Environmental Disaster in Paraguay Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ............................................................... PRESS RELEASE : IUF / UITA / IUL International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations Rampe du Pont-Rouge, 8, CH-1213 Petit-Lancy (Switzerland) tel: + 41 22 793 22 33, fax + 41 22 793 22 38 e-mail: iuf@iuf.org -www.iuf.org president: Frank Hurt, general secretary: Ron Oswald, press officer: Peter Rossman Geneva, June 15, 1999 IUF Calls on Delta & Pine Land to Clean Up Toxic Disaster in Paraguay The IUF has called upon the US-based Delta & Pine Land Company to assume responsibility for the environmental and public health disaster created in Paraguay by its local subsidiary. Delta & Pine Land, the world's largest cottonseed producer, is in the process of being acquired by the MONSANTO Company through a share swap to be completed later this year. Last November, Delta & Pine Paraguay dumped 30 thousand sacks of expired cottonseed - 660 tons - in the area of Rincon-i-Ybycua, a rural community 120 kilometres from the capital Asuncion. The seeds were treated with high concentrations of toxic pesticides, including the organophosphates acephate and chlorpyrifos. Organophosphates are powerful poisons which attack the central nervous system. The label on the seed sacks states that the acephate chemical compound (trade name: Orthene 80 Seed Protectant) "contains material which may cause cancer, mutagenic or reproductive effects based on laboratory animal data. Risk of cancer depends on duration and level of exposure." This toxic cocktail, extending over one-and-a-half hectares, was covered with only a thin layer of soil. The disposal site is on private land in the center of a rural population of three thousand, less than 170 meters from a primary school with 262 pupils. Health problems were immediately reported. The well-known symptoms of pesticide poisoning - vertigo, nausea, headaches, neurological disorders, memory loss, insomnia and skin rashes - appeared immediately, and worsened as the first rains brought with them a malevolent odor which hung over the area. Instead of water, toxic sludge oozed from the wells and pumps. The poison claimed its first victim on December 28, the day of the death of Agustan Ruiz Aranda. Ruiz Aranda had been active in the Commission for the Defense of the Environment and Human Rights formed by the local community to draw attention to the dumping and demand government action. His official death certificate states that he was treated by the attending physician for "acute poisoning due to pollution caused by toxins of the Delta & Pine Land seed deposited on the property of Julio Ch_vez..." In May, his widow told the IUF that "On December 26 my husband attended what would be his last meeting with the Commission. He felt very ill. On December 27 he could no longer get up from his bed. We did not have a single guarani (Paraguayan currency) to buy medicine, much less to get to the city. On Monday noon he lost the capacity to speak. When he died, his flesh was like a wet, twisted rag stuck to the bone." Thirty years old at the time of his death, Mr. Ruiz left behind five children. Medical testing of the residents has produced irrefutable evidence of acute pesticide poisoning. The Ministries of Agriculture and of Public Health have acknowledged the results of the tests but have not taken action. The Ministry of Education has refused support for the school organized by the villagers when it became necessary to abandon the polluted schoolgrounds. The IUF has met with the Minister of Health and the president of Paraguay, and has helped to organize demonstrations and support for the victims of the contamination. Still, the government refuses to act, despite the publication of no less than 45 articles on the situation in Ybycua in the nation's largest circulation newspaper Diario Noticias. In August, the case will be the subject of an inquiry in Asuncion organized by the Ethical Tribunal against Impunity in Paraguay with the support of the Latin American Regional Secretariat of the IUF. The Ethical Tribunal is well known for its work in defense of the victims of the Stroessner dictatorship and for its discovery, in 1992, of the dictator's "Archive of Terror" which documented the coordinated police operation of the Southern Cone dictatorships known as "Operation Condor." Rincon-i-Ybycua is a poor, isolated part of the country where life has always been difficult for the population of small producers of manioc, fruits and vegetables. Delta & Pine Land has chosen this neglected corner of the world to dump its poisonous waste. The company must now face the consequences of its disregard for human life and the environment. The IUF is demanding: - Immediate action to remove the toxic seed and decontaminate the area; - Immediate and comprehensive medical treatment for the victims; - A program of long-term medical and environmental surveillance, including regular monitoring of water supplies; - Adequate compensation for the victims, their families, and the wider community. The company must also make a full and public disclosure of the circumstances surrounding the dumping. The thirty thousand seeds buried in Ybycua were part of a larger shipment of 84 thousand bags of Delta & Pine Land cotton seeds authorized for importation by the Paraguayan Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock in 1997 after the ministry had imported sufficient seed for the 1997-98 planting season. Where is the rest of the seed? Has it also been similarly dumped on unsuspecting communities? Were the seeds already past their expiry date at the time of export from the United States, i.e. were they exported with the intention of dumping as an alternative to the more costly methods of controlled waste destruction required by US law? Answers to these questions are urgently necessary if more disasters are to be avoided. Delta & Pine Land Co. is in the process of merging with the agro-chemical, seed and biotechnology giant Monsanto. Delta & Pine Land jointly holds the patent rights, and the exclusive licensing rights, to the notorious "Terminator" technology, a technique of genetic modification which ensures that seeds will not germinate if planted a second time. The Terminator patents are designed to ensure that farmers will not be able to save their seed, as they have done for thousands of years, but will instead be totally dependent on Monsanto to plant their crops. The Terminator has been described by farmers' organizations, trade unions, and consumer and environmental groups as an unprecedented threat to food security and bio-diversity. The IUF supports the international campaigns to have this dangerous technology banned from commercial production. Monsanto (corporate slogan "Food-Health-Hope") claims to be advancing food production and sustainability and creating "new possibilities for better nutrition and health". The company's history as a major corporate polluter raises serious doubts about these claims. In 1995, Monsanto was named in the US Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory as having released 37 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment. Monsanto is indelibly linked to the environmental disasters of Times Beach, Missouri, a town so thoroughly polluted with Monsanto dioxin that its entire population had to be evacuated, and the poisoning of Vietnam with the defoliant "Agent Orange". With the proposed merger with Delta & Pine Land, Monsanto will be able to add the poisoning of Rincon-i-Ybycua, Paraguay to its history of corporate abuse of the environment. * * * * * The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) is an international trade union federation composed of 329 trade unions in 118 countries with an affiliated membership of 2.6 million members. It is based in Geneva, Switzerland. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-06.23.99-16:10:57-28740