Pesticides in Orchards.

Exposure to toxins can be by inhalation, skin contact, eyes and ingestion. The diagram(by agro-industry) at the top of the page gives the very misleading impression that spray falls neatly onto the crop, and nothing else. Nothing could be further from the truth. The spray is blasted high into the air, above tree canopies, and the vapour can be inhaled by people many hundreds of yards outside the perimeter of the orchard. This is actually the best scenario- if there is a wind the distance can be miles. Sprayed fields/orchards are a hazard to people using adjacent lanes or main roads, either on foot, cycling or in cars.

It is not safe to enter the orchard for four days after spraying, this is a defra regulation. -but unbelievably public footpaths, under council jurisdiction, often run through orchards. The government has refused to respond to the recommendation of the latest 'Royal Commission for the Environment' report, for on-site notices to warn walkers of spraying. Although it is obvious to any rational person that spraying poses a threat to the health of people who live close to sprayed crops, the government refuses to acknowledge this fact.

Pesticides- Farmers ignore safety regulations.

I often see farmers breaking safety regulations. They spray agricultural chemicals,(ie pesticides,fungicides) over public footpaths and rights of way, which traverse crops, sometimes only two or three minutes before walkers use the footpath.

These chemicals sometimes have rei's of 3or 4 days,(ie it isn't safe to enter the sprayed area for that time.) No notifications or warnings are put on site to warn walkers of the danger.

Crops are often sprayed when the wind speed is well above the 10 mph which is the legal limit for spraying.

Defra's propaganda that the UK has strict safety regulations is laughable. Defra is negligent and cavalier in the way it turns a blind eye to farmers breaking the law in this and in other ways.

Defra's main concern is overwhelmingly on financial and economic considerations rather than protecting the health of people who live or work close to agricultural land.

Genetically Modified Crops.

Shared Terrain or State Terra?

There's a lot of opposition to the use of agricultural pesticides, and the government sees this as an opportunity to promote what they claim are the benefits of genetically modified crops. There are currently two main types of genetically modified crops, those engineered to be resistant to herbicides in order to kill weeds and those engineered to produce toxins to to kill pests.


There are many concerns about introducing GM crops in the UK, and I refer here to the Soil Association for an outline of some of the issues. Coloured text below are quotes from the Soil Association website.


Health

Unlike new drugs, there is no requirement for GM foods to be routinely tested on animals or humans so scientists don't know what the effects are on health. GM food has been available in America since 1996, but no studies have been carried out to assess whether this has led to health problems.



The only known trial on humans of GM food was carried out by the University Of Newcastle in 2002 and commissioned by the Food Standards Agency.Seven people were given a meal containing GM soya and it was found that in at least three people the GM material entered their gut bacteria. The accidental contamination of many US food products with GM maize in 2000 is believed to have caused allergic reactions in over 50 Americans, some serious.

The Environment.
A number of worrying environmental impacts are developing in countries where GM crops are grown commercially:-

Widespread contamination of crops: in America and Canada contamination has caused major problems throughout the food and farming industry in just a couple of years, including the loss of nearly the whole organic oilseed rape sector in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Seeds that are produced to be GM-free are difficult to buy and sometimes are later found to be contaminated.Those who are successful in sourcing non-GM seeds risk having their crops contaminated by neighbouring GM fields.

Increased use of chemical sprays: Contrary to claims from the biotechnology industry, farmers are now more reliant on herbicides(weedkillers). Certain crops have been engineered to be resistant to specific herbicides to enable farmers to spray weeds without damaging crops. However, weeds (sometimes referred to as superweeds) are developing resistance to these herbicides, and rogue GM plants that grow after a harvest(volonteers) have appeared and spread widely. In particular, GM oilseed rape volonteers- the crop most likely to be introduced into the UK- have spread quickly, and some plants have become resistant to several herbicides through cross pollination. As a result, farmers are making more frequent applications and reverting to older and more toxic chemicals.

Resistant Pests: Pests are becoming resistant to some GM cotton plant crops in Australia and China (which have Bt genes inserted). There are many laboratory studies to prove this and the biotechnology companies have acknowledged that Bt resistance will develop.

The market
There is also no market for GM food as it has been rejected by all the supermarkets in their own brand food and British Sugar has said it will not buy GM sugar.

GM technology is driven by four commercial biotechnology companies(Monsanto, Syngenta,Aventis Cropscience and Dupont) none is British.

Milliband and Defra Hear no evil, See no evil, Smell no evil.

Hear no evil, see no evil, smell no evil:-

This has always been the stubborn and perverse response by successive governments to successive 'Royal Commission for The Environment' reports over the years.Scientists have produced substantial evidence that agricultural pesticides and fungicides are unsafe to be used at all, let alone anywhere near to human habitation.

Georgina Downs, leading campaigner, has been given permission by the judge to challenge Government's pesticide policy in the High Court. She is contesting the current method of assessing the dangers and risks to public health from crop-spraying, which is currently based on the model of a bystander. She explains how this is based on a predictive model, which assumes that there will be only be occasional short-term exposure from the immediate spraydrift at the time of application, and to one individual pesticide at a time. It also assumes that the person can walk away and leave the area.

Georgina Downs- "Obviously this model is not appropriate or realistic to address the long-term exposure of a resident actually living in the sprayed area, where they will be repeatedly and frequently exposed to mixtures of pesticides and other hazardous chemicals, throughout every year and in many cases, like ours, for decades. Therefore as you can see this is a completely different type of exposure scenario to that set out for a bystander."

Pollution, Pesticides, and Defra decides.

The average western adult contains between 300 and 500 traces of man-made chemicals in their bodies. Before the second world war there were none.



During the war in this country there was a need to increase food production, and so the use of pesticides and fungicides began.

After the war 4000 farmers were disposessed of their land by government because they wouldn't farm in the intensive way that government wanted them to.
The government brought in legislation- 'The 1947 Agricultural Act' to make farmers adopt the use of chemicals and technology for high crop production.

There is no longer any necessity for this sort of intensive agriculture but government persists in their mantra that the more chemicals and technology are applied in agriculture, the more food will be produced and the lower the price will be for the consumer.

The following extract from the Ecologist Magazine, 'Fatal Harvest' 1/11/02 describes the background to this policy:-

..."This myth of cheap food is routinely used by agribusiness as a kind of economic blackmail against any who point out the devestating impacts of modern food production. Get rid of the industrial system, people are told, and they won't be able to afford food. Using this 'big lie' the industry has even succeeded in portraying supporters of organic food production as wealthy eletists who don't care about how much the poor will have to pay for food. Under closer analysis the US's supposedly cheap food supply becomes monumentally expensive.

The myth of cheapness completely ignores the staggering externalised costs of the food, costs that do not appear on supermarket checkout receipts. Conventional analysis of the cost of food ignore the exponentially increasing social and environmental costs customers are currently paying and will have to pay in the future. Americans spend tens of billions of dollars in taxes, medical care, toxic clean-ups, insurance premiums and other pass-along costs to subsidise industrial food producers. Given the ever increasing health, environmental and social destruction involved in industrial agriculture, the real price of this food production for future generations is incalculable".