8.1% of
children under age six statewide had elevated blood-lead levels in 2001.
Forty to 50 lawsuits have been filed since 1989 by individuals and
communities against lead paint companies. All have failed. Connecticut
and West Virginia are almost certain to take legal action if Rhode
Island wins, while Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Ohio are
contemplating lawsuits, said Eileen Quinn, deputy director of the
Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning. Cities such as San Francisco,
Milwaukee, New York and Newark, New Jersey, have already filed lawsuits.
STEVEN PEARLSTEIN, WASHINGTON POST: A Pennsylvania judge [Wednesday]
issued a temporary restraining order barring any sale of Hershey Foods
Corp. by the charitable trust that controls it --- at least until after
the court has considered the harm a sale might cause to the Hershey
community.
The order was issued by Senior Judge Warren G. Morgan of Dauphin County
Orphans Court, which has jurisdiction over the Milton Hershey School
Trust. The trust, which controls 77% of the voting shares of the
nation's largest and most famous candy company, announced in July that
it was exploring a sale as a way of diversifying its holdings.
A spokesman for the trust expressed disappointment with the decision and
said it will be appealed. The trust had argued that the orphans court
had no jurisdiction to interfere in the sale of a public company
incorporated in Delaware.
Morgan issued his brief order despite testimony earlier in the week from
Hershey's investment bankers that any delay could cool the interest of
potential bidders, which include chocolate rivals Nestle SA and Cadbury
Schweppes PLC as well as the Kraft Foods Inc. division of Philip Morris
Cos. Final bids had been expected by the end of the month.
After the court order, Hershey stock fell $3.09, to $72.51 --- below its
recent high but still 15% above where it was before news of the possible
sale leaked out.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher had requested the injunction,
arguing that a sale of the candy company could cause irreparable harm to
the economic and social vitality of the community that has revolved
around it for nearly a century.
Lawyers for the trust had argued its only legal obligation was to its
sole beneficiary, the Milton Hershey School, a residential facility that
serves 1,200 students from low-income homes who might otherwise require
foster care. With Hershey stock representing more than half of its
portfolio, the trust had a fiduciary responsibility to protect its $5.4
billion endowment by diversifying its holdings in a manner that
maximizes the value of its
controlling stake in Hershey Foods, the lawyers told Judge Morgan.
Morgan did not rule on the merits of that argument. But in issuing
yesterday's order he assumed jurisdiction in the case and agreed that
the attorney general had standing to sue on behalf of the public.
The proposed sale has turned into a public relations disaster for the
trust ever since word of it leaked out in July as media from across the
globe descended on the small Pennsylvania town that had become
synonymous with chocolate.
The sale is opposed by the town's board of supervisors, the Hershey
School alumni association, the chocolate workers union, several former
chief executives of Hershey Foods, an association of Hershey family
members and nearly everyone else in town.
The incident has also threatened to become a political embarrassment for
Attorney General Fisher, now a Republican candidate for governor, whose
office had originally pushed the trust to diversify its holdings and cut
its traditional ties to the chocolate company to avoid possible
conflicts of interest. On Tuesday, however, Fisher sat through a
day-long hearing at the orphans court to make clear to angry voters that
he never intended or anticipated that such advice would lead to sale of
the company.
"This was a good day," said Dick Zimmerman, a former Hershey Foods chief
executive who opposes the sale. "We've won the first skirmish in a
battle of a war being fought on many fronts. But we still got a long way
to go."
ASSOCIATED PRESS: A coalition of Mexican immigrants has called for a
boycott of Wells Fargo banks to support Mexican laborers who claim money
is owed to them for working on U.S. farms and railroads more than 50
years ago.
Members of the Council of Presidents of Mexican Federations of Los
Angeles also protested in front of a bank in downtown Los Angeles . . .
. They urged people not to sign up for new accounts with the bank, and
to close accounts.
Wells Fargo, which was responsible for transferring workers' withheld
wages to a Mexican bank, could owe the workers millions in back wages,
said Guadalupe Gomez, president of the council. "They need to tell the
people where their money went," said Martha Jimenez, a spokeswoman for
one of the groups, the Zacatecas Federation. "We need to get the
documentation."
"We believe we completely fulfilled our responsibility to transfer the
money," Wells Fargo spokesman Larry Haeg said. The workers include more
than 300,000 Mexicans who came to the United States between 1942 and
1949 to harvest crops and maintain railroad tracks as guest workers.
Called "braceros," after the Spanish word for arm, they came to this
country under an agreement between the United States and Mexico to fill
labor shortages during World War II. Under the agreement, ten percent of
each worker's wage was to be withheld and transferred, via U.S. and
Mexican banks, to individual savings funds set up for each bracero. But
many braceros said they never received that money when they returned to
Mexico.
The workers filed a class-action lawsuit in San Francisco in March 2001
seeking repayment of the money deducted from their paychecks, plus
interest. They did not specify the amount owed but advocates estimated
it at $500 million.
MICHAEL MCHUGH, DOW JONES NEWSWIRES: Minnesota Corn Processors LLC
shareholders on Thursday approved a $396 million merger with
agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM), linking the top two
players in the U.S. ethanol market, a spokesman from Archer Daniels
said.
"They have approved it," said Larry Cunningham. While he did not know
the final tally of shareholders, he said it exceeded the two-thirds
majority needed to seal the deal. Cunningham expects the transaction to
close in the next few days. He said Archer Daniels hopes to cut costs
and improve efficiency by incorporating MCP's operations with Archer
Daniels'. But he said the company has to study MCP's business further
before determining if any job cuts are ahead.
In July, the MCP board accepted Archer Daniels' offer of $2.90 a share
for the 136.6 million shares outstanding, or 70% of the company, Archer
Daniels didn't already own. The Decatur, Illinois, corn and soybean
processor bought 30% of MCP in 1997.
The combined company will have about 50% of the ethanol market,
according to some industry analysts. Cunningham said the share is a
little less than that figure, and that it will fall as more ethanol
capacity comes on stream in the coming years. In fact, he said about 60
new plants are being built --- none of them by Archer Daniels.
Concentration in the ethanol market has been a topic of discussion in
Washington. The antitrust division of the Department of Justice is
reviewing the Archer Daniels-MCP merger. In recent months, Archer
Daniels executives have expressed confidence that the deal will be
approved. "Both companies have thoroughly reviewed everything with
Justice, and I don't think there are any red flags at this moment," said
Cunningham.
BJORN LOMBORG, NEW YORK TIMES: With the opening [August 26] of the
United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg,
we will be hearing a great deal about both concepts: sustainability and
development. Traditionally, the developed nations of the West have shown
greater concern for environmental sustainability, while the third world
countries have a stronger desire for economic development. At big
environmental gatherings, it is usually the priorities of the first
world that carry the day.
The challenge in Johannesburg will be whether we are ready to put
development ahead of sustainability. If the United States leads the way,
the world may finally find the courage to do so.
Why does the developed world worry so much about sustainability? Because
we constantly hear a litany of how the environment is in poor shape.
Natural resources are running out. Population is growing, leaving less
and less to eat. Species are becoming extinct in vast numbers. Forests
are disappearing. The planet's air and water are getting ever more
polluted. Human activity is, in short, defiling the earth --- and as it
does so, humanity may end up killing itself.
There is, however, one problem: this litany is not supported by the
evidence. Energy and other natural resources have become more abundant,
not less so. More food is now produced per capita than at any time in
the world's history. Fewer people are starving. Species are, it is true,
becoming extinct. But only about 0.7 percent of them are expected to
disappear in the next 50 years, not the 20% to 50% that some have
predicted. Most forms of environmental pollution look as though they
have either been exaggerated or are transient --- associated with the
early phases of industrialization. They are best cured not by
restricting economic growth but by accelerating it.
That we in the West are so prone to believe the litany despite the
overwhelming evidence to the contrary results in an excessive focus on
sustainability. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the discussion
on global warming.
There is no doubt that pumping out carbon dioxide from fossil fuels has
increased the global temperature. Yet too much of the debate is fixated
on reducing emissions without regard to cost. With its agreement to the
1997 Kyoto climate treaty, Europe has set itself the goal of cutting its
carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2012. This is more than 30% below
what they would have been in 2012.
Even with renewable sources of energy taking over, the United Nations
Climate Panel still estimates a temperature increase of four degrees to
five degrees fahrenheit by the year 2100. Such a rise is projected to
have less impact in the industrialized world than in the developing
world, which tends to be in warmer regions and has an infrastructure
less able to withstand the inevitable problems.
Despite our intuition that we need to do something drastic about global
warming, economic analyses show that it will be far more expensive to
cut carbon dioxide emissions radically than to pay the costs of adapting
to the increased temperatures. Moreover, all current models show that
the Kyoto Protocol will have surprisingly little impact on the climate:
temperature levels projected for 2100 will be postponed for all of six
years.
Yet the cost of the Kyoto Protocol will be $150 billion to $350 billion
annually (compared to $50 billion in global annual development aid).
With global warming disproportionately affecting third world countries,
we have to ask if Kyoto is the best way to help them. The answer is no.
For the cost of Kyoto for just one year we could solve the world's
biggest problem: we could provide every person in the world with clean
water.
This alone would save two million lives each year and prevent 500
million from severe disease. In fact, for the same amount Kyoto would
have cost just the United States every year, the United Nations
estimates that we could provide every person in the world with access to
basic health, education, family planning and water and sanitation
services. Isn't this a better way of serving the world?
The focus should be on development, not sustainability. Development is
not simply valuable in itself, but in the long run it will lead the
third world to become more concerned about the environment. Only when
people are rich enough to feed themselves do they begin to think about
the effect of their actions on the world around them and on future
generations. With its focus on sustainability, the developed world ends
up prioritizing the future at the expense of the present. This is
backward. In contrast, a focus on development helps people today while
creating the foundation for an even better tomorrow.
The United States has a unique opportunity in Johannesburg to call
attention to development. Many Europeans chastized the the Bush
administration for not caring enough about sustainability, especially in
its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol. They are probably correct that the
United States decision was made on the basis of economic self-interest
rather than out of some principled belief in world development. But in
Johannesburg the administration can recast its decision as an attempt
to focus on the most important and fundamental issues on the global
agenda: clean drinking water, better sanitation and health care and the
fight against poverty.
Such move would regain for the United States the moral high ground. When
United States rejected the Kyoto treaty last year, Europeans talked
endlessly about how it was left to them to "save the world." But if the
United States is willing to commit the resources to ensure development,
it could emerge as the savior.
Bjorn Lomborg is director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in
Denmark and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist.
NEW YORK TIMES READERS DISPUTE, DENOUNCE
"DEVELOPMENT, NOT SUSTAINABILITY" ARGUMENT
* To the Editor:
Re "The Environmentalists Are Wrong," by Bjorn Lomborg (Op-Ed, August
26):
As the majority of countries here at the United Nations World Summit on
Sustainable Development understand, there need not be a contradiction
between economic growth and environmental sustainability.
Among the crucial questions we're addressing is how to ensure that
globalization works to benefit the have-nots as well as the haves, and
how to develop economically and protect the earth at the same time.
As Mr. Lomborg points out, people in the poorest countries need many
things: clean drinking water, basic health care and family planning
services. But they also need a healthy environment in which to live and
work, just like the rest of us.
This won't just magically occur as an inevitable byproduct of
unrestrained economic development, but it will if we make it a
priority.
STEPHEN MILLS, Johannesburg, August 27, 2002
The writer is international program director of the Sierra Club.
* To the Editor:
If, as Bjorn Lomborg asserts (Op-Ed, August 26), for the same amount
the Kyoto climate treaty would have cost just the United States every
year "we could provide every person in the world with access to basic
health, education, family planning and water and sanitation services,"
what is our excuse for not doing exactly that since we have not signed
on to this treaty?
Until we see action in this area of humanitarianism, let's not talk
about the United States' "moral high ground."
LORRAINE T. SHERMAN, Yonkers, August 26, 2002
* To the Editor:
Why does Bjorn Lomborg (Op-Ed, August 26) present the cost of fixing the
environment or aiding development as an either-or choice?
Instead, why not use for development the money that is now being spent
on the anti-Iraq buildup? Or the $180 billion in farm subsidies that
will go to large American agribusinesses so that they can drive out
small American farmers and flood the world with subsidized American
food, undercutting the market for third-world farmers and driving them
into poverty?
There are many other wasted expenditures that could be better spent on
foreign aid.
Mr. Lomborg is clever in disguising his anti-environmentalism in the
cloak of a third-world do-gooder. I think Little Red Riding Hood can
see the wolf in bed dressed in Granny's nightgown.
ROBERT WYMAN, New Haven, August 28, 2002
The writer is a professor of biology, Yale University.
* To the Editor:
How did Bjorn Lomborg (Op-Ed, August 26) tally the cost of climate
change? Did he add in the cost of the increased droughts, fires and
hurricanes that we're likely to see? How about lost crops, fish
migration, the disruption of breeding grounds, the death of coral reefs?
How did he value a nice view, a river that is safe to swim in?
It's a mistake to regard the term "global warming" as the end-all of
environmental consequence. It's about much more than average global
temperatures. Let's use "regional fluctuations from the norm, with
increasing magnitude and frequency." Then we've introduced a whole host
of other issues.
JIM POSS, Marblehead, Mass., August 26, 2002
* To the Editor:
Bjorn Lomborg is right that environmentalists who claim that we are
running out of resources and polluting the planet are wrong (Op-Ed,
August 26). But I don't believe that by helping the poor get richer we
can save the planet from global warming.
When the poor get rich enough to afford S.U.V's and McMansions, they
will buy them just as we do. Does anyone believe that the planet can
support six billion to ten billion people living the American lifestyle
that President Bush seems determined to preserve?
ERIC GOLDWASSER, Yorktown Heights, New York, August 26, 2002 | |
