STRAIGHT FROM CURITIBA

Agro-toxins used in transgenic crops cause deaths

All over the world, the way transgenic soy is being grown has brought serious, economic and agricultural effects to local populations. At the MOP-3, stories of commoners who are far from the debates and governmental decisions are being told at parallel events. They will also be told at the Global Civil Society Forum of the Fboms during the week that the COP-8 will be held and will deal with another aspect of the advance of GMOs: the loss of human life.

Natália Suzuki - Carta Maior

CURITIBA – Ituizaingó is a humble neighborhood in the outskirts of Cordoba, Argentina with about five thousand inhabitants. Similar to so many other Latin American housing groups, this place stands out because of the countryside that defines it. The patios of people’s houses normally face large crops of Round Up Ready transgenic soy which is developed by the biotech company Monsanto and surrounds other neighborhoods as well.

The way the soy crops are grown expose the local population to a heavy contamination of agro-toxins which are used on a large scale to combat new pests and diseases that the new soy helped develop in the Argentinean fields. These agro-toxins are responsible for the poisoning and death of hundreds of people.

Today in the Ituizaingó neighborhood, there have been more than 300 cases of cancer in addition to other skin, respiratory, and blood illnesses such as hemolytic anemia, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and tumors. Leukemia has affected 13 individuals, eight of which are still fighting the disease. Children and teens in the region are the main victims of the agro-toxin poisoning.

The stories from individuals all over the world about the negative effects that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have played on agriculture, economy, and society are all too common at the 3rd Meeting of the Parties of the Protocol of Cartagena on Biosafety (MOP-3) that is being held in Curitiba (March 13-17).

The issue is controversial and rarely dealt with by the mass media, but at the parallel events of the MOP-3, these stories are a method of protest against the indiscriminant advance of transgenics and their production model. They will be debated again at the Global Civil Society Forum promoted by the Brazilian Forum of NGOs and Social Movements during the week of the 8th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 8) which will be held March 20-31.

Ituizaingó is just one of these sad stories. Currently, Argentina is the second largest producer of transgenics in the world, just behind the United States. Close to 14 million hectares are used for growing genetically modified soy. The country, in conjunction with the United States, is one of the non-signing parties of the Protocol of Cartagena which establishes Biosafety regulations, even for GMOs.

Sofia Gatica is one of the inhabitants of Ituizaingó. She and eight other women started the Group of the Mothers of Cordoba after various cases of illnesses were diagnosed in the region since 2001. At the time, she questioned why so many women were using handkerchiefs to hide the fact that they were losing hair and why children were using surgical masks. Gatica went from house to house, writing down the names of all of the people who were sick. She initially counted 28 individuals. Her work took her four months to complete and then was submitted to the Argentinean Ministry of Health so that they would conduct a soil, air, and water contamination study in the neighborhood.

Toward the end of 2002, they discovered that home water tanks were contaminated with agro-chemicals and heavy metals such as lead, chrome, and arsenic which are highly toxic to living organisms. The soil and air of the region also contained and still contain high levels of chemical agents. The environmental problems are numerous. Today, the community needs running drinking water. Analyses have proven the presence of endosulfate, a prohibited pesticide, and high levels of sulfate and carbonate.

According to a study by the British non-governmental agencies EcoNexus and Gaia Foundation, the Round Up Ready Soy is a fairly similar variety to conventional soy. The only difference is in that it is resistant to glysophate herbicide which is used in large quantities to control pests and kill weeds. This way, although the landowner uses an enormous amount of pesticides, his crops will not be damaged as would have happened in the past with non-genetically modified soy. For this reason, the indiscriminate use of poison increased, bringing about the contamination of the environment surrounding Ituizaingó, and the poisoning of the people.

In addition, the study shows that this type of soy brought about a new type of crop-growing in the US. The soil was no longer plowed deeply. On the contrary, the landowners incorporated the leftovers from the previous harvest just a few centimeters above the soil. All of this was done to save money and time since the work can be done quickly by just one man and a specialized machine. This model was copied in other countries like Argentina.

The big problem is that this agricultural method made it so that the pests appeared and prospered in the crops in addition to the other diseases that arose in the old harvest leftovers. Asian soybean rust (Phakopsora pachyrhizi) appeared in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay since they started using Monsanto soy. Weeds are also becoming more and more resistant to glysophate. That is why more pesticides in addition to glysophate were needed.

In spite of the fact that the Monsanto soy was not developed to promote the use of these chemical agents, the production method provoked an increase in the use of herbicides for Round Up Ready soy crops.

Syngenta, another biotech company, is a producer of many chemicals and fungicides used by landowners to treat soy.

Gatica says that there are still genetic development problems in the children that are being born. “Children are being born with birth defects, without part of their mouth or fingers and with kidney problems. They have agro-toxins in their blood”. There are cases of multiple deformities that have lead to two deaths.

Farmers and agronomist engineers who are responsible for agro-toxin dusting the soy crops didn’t know that components of the chemical agent used against pests like glysophate and endosulphate enter the human body and alter the hormonal system.

Dusting is done with small planes or tractors called mosquitoes. Both methods spread the pesticides on the crops and also on houses and people. The water tanks are contaminated because the government provided the inhabitants with tanks without covers. Before transgenic soy crops were being planted, Gatica remembers that there weren’t these types of planes and tractors and that crop dusting is more and more frequent nowadays. “Dusting is done every two weeks”.

“A hospital was opened in the region three weeks ago, but the inhabitants protested saying that they didn’t want a hospital but rather another town”, Gatica says explaining that the people of Ituizaingó cannot stand living in such a contaminated place anymore. “The government denies there is a problem”, she regrets to inform.

PARAGUAY AS WELL
Crop dusting in soy fields has also harmed people in Paraguay. Petrona Villasboa, a member of the National Coordination of Rural Women Workers of Via Campesina in Paraguay, lost her 11 year old son, Silvino Talavera, due to agro-toxin poisoning.

On January 2, 2003, Silvino went to the supermarket on his bike. On his way home, a German soy producer, who owns a neighboring hacienda in the region where Petrona and her family live, was dusting his crops with a mosquito type tractor. When the boy got home, he and the food he brought home from the market were covered in herbicides.

Not knowing the potential negative effects of the herbicide, Silvino’s sister cooked the macaroni that he had brought home. She ended up contaminating the entire family of 11 kids. In the end, Silvino died because he was exposed to a higher dose of the poison.

One morning, he complained of pain in his bones. When he was taken to the hospital, the doctor confirmed that he was poisoned and that his blood had completely coagulated. The doctor said that there was no way to treat the child because they didn’t have the right equipment for these types of cases. Petrona remembers that Silvino became totally paralyzed and could no longer walk.

Even so, they took him to another hospital, but another doctor told Petrona that her son has been so strongly poisoned that nothing could be done to save him. Silvino died on the way back home, just five meters from the hospital.

After Silvino’s death, the local community took all of the children in the region to have blood tests done. Three types of agro-toxins were confirmed to be in their blood and they still live in that condition.

Translation by Donovan Libring