Advancing alternatives to pesticides worldwide • www.panna.org Spring 2011

Pesticide Action Network NEWS

Inside This Issue

Why the POPs Treaty Matters p. 2 Strawberries Make Me Happy p. 3Portrait of PAN Members p. 4

Victory! Endosulfan Slated for Global Ban173 countries to phase out a major DDT-era pesticide

One Million Speak Up for Honey Bees

In Geneva on April 29, the infamous pesticide endosulfan was added to the list of Persistent Organic Pollutants scheduled for worldwide phaseout. The decision rewarded PAN’s 17‑year campaign to get the major POPs pesticides banned everywhere.

Endosulfan had already been eliminated or put onto a phaseout track in more than 80 countries (including the U.S. last year, spurred in part by evidence collected by PAN scientists and our public campaign). The chemical is linked to seizures and deaths; long‑term effects of low‑dose exposure can include autism, delayed puberty and birth defects.

Still, pesticide companies in India who produce more endosulfan than any other country had been bombarding the media and sympathetic government officials with misinforma‑tion, pulling out all stops to keep it on the market. Ironically, on‑the‑ground evidence of health impacts is particularly dra‑matic in India where three states have already banned use of the chemical. In the run‑up to Geneva, Indian activists and PAN partners everywhere campaigned to shame their government into supporting the listing.

Staff scientist Karl Tupper was part of a team representing PAN at the 5th Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. He emailed from Geneva: “Today the global community finally agreed to add this

antiquated neurotoxin to the Convention, responding to a mas‑sive civil society campaign. In the end, India’s spurious scientific and legal arguments failed to convince the other governments here. Common sense prevailed!”

“This is the moment we have been dreaming of,” declared Jayan Chelaton from Thanal, a PAN partner based in Kerala, India. “The tears of the mothers of the endosulfan victims cannot be remedied, but it will be a relief to them that there will not be any more people exposed to this toxic insecticide.”

PAN will watchdog the phaseout as we press for full and rapid implementation of this powerful treaty. Right now, we celebrate a milestone victory.

In the last four months, more than one million people around the world have raised their voices on behalf of honey bees—urging officials to take decisive, precautionary action by suspending a sus‑pect class of pesticides (neonicotinoids) known to undermine honey bee immunity.

Following the “leaked memo” in December, PAN members petitioned EPA to pull clothianidin (a neonic‑otinoid) until the science supporting

its registration is re‑done right and in partnership with practicing beekeep‑

ers. EPA responded, agreeing to move up their review of this family of pesticides and improve the sci‑ence behind bee decisions (which is good!). But the agency declined to take action on a timeline that will be meaningful for bees or beekeepers.

We don’t have five-plus years for these decisions to play out. PAN is working with partners and beekeepers to ensure that EPA hears this. To get involved, go to www.panna.org/bees.

PAN’s Karl Tupper and International Indian Treaties Council’s Danika Littlefield serve endosulfan-free coffee and chocolate at the “Café” advocates set up for POPs treaty delegates (many of whom wanted to wear our organic cotton T-shirts), and the Café was covered by The Hindu, India’s second largest paper. Photo: John Wicken

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2 Pesticide Action Network News Spring 2011

Why the POPs Treaty Matters One Mom’s View I couldn’t take nine‑month‑old Connor with me when I attended my first POPs treaty meeting in Bonn in March 2000, so I took my breastmilk pump instead. I vividly remem‑ber struggling with my rusty German to convince the women in the conference center kitchen to store my milk in the deep freeze.

The POPs treaty is officially known as the Stockholm Conven‑tion on Persistent Organic Pollutants. It’s a completely unprec‑edented international agreement designed to rid the world of an entire class of chemicals that scientists and the global com‑munity agree are just too dangerous to have on the planet.

These “POPs” are frighteningly long‑lasting (persisting for decades), concentrate up the food chain (building up in higher‑level predators like humans) and travel the globe

(settling in the Arctic, where levels in human tissue are astonishingly high). They’re also known to harm human health. As a nursing mother, participating in the POPs treaty meetings took on a very personal dimension: human milk—nature’s perfect food for infants—is at the very top of the food chain.

Persistently targeting persistent chemicals

PAN has been pressing for action on persistent chemicals since the early 1980s. The global network’s initial “Dirty Dozen” campaign targeted many of the same chemicals now listed for global action under the POPs treaty. PAN experts, including Dr. Romeo Quijano of PAN Philippines and my PAN North America colleagues, Dr. Marcia Ishii‑Eiteman and founder Monica Moore, were directly involved in advocating for a global POPs treaty in the mid‑1990s.

My breastmilk pump has long since been retired, but decisions made in Bonn back in 2000—and at meetings that followed in Johannesburg and Geneva—resulted in a global agreement designed to ensure that mothers around the world would pass fewer persistent chemicals along to their nursing infants.

This is a very good thing. Experts agree that breastmilk remains, hands down, the best food for infants, even with widespread presence of POPs. Yet breastfed infants are now likely to be even healthier as their mothers’ milk becomes less compromised with chemicals.

Ensuring the treaty lives up to its promise

Today, 173 countries are members of the POPs treaty (the U.S. isn’t among them, but that’s another story). The initial list of 12 chemicals targeted for action has expanded to 21, and countries are making real progress implementing the treaty.

by Kristin Schafer, Senior Policy Analyst

Kristin (left) in Johannesburg

The Sciencefor your conversations about pesticides

Pesticides that are Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) stay in the environment for generations, build up in the food web, and travel the world on wind and water. POPs can cross the placenta and are found in breastmilk. DDT is the most famous POP pesticide.

• A POP pesticide sprayed on roses in Ecuador contaminates the blood of children in Iowa.

• Girls exposed to DDT before puberty are five times more likely to develop breast cancer.

• Since the U.S. banned DDT in 1972, levels of DDT and its breakdown chemical in our bodies are five to ten times lower.

For sources, see www.panna.org/issues/persistent-poisons/pesticides-in-our-bodies

POPs activists in Geneva, April 2011. Photo: John Wickencontinued on next page

Pesticide Action Network News Spring 2011 3

• California’s governor Jerry Brown has said he’ll “take a fresh look.”

• In late March, EPA publicly announced that it will consider comments on our petition to ban methyl iodide

nationwide. As of this writing, more than 35 California legisla‑tors and over 150,000 people have weighed in asking for such a ban and calling instead for investment in green farming.

It’s inspiring to see so many people finding a way to work together to loosen the hold that Arysta and other pesticide corporations have on our gov‑ernment. Everyone should have access to strawberries grown without hazardous pesticides, and our government policy could support that. We know that farmers who grow the fruit organically are fueling a safe and green strawberry industry—they deserve strong backing. And farmworkers and their families shouldn’t be forced to be on the front lines of toxic chemi‑cal exposure by simply going to work in the morning.

I love strawberries, yet I never imagined them as a gateway to food revolution. But momentum is building, and working together for an organic and fair berry could be one way to take a big bite out of corporate control of food. I invite you to get involved at www.panna.org/cancer‑free‑strawberries.

by Kathryn Gilje, Co-Executive Director

POPs Treaty, continued from previous page

Strawberries Make Me Happy But I never imagined the sweet fruit as gateway to food revolution.

They are tasty, bite‑sized and cute. They fight cancer, give you a boost of Vitamin C, and even improve brain function. In late April, they arrived en masse to the farmers market in my Oakland, California, neighborhood. A sweet, true sign of spring.

When it comes to strawberries, it’s clear that it’s not just me. At PAN, we’ve witnessed tremendous enthusiasm from parents and others across a wide spectrum to take back our strawberries from the clutches of a multinational pesticide corporation.

Arysta LifeScience, the larg‑est private pesticide company in the world, wants us to use a new cancer‑causing pesticide in strawberry production, methyl iodide. Though approved in California despite the recom‑mendations of scientists, both California and U.S. EPA are being pushed to reconsider their approval of this dangerous fumigant.

Recent examples of growing momentum

• Gluten‑free guru and longtime PAN friend and supporter Elana Amsterdam has a lus‑cious new cookbook called Gluten-Free Cupcakes, and she’s tapping into the press around her cookbook to blog about keeping methyl iodide and its manufacturer, Arysta, away from our strawberries.

• Retailers across the country are making commitments to “Safe Strawberries,” those grown organically and under fair conditions for workers, and strawberry eaters are pushing them to take such a pledge. Stonyfield Farm and New Leaf Market are two who have already signed.

Photo: Annabelle Breakey from Gluten-Free Cupcakes

Yet the pace of action is agonizingly slow. PAN and our partners continue to press governments to pick up the pace, and to resist pressure from corporate interests to weaken the treaty with loopholes and delays. Indigenous peoples from the Arctic are especially concerned and engaged, as their traditional foods continue to be contaminated with harmful chemicals used elsewhere on the planet.

As we report on page one, staff scientist Karl Tupper rep‑resented PAN North America in a strong team of environ‑mental health advocates at the 5th official POPs meeting in Geneva in late April, where the last major POPs pesticide was listed for phaseout. As the mom of now 11‑year‑old Connor (and his older sister, Linnea), I supported the team’s work from here in California—wholeheartedly rooting them on.

What’sonmy

food?

Pesticide Action Network North America uses science in public campaigns to end pesticide reliance and to promote food democracy. PAN advances agroecology and sustainable farming as solutions that protect the health of communities and the environment. PAN North America is one of five independent regional centers of PAN International, a worldwide network of more than 600 organizations in 90 countries. Printed with soy-based ink on New Leaf Reincarnation: 100% Recycled, 50% PCW, Processed Chlorine Free.

49 Powell Street, #500, San Francisco, CA 94102 • 415-981-1771 • www.panna.org

Larry Jacobs and Sandra Belin have made a life‑long commitment to sustainability and social justice, and have been long‑time supporters of PAN. They started farming organically in Santa Mateo County, California, in 1980, producing fresh culinary herbs and edible flowers. Then in 1985 they began working with the Del Cabo community in Baja California, Mexico, to develop a source of organic fruit and vegetables during the off season. Today, Del Cabo Cooperative is a thriving community of 400 farmers that sells organic produce across the U.S.

Together they put into practice what they preach. Larry and Sandra hold a vision that goes well beyond the success of their own organic farm, and urges a transition to a sustainable, healthy and fair food system. They are actively involved in influencing policy to protect people’s health and livelihoods from toxic pesticides. One example: Larry traveled with PAN scientist Susan Kegley to Washington, D.C., to testify at the EPA on the economic hazards caused by pesticide drift.

In October 2006, trace levels of pesti‑cides were detected on plants at their farm after several organophosphates (chemicals that pose serious health

risks to unborn fetuses and young chil‑dren) were applied nearby. Coastal fogs carried the chemicals over neighboring property, contaminating a year’s worth of sage, rosemary and dill at Jacobs Farm Del Cabo.

A pesticide Drift Catcher, the air monitoring device developed by PAN, was used to collect samples of the chemicals. “Jacobs Farm now has evidence that these chemicals travel significant distances in the fog and have settled in Wilder Ranch State Park and likely in neighborhoods on the west side of Santa Cruz,” reported Dr. Charles Benbrook, Chief Scientist at The Organic Center.

Western Farm Service, the pesticide applicator, was found liable and in 2010 a $1 million fine was upheld. “The message from the jury is pretty clear, both to industry and to regu‑lators,” says Jacobs Farm attorney Nathan Benjamin. “It’s not acceptable to apply these poisonous chemicals and turn your back on the consequences after the point of application.”

“Your scientists helped us explain how pesticides evaporate and drift after application and can contaminate nearby crops,” Larry tells us. “PAN saved our farm.”

Sandra & Larry at their organic herb farm near Santa Cruz. Photo: Paolo Vescia

our CFC number is 11437

A Portrait of PAN Members

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What’s On My Food? Now with bees!PAN’s online guide to pesticide residues is updated regularly with new data from USDA. We still track which pesticides are linked with health-related harms.

Honey bee toxicity data is in this spring’s update. We added this non-human dimension because:

• Bees are carrying a pesticide burden that has clearly become unbearable; and

• Bees are an indicator species.

As bees go, so goes the environment and, with it, us.

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Join the PAN Sustainers Circle with a monthly or quarterly donation. Pledging provides reliable funding that helps us plan more effective campaigns.

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