The jury of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal has returned its preliminary verdict on the six agrochemical companies accused of gross human rights abuses. It is damning in its conclusions and calls upon national governments and international institutions to take action to hold the companies criminally responsible for their actions and to ensure that the power of these companies is no longer put before people and planet.
The preliminary verdict and recommendations can be read at the following link: Preliminary verdict
The full verdict will be passed down in two weeks time and we will report further on the outcome and implications then.
Permanent People's Tribunal on Agrochemical Companies' Violations of Human Rights
Dear Friends,
From 3rd – 6th December 2011 the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) will convene to consider charges being brought against the six biggest multinational agrochemical companies and others for their role and complicity in gross violations of human rights.
An international opinion tribunal, the PPT will gather farmers, agricultural workers, Indigenous Peoples, fisher folk, women, children, scientists, consumers, and activists from all over the world to bear witness to the crimes against people and planet of the six largest agrochemical companies: Monsanto, Syngenta International, Bayer CropSciences, Dow Chemicals, DuPont and BASF. These six companies control 74% of the world pesticide market and 49% of the world proprietary seed market allowing them to earn massive profits and garner huge influence of politicians and regulators whilst they consolidate their control over global food and agricultural systems.
Throughout the years these companies have caused the death and illness of countless millions of people, caused irreversible environmental damage, destroyed livelihoods and have brought about the loss of food sovereignty for communities globally.
The PPT will be hearing evidence from across the globe about the destruction that has been wrought on people and the environment. In the UK we will focus on three issues of concern:
·The suffering of the victims and families of organophosphate poisoning
·The wilful suppression, corruption, manipulation and distortion of science. We will also highlight how by failing to implement the new EU legislation on pesticides in the UK the government are failing to adequately protect UK citizens and the environment from the harmful effects of pesticides.
·The deaths of bees and other pollinators as a result of pesticide use;
To date these companies, and others that have assisted them, have not been held to account for their actions. National, regional and international bodies have consistently failed to hold these corporations to account whilst allowing them to continue with business as usual.
The PPT hearing is our opportunity to present the stories of the usually voiceless victims of pesticides and to show the world the true extent of the devastation that pesticides are causing.
The PPT is an international opinion tribunal that aims to raise awareness of massive human rights violations when these receive no institutional recognition or response. Started in 1979 as an offshoot of the tribunals on the Vietnam War and Latin American dictatorships, the PPT has so far held 35 international sessions exposing various human rights abuses. Unlike existing legal mechanisms that only serve to benefit the powerful and the wealthy, the PPT draws its authority from the people. It provides alternative judgments and legal articulations that are vital in the quest to serve justice for both historic and enduring crimes against humankind.
Please help us to get some recognition and justice for the victims of pesticides by supporting this initiative. We want to gather at least 10 000 signatures from individuals and organisations to present to the PPT. Please help us to reach this goal by contacting me with your support or by signing the petition at: http://www.agricorporateaccountability.net/en/page/general/17#signthepetition1
There will be more supporting documentation circulated in due course. If you require any further information in the PPT, the cases involved or how you can assist please do contact me via one of the following:
Pesticides Rank 3rd and 10th in Causing the World's Worst Toxic Pollution Problems
The Blacksmith Institute in collaboration with Green Cross Switzerland has been collecting data from thousands of the world's toxic hotspots for the past three years in order to identify our world's top ten toxic pollution threats and calculate their health impact. Their findings have been compiled in the recently released The World's Worst Toxic Pollution Problems 2011 Report.
Two of the top ten toxic pollution threats - Agricultural Production and Pesticide Manufacturing and Storage - are identified specifically as being caused by pesticide pollution.
The report asserts: Agrochemicals, which include pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, have been widely used since the 1940s in many low- and middle-income countries. Unfortunately, many chemical pesticides, particularly those containing chlorinated compounds, are often persistent in the environment and can be toxic to humans.These kinds of pesticides are dangerous to many different forms of life, and their impacts can spread far beyond their production and application point to even a global scale. Chemical pesticides can harm agricultural workers who do not wear the proper safety gear and can also be dangerous for nearby communities. Common pathways for human exposure include inhalation when pesticides are applied (particularly when applied through spraying), ingestion of contaminated foods, ingestion of contaminated soil (particularly children, who may not wash hands before eating after playing in dirt), and contamination of surface or groundwater and subsequent ingestion.
The health consequences are extremely severe:
Common health effects [from pesticides] include skin irritations, respiratory and pulmonary problems, vision loss, damage to nervous and immune systems, birth defects, DNA damage, disruption of the hormonal system, many different forms of cancer, and in some cases, death.
This is just one more reminder that we need to continue our mission to eliminate the dangers of toxic pesticides, our exposure to them, and their presence in the environment where we live and work.
You can access the full report at Top Ten Toxic Pollution Problems 2011.
Big 6 agrochemical companies indicted for crimes against humanity Press Release:
From 3-6th December 2011, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) will convene in Bangalore, India, to hear cases brought against six multinational agrochemical companies who stand accused of violating human rights by promoting reliance on the sale and use of pesticides known to undermine internationally recognised rights to health, livelihood and life.
Known as the ‘Big 6’, the indicated agrochemical corporations are Monsanto, Dow, BASF, Bayer, Syngenta and DuPont. Collectively, these companies control 74% of the global pesticide market, making the pesticide/agricultural biotechnology industry one of the most consolidated sectors in the world.
The World Bank estimates that 355 000 people per year die of unintentional pesticide poisoning. “The aim of taking the Big 6 to the PPT is to give a voice to the otherwise voiceless victims of pesticides around the world who have suffered as a result of the relentless promotion of toxic poisons by these multinational companies.” Said Nick Mole, PAN UK Policy Officer.
Cases from the UK and Europe will focus on the loss of bees due to neonicotinoid pesticides developed and sold by Bayer; Graham White, a beekeeper said, “Bee losses in the UK and Europe have been catastrophic, with over a million colony deaths since 1993; there is a massive body of peer-reviewed scientific evidence from European universities, which indicate that neonicotinoids are having a lethal impact on bees and other pollinating insects. It is high time that the companies that manufacture these toxic pesticides are held to account for the damage they have done.”
Cases from the UK will also focus on the damage that has been done to the health of UK citizens by organophosphate (OP) pesticides, most notably sheep dips. In the UK many hundreds of individuals and their families have had their lives devastated by exposure to OP pesticides and have had no recognition or compensation for their suffering. “We hope that by taking these companies to the PPT we will raise the issue of OP poisoning in the UK and bring to the attention of the public and politicians the suffering that has been caused” stated Elizabeth Sigmund of the Organophosphate Information Network.
During the course of the tribunal, Pesticide Action Network will invite witnesses including scientists, medical doctors, and lawyers, to prove the charges through expert testimony on pesticides, genetic engineering, intellectual property rights, and other subjects germane to the cases at hand. The PPT will also hear testimony from farmers, farm workers, beekeepers, mothers, young people, scientists and consumers from around the world. The defendants will be served and summoned to offer their perspectives and responses.
Also under indictment are the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, andWorld Trade Organisation; these entities are charged with facilitating corporate concentration of power through their policies and programs. Additionally, the governments of Switzerland, Germany, and the United States – the home nations of six defendant companies – have been indicted for colluding with, and failing to regulate, corporate power.
The verdict from the hearing will be given on 6th December.
The BBC News website has today published an article titled "'Toxic' pesticide Dichlobenil used on London Underground" in which they uncover how London Underground carried on using the potentially carcinogenic pesticide dichlobenil despite the known links to ill health effects.
PAN UK Policy Officer, Nick Mole, comments in the article that this was not a responsible way for London Underground to act and once the EU had issued its notice stating that approval for the use of diclobenil had been revoked they should have stopped use immedeatly.
Of course the real underlying factor is that London Underground and other amenity pesticide users should be looking at introducing non-chemical weed and pest control methods and moving away from the use of potentially toxic chemicals that can have adverse effects on human health, water and the wifer environment.
As the UK Government is clearly not interested in protecting its citizens from the effects of pesticides, responsible companies should be taking up the initiative to reduce or stop their use of toxic pesticides.
Katharine Hamnett, fashion designer and activist backs PAN UK’s
25th Anniversary appeal.
Katharine Hamnett, fashion designer and activist has backed PAN UK’s 25th Anniversary appeal. In an open letter, she urged people to support PAN UK’s appeal and cited PAN UK as a major influence behind her decision to champion ethical fashion.
“Two decades ago, PAN UK opened my eyes to the horrors of conventional cotton farming and what I saw has changed the way I make clothes forever,” said Prof Hamnett. “The information that I received from PAN UK was the spark that ignited the whole sustainable clothing movement, now huge and growing every day. Without PAN this would never have happened.”
“I hope you can help PAN UK continue its amazing work. Please give as much as you can NOW to save this incredibly valuable organization.”
PAN UK has been working to promote organic cotton for over 20 years and has worked tirelessly to expose the abuses behind conventional cotton production. PAN UK also provides practical support for cotton growers to help them off the pesticide treadmill and has trained thousands of African Cotton farmers in organic and low input techniques and linked them with retailers and manufacturers to provide them with a sustainable and safe livelihood.
PAN UK’s 25th Anniversary appeal was launched in April.
PAN UK is the only UK charity focusing solely on the problems of global pesticide use. But our future is at risk – just when our work is more urgent than ever. The financial crisis has hit us hard and our income has halved in the last year. Without your support we will struggle to continue our fight against the use of toxic chemicals.
PAN UK was set up twenty-five years ago to expose and tackle the damage that pesticides cause to health and the environment. Today, our work is more vital than ever. Tens of thousands of people in the developing world die every year from accidental pesticide poisoning and countless more suffer from chronic illness. Alarmingly, more than 250,000 people take their own lives using pesticides every year, many of them poor farmers driven into despair by debt. It is a cruel irony that they end their lives using the very pesticides that forced them into debt.
PAN UK trains African farmers to use organic and low input techniques and creates markets for products like organic cotton, so that the farmers can escape poverty without jeopardising their own – or their family’s – health.
Meanwhile, the pesticide industry pours millions of Euros into lobbying. The UK government has ignored public and NGO concerns about new pesticide legislation, choosing to side with industry, thus sticking with the current, environmentally disastrous approach. We will be challenging this sad outcome, in the courts if need be.
I joined PAN UK as Director nine months ago. I first started working on pesticides in the early 1990s when I saw children as young as 7 in the tropics working with pesticides with little or no protection. PAN UK research shows that these abuses are widespread. I joined PAN UK to put my 20 years of environmental expertise into stopping these atrocities and to see farming – whether UK or African – become more equitable and sustainable. I want a stronger PAN UK to uncover the concealed problems of pesticide use. Over the coming months, we will fight to prevent deaths with a global ban on endosulfan, and press the UK government for a ban on neonicotinoid pesticides that contribute to the crash in bee populations.
PAN UK is an important counterweight to the powerful agro-industry lobby. The world can easily be fed without using huge amounts of agrochemicals. Our arguments are based on sound science and we offer realistic campaigns and practical solutions to reduce dependency on pesticides. We owe that to victims of pesticide use, to nature and to future generations.
I hope you can help us continue our work. Please give as much as you can.
“IMPACT OF NEONICOTINOID PESTICIDES ON BEES AND OTHER INVERTEBRATES”
Martin Caton, Labour MP for the Gower, presented the above named EDM to Parliament on 13th January.
The EDM is calling for the Government to suspend all existing approvals for products containing neonicotinoids and fipronil while more tests are carried out and an international standard for assessing the long term effects of these pesticides on invertebrate populations is developed.
These are goals that PAN UK supports completely and we are asking our supporters to write to their MP asking them to sign EDM number 1267 as a matter of urgency. To find out if your MP has or has not signed click here
The full text of the EDM is reproduced below. We really do need your support on this so please take a few minutes to contact your MP.
“That this House is gravely concerned by the contents of a recently leaked memo from the US Environment Protection Agency whose scientists warn that bees and other non-target invertebrates are at risk from a new neonicotinoid pesticide and that tests in the US approval process are insufficient to detect the environmental damage caused; acknowledges that these findings reflect the conclusions of a 2009 `Buglife' report that identified similar inadequacies in the European approval regime with regard to neonicotinoids; notes reports that bee populations have soared in four European countries that have banned these chemicals; and therefore calls on the Government to act urgently to suspend all existing approvals for products containing neonicotinoids and fipronil pending more exhaustive tests and the development of international methodologies for properly assessing the long-term effects of systemic pesticides on invertebrate populations.”
Michael McCarthy in the Independent makes the case against neonicotinoid pesticides
Now among the most widely used insecticides, neonicotinoids are suspected to be one of the factors in the alarming decline in bee populations.
read more here
PAN UK is supporting Buglife's campaign to withdraw neonicotinoid pesticides.
These pesticides are toxic to bees and may be part of the reason for declining bee populations. Buglife are calling for a review of their safety, and for the withdrawal of products containing these pesticides as a precautionary measure.
The publication of the UK Government response to the implementation of the EU Directive on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides (SUD) has been met with disappointment by the Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK).
“The hopes of David Cameron for this to be ‘the greenest government ever’, are completely undermined by this disgraceful response to the public consultation issued by DEFRA today”, said Nick Mole, Policy Officer at PAN UK.
PAN UK's policy officer, Nick Mole, was one of the speakers at the London Bee Summit 2010. Here's what he said...
A few facts to begin with:
·Globally pollination is estimated to be worth £141 billion pa.
·In the EU honey bees play a key role in the successful production of 80 million tonnes of food every year – that is 160 kilos of food per EU citizen.
·In the winter of 2008/2009 around one fifth of honeybee hives were lost in the UK.
So what effect are pesticides having on bee populations?
It is fair to say that nobody is really clear on the role of pesticides in bee deaths given the range of other factors that could be having an effect. However, what is recognised is that there are three issues related to pesticide use that are part of the problem:
•Toxic pesticides having acute or chronic effects on bee health
•The effects of pesticide as stressors on bees making them more susceptible to parasitic, microbial and viral attack
•And loss of foraging habitat due to the overuse of herbicides and/or widespread monocultures in agriculture, which increase the use of pesticides.
A number of pesticides have been clearly identified as being toxic to bees. In May 2008 the UK Pesticide Safety Directorate, now the Chemicals Regulation Directorate, analysed 286 EU pesticides and identified 40 as being toxic to bees.
We have clear evidence from the US that pesticides are killing bees, an issue that was very clearly highlighted in the film Vanishing of the bees, a film I urge you to watch if you haven’t already done so. It contains a lot of information about bee deaths from the point of view of beekeepers who are unanimous in stating that pesticides are part of the problem.
India is currently suffering from a huge decline in bee and other pollinator species which is resulting in reductions in crop yields - something that India really can’t afford. Some of these pollinator losses have been linked with pesticide use.
In Europe there have been concerns for many years about the effects of pesticides on bees, particularly the class of pesticides known as neo-nicotinoids.
In 1999, over ten years ago, the French government banned the use of the product Gaucho as a seed dressing on sunflowers, which contains the neonicotinoid imidacloprid, when the loss of a third of French honeybees occurred after the widespread use of Gaucho had begun. Subsequent investigations into the impact of pesticides on bees led to further curbs on imidacloprid as well as fipronil.
In 2006 European beekeepers demanded an EU wide withdrawal of four bee toxic pesticides. This request was sadly ignored by the EU.
In 2008, Germany suspended seed treatments containing three insecticides toxic to bees. The President of the German Professional Beekeepers' Association, Manfred Hederer, is quoted as saying "It's a real bee emergency, 50-60% of the bees have died on average and some beekeepers have lost all their hives."
Tests on dead bees showed that 99% of those examined had a build-up of clothianidin. The chemical, produced by Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of the German chemical giant Bayer, is sold in Europe under the trade name Poncho. It was applied to the seeds of sweetcorn planted along the Rhine. This same pesticide is approved for use in UK agriculture and is contained in seven products available to farmers.
In Paris bee numbers are on the increase due not only to the increasing popularity of urban beekeeping but also to the fact that Paris has been largely pesticide free for the last 10 years.
So what has the UK government done? Nothing at all, no withdrawals of potentially bee toxic pesticides, despite the fact that a major retailer banned certain uses of neonicotinoid in order to protect bees, a lack of research into the effects of pesticides on bees and a continued refusal to acknowledge the potential for harm as evidenced in 2009 when the then DEFRA minister Dan Norris stated: “There is no evidence that authorised pesticides pose an unacceptable risk.” Does that mean that there is some kind of acceptable risk to bees?
What needs to be done?
The key to bee survival is that we err on the side of precaution. We can’t legislate against the varroa mite or other diseases harmful to bees but we can legislate for reductions and bans on the use of pesticides toxic to bees and we can legislate for prohibitions on use of pesticides in certain areas such as parks. Such a prohibition would increase the areas that bees can forage in that are free of potentially harmful chemicals. These are all actions that could be taken today if the political will to do so was present.
Shamefully the UK government only yesterday has chosen to ignore the golden opportunity we have to do this by failing to include such measures in its intended implementation of progressive new EU legislation on pesticide use.
If the matter is to be addressed and bee populations are to be protected we need clear, progressive, visionary thinking from government, not a head in the sand approach and the persistent kowtowing to the opinions of the agrochemical industry as has been the case up until now.
Once you’ve met Leah Borromeo it is difficult to forget her. We first met this filmmaker and journalist at this year’s UK Aware show in April and have since been following the progress of her debut documentary ‘Dirty White Gold’ which she produced, directed, presented and shot.
Here she tells Wear Organic that the problem with conventional cotton is the greed of the middlemen and why organic cotton means people power to her.
News
PAN UK trains African farmers to use organic and low input techniques and creates markets for products like organic cotton, so that the farmers can escape poverty without jeopardising their own – or their family’s – health.
I want a stronger PAN UK to uncover the concealed problems of pesticide use. Over the coming months, we will fight to prevent deaths with a global ban on endosulfan, and press the UK government for a ban on neonicotinoid pesticides that contribute to the crash in bee populations. 
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