Chemical Agriculture's Dirty Fight

by guest blogger Alex Formuzis, of the Environmental Working Group

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) began testing fruits and vegetables for pesticide residues in 1991 after the public became concerned about their potential risks to children. Remember Alar? In 1993, at the request of Congress, several top public health experts released a seminal report, Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children. Three years later, Congress responded by passing unanimously the federal Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), which required the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to implement health-based standards for all pesticides used in food, with special safeguards for infants and babies.

This flurry of activity grew out of one overarching conclusion embraced by scientists, physicians, policy makers, parents, and the public interest community: Pesticides used in the cultivation of fruits and vegetables can cause serious and lasting harm to young children.

That didn't stop conventional agribusiness interests from trying hard to water down or remove provisions of the proposed law designed to protect infants and children. The industry argued that it would cut into its profits if it had to take children's health into consideration.

It lost that fight, but in the years that followed, chemical agriculture has repeatedly gone to the mattresses, enlisting its allies in Congress to try to dismantle the food safety law. And agribusiness is still trying.

In 1999, former Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) introduced legislation that would have amended FQPA and effectively kept the EPA from protecting children from harmful levels of toxic pesticides. It turned out that Pombo's bill was a word-for-word copy of a proposal written by the "Implementation Working Group" (IWG), a front group formed by pesticide manufacturers and agricultural trade organizations. Following a meeting with California produce growers, Pombo offered the Regulatory Fairness and Openness Act of 1999.

Fortunately, the defenders of the FQPA rallied to its defense. "The Pombo bill would be a major step backward," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.). "It would guarantee that the law we passed would never be implemented."

Conventional agriculture's campaign pulled out all the stops to try to weaken or repeal the new pesticide law, marshaling the industry's publications to disparage both the FQPA and the EPA.

As a Washington Post story by George Lardner Jr. and Joby Warrick noted in May 2000:

Articles and editorials in the farming trade press predicted that continuing with the current law would produce economic disaster for growers and mean less fresh fruit and vegetables for children, who would suffer more illnesses and deaths as a result. One November (1999) article in the magazine The Packer even likened EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner to infamous mass murderer John Wayne Gacy.

Chemical agribusiness' spokesmen predicted that the safety standards implemented under FQPA would destroy American agriculture. The trade publication InsideEPA (subscription required) reported in May 1999 that:

If the conservative default assumptions allowed under current law (FQPA) are used, some of the pesticides farmers now rely on will likely be pulled from the market, one industry source says. American farmers would be less competitive in the international market and could potentially be driven out of business, this source adds.

In the end, however, the Pombo bill failed, and more than a decade later, there is U.S.-grown food in abundance in every supermarket in the country.

In the years that followed, a number of pesticides that had been considered safe by conventional agriculture were found to be anything but, and EPA banned or restricted their use. And in virtually every instance when a pesticide came under the microscope of public health officials, chemical agribusiness fought to try to block any action by EPA.

In 2006, for instance, EPA completed its FQPA-mandated review of the pesticide carbofuran, concluding that it harmed the nervous and reproductive systems and was too risky for consumers and workers:

All products containing carbofuran generally cause unreasonable adverse effects on humans and the environment and do not meet safety standards, and therefore are ineligible for reregistration.

In December 2009, the agency officially revoked its earlier approval of carbofuran for use on U.S. food crops.

Chemical agriculture fought that decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where, five years later, the Roberts court refused to hear the case (National Corn Growers Association et al v. EPA).

There are plenty of other examples of the industry's deny-and-delay tactics.

In 2010, when environmental and community groups pressed EPA to restrict chlorpyrifos (aka Lorsban or Dursban), one of Dow AgroSciences' popular products, industry ran a scare-tactic ad to try to persuade consumers that fresh produce would disappear if that chemical were no longer in produce growers' toolbox.

The battle goes on. Also in 2010, another agribusiness front group calling itself Alliance for Food and Farming (AFF), which represents many of the same interests that fought the 1996 pesticide law, enlisted the unwitting assistance of American taxpayers when it secured a USDA grant to attack the Environmental Working Group's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce. Members of The Alliance also lobbied the Obama administration to change how USDA releases the annual pesticide residue tests that EWG uses to produce the Shopper's Guide.

When the AFF or any representative of chemical agriculture tells consumers pesticides in food are perfectly safe and there is nothing to worry about, remember this history of what its representatives have done, or not done, where public health is concerned.

USDA should be releasing its latest round of pesticide residue tests soon. When it does, EWG will do what we always do: give eaters the best available list of fruits and veggies that carry the highest and lowest levels of pesticides--even if the AFF wishes we wouldn't.

 

Alex Formuzis is vice president for media relations at Environmental Working Group. He came to EWG in 2007 after nearly a decade as a senior communications aide to three members of the United States Senate. Prior to his time on Capitol Hill, he was in the public affairs shop of the Clinton Treasury Department and worked on state and national campaigns in his native Washington state.

 

For more from Maria Rodale, go to www.mariasfarmcountrykitchen.com

 

 

 

Follow Maria Rodale on Twitter: www.twitter.com/farmkitchenblog

Comments

[RANJAN3P]

04:47 AM on 06/11/2012

Wondering which battles to fight ... which makes me more angry? (all of them).

What is more disheartening, this above news or

http://sugarorsweetheart.blogspot.com/2012/05/sugar-can-make-you-dumb-us-scientists.html or

http://atoasis.blogspot.com/2012/06/optionetics-instructors-sleep-with.html or

http://water-becomes-mermaid.blogspot.com/2012/03/my-ghostly-encounters.html?

[farmers advocate]

08:37 PM on 05/09/2012

It is great to have the freedom of choice. You choose organic and 90% of the country chooses conventionally grown produce. Do you realize that organic is still sprayed there are dozens of pesticides legal for organic production including metals. Food produced in the United States is safe and healthy. All of the fear and hysteria created by groups like EWG, PANNA, Greenpeace and even Humane society of America, fund lobbyist and full time staff to create issues centered around dangers to the public. With our current food production people are living longer are able to feed themselves better than the past decades. The problem is not the safe production of food it is the economics of environmental groups funding. It is true that individual donors cannot see the damage that these groups are creating but farmers, small and medium family farms are disappearing. They are being absorbed by large conglomerate companies who can afford the additional burdens placed on the small farmers. Farmers are older (average age 56) and are not being replaced (1.6% of the US population). We are systematically removing US farmers and replacing them with foreign imports. Food will come from other countries with less control or say on production methods and the assurance that US standards are being met. International organic standards do not have to meet US organic standards to be sold in the US. We can feed the world a healthy and safe diet if the special interest environmentalists would just stop.

[Alliance for Food]

11:46 PM on 05/08/2012

Consumers do have the right to choose between conventional and organic, but for groups like the EWG to tell people that organic is the only safe choice is just not true. What's also not true is what Alex Formuzis says about the Alliance for Food and Farming. The Alliance for Food and Farming does not engage in lobbying or regulatory affairs. The Alliance is an information resource only. We represent organic and conventional produce farmers of all sizes or organizations that represent farmers. Our goal is to provide consumers with information on the safety of ALL produce – conventional and organic – and encourage people to include more fruits and vegetables in their daily diets. The Alliance takes no money or support from the pesticide industry and, in the interest of transparency, our 2011 tax return is posted on our website at safefruitsandveggies.com. We hope consumers who want to know more about how their organic and conventional produce is grown will visit the website or www.facebook.com/safefruitsandveggies

[Richard Cornett]

12:31 PM on 05/08/2012

More dribble from EWG. Its annual Dirty Dozen list has been discredited by the scientific community and has only served to frighten consumers away from eating fresh fruits and veggies. EWG is nothing more than a self-serving organization that relies on fear to produce its operating revenues from grants and contributions (and still smarting from the AFF federal grant, hee, hee). They would like nothing more than to outlaw commercial crop pesticides altogether. They can attack the agrichemical industry all they want, but actually they are only henchmen working for the interests of the organic crop industry. Yeah, try and feed the world's growing population without pesticides and organics only. Get real EWG!!

[Mehrnoush Tavakkoli]

06:20 PM on 05/08/2012

That is not true. As a consumer, a doctor, and a mother I support EWG. I can tell the difference between organic grapes/apples vs non-organic. Certain fruits are more prone to manifestation than others like apples or pears, so they need more pesticide, and those fruits/veggies are the ones on the dirty dozen list. Growth hormones also prevent the fruit to have the natural taste that they are supposed to have. Non-organic strawberries are like a piece of rubber, tasteless and aroma-less, whereas the organic is sweet with a pleasant scent. And last but not the least antibiotics, feeding on antibiotics through non-organic food is one of the reasons we are approaching the "post-antibiotic era". I try to stay away from non-organic as much as possible, and I do not feed my baby anything but organic. It is my right to chose between organic or non-organic, and EWG is there to educate people and fight for my rights.

[Sara Savary]

08:06 AM on 05/09/2012

That is nice that as a doctor you have the means to afford more expensive products. But as groups with agendas like the EWG that skew the information they give you force more small farmers out of business, leaving us at the mercy of large companies, we will have less choices and that serves no one. People at the lower end of the economic ladder than you are need to eat more fruits and veggies (as a doctor I'm sure you are aware of this) and there are a lot of people to feed. Yields per acre on organic isn't going to feed all these people at a price point they can afford. Maybe non organic fruits don't taste as good but they have the same nutrition and are just as good for you. Better than not having them at all, IMHO

[Richard Cornett]

11:53 AM on 05/09/2012

To doctor: Eating organically is a lifestyle choice. If you can afford it, it is certainly your right. But keep in mind that scientific and peer-reviewed articles have noted that organic foods are neither more healthy or more safer than eating conventional food crops. If you think they appear tastier, that is your perception only and this can be debated. So it is better to eat fruits and veggies, either conventional or organic, than to avoid them out of fear that you will be poisoned by awful amounts of pesticides.