August 2003

Pesticide Potpourri

• The World Health Organization’s World Health Report for 2000 identifies its top ten global disease and health risk factors. Pesticides are not included. The top ten are: underweight (1), unsafe sex (2), hypertension (3), tobacco use (4), alcohol consumption (5), unsafe water, poor sanitation and hygiene (6), iron deficiency (7), indoor smoke from solid fuels (8), high cholesterol (9), and obesity (10). (CropLife America Spotlight, 7/18/03.

• A recent ABC News poll has found that one-third of U.S. consumers seek to avoid buying foods that have been bioengineered or have come from livestock treated with antibiotics or hormones. Also, if biotech food were labeled, more than half the 1,024 adults in the telephone survey say they'd avoid it, while 92 percent favored mandatory labeling. The poll also found gains in the belief that biotech food is safe to eat - up 11 percentage points from two years ago to 46 percent. (CropLife America Spotlight, 7/18/03.

• In early August, Archbishop Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, was cited as saying that the Vatican would publish a report next month endorsing genetic modification of plants as the best way to feed the world's starving and that when it comes to dealing with world hunger, "there is no room for the ideological argument advanced by the environmentalists. The Pope ardently desires to do something for the billions of people who go to bed hungry every night." Some may question how the Vatican can support a technology such as GM food while opposing a technology such as cloning. The answer lies in the Church's understanding of humans as both spiritual and material creatures. Those who oppose technological innovations such as GM food forget that the purpose of scientific experimentation, as formulated by Renaissance thinkers, was to improve the conditions of human life, and this desire was rooted in the Christian concept of caritas, or charity. (The Ottawa Citizen, 8/6/03 via AgNet).

• A federal judge in the Washington Toxics Coalition Endangered Species Act lawsuit granted plaintiffs' request for interim injunctive relief to "protect" salmon in Idaho, Northern California, Oregon, and Washington. Judge John Coughenour of the U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington at Seattle, issued an order requiring EPA to establish buffer zones for any of 54 active ingredients for which EPA had not made "no-effect determinations" under the Endangered Species Act. The order arbitrarily sets interim buffer zones at 20 yards for ground applications of pesticides and 100 yards for aerial applications unless the defendant and interveners can convince the court at an August 14 hearing that lesser buffer zones are sufficiently protective. The judge also said he would consider arguments regarding additional urban-use restrictions requested for 13 pesticide active ingredients which, if approved by the judge, would effectively remove them from all consumer use. (CropLife America letter of 7/17/03).

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