Rendez-vous 131
Monday, February 25 2002
Andrew is Journalist with Christian Aid and Author of the report Hooked on Tobacco about tobacco farmers in Brazil
Thank you Andrew for accepting our rendez-vous. May I ask you to introduce yourself ?
Andrew Pendleton: My name is Andrew Pendleton and I am journalist employed by UK
development agency Christian Aid which works with over 650 partner organizations in more than 60 developing countries.
Christian Aid acts as an advocate, raising issues of concern to our partners and to the poor people with whom they work and attempting to open up debates about poverty and injustice.
The conditions for tobacco growers in Brazil was brought to our attention by DESER, Departamento de Estudos Socio-Economicos Rurais, one of our Brazilian partners. DESER is a think tank working on rural affairs and poverty. It is based in Curitiba, southern Brazil and is part of a network of organizations which have been working with tobacco farmers and campaigning on their behalf for many years.
Q1. You mention a higher rate of suicides among tobacco farmers in southern Brazil and you think there is a link with their exposure to pesticides. The industry denies any correlation. Can you tell us more about what is already scientifically available?
Andrew Pendleton: There are a series of sound and highly credible scientific studies cited in
our report which link exposure to organophosphates and suicide. But
there are two studies which are particularly interesting. The first is
from southern Spain and shows a firm link between suicide among
agricultural workers and their intensive use of organophosphates. The
second concerns sheep farmers in the UK who were compelled by the UK
government to use Diazinon in their sheep dip.
Christian Aid's concern in Brazil is that there appears anecdotally to be a high suicide rate in the tobacco growing regions, and the study by Falk et al, cited in our report, provides empirical evidence of this in one such municipality. But it is the manner of the suicides that is also a concern. The events leading up to them, the timing - often around harvest - and the accounts of relatives is most alarming and echoes those of sheep farmers in the UK and gulf war veterans. It is Christian Aid's belief, and the belief of DESER, that this concern needs to be taken seriously and investigated thoroughly and scientifically. But we would also like the tobacco industry to stop selling organophosphate insecticides to the farmers.
Q2. Jose Wandelei da Silva is a former tobacco farmer who is suing the tobacco company that provided the pesticides because he considers they are responsible for his illnesses. Can you give us more details about his story? How can he afford to sue such a big corporation?
Andrew Pendleton: Jose Wanderlei da Silva is 32 years old and has grown up working with tobacco (see: http://www.christian-aid.org/indepth/0201bat/story1.htm). His father grew tobacco under contract to British American Tobacco's subsidiary in Brazil, Souza Cruz. When he retired, Wanderlei da Silva and his brother divided the land on the small holding in Brazil's southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, and signed their own Souza Cruz contracts.
But in 1994, Wanderlei da Silva collapsed in one of his fields. What followed was six years of illness during which time he says he was in and out of hospital and prescribed all manner of drugs. He finally gave up farming in 2000 because he says he could no longer manage his illness and farm at the same time. He says his condition has improved since he gave up but he still takes anti-depressants and drugs to arrest muscle tremors. He also says he still suffers from chronic muscular aching and weakness, something like chronic fatigue syndrome. His doctors believe his illnesses are related to his use of the pesticides sold to him by Souza Cruz.
His case has been taken on by two lawyers from Porto Alegre who are operating on a no win no fee basis. He is hoping to win compensation from Souza Cruz because he says he can now no longer work and has suffered permanent damage to his health. Souza Cruz argues that there is no factual or legal responsibility for Wanderlei da Silva's claim, that as an independent contractor he must assume the risk of the economic activity he undertakes and that there is no record in medical literature linking intoxication by pesticides to psychic disorders.
Campaigners in Brazil are watching the case with interest.
Q3. What is the government doing? Apparently there have been a few local and regional studies on those issues. Could they lead to stricter regulations or even bans of pesticides? A law that obliged the chemical companies to take care of the recycling of used containers was abrogated in 1989. Are new bills to be introduced? Is the WHO concerned with these issues?
Andrew Pendleton: The Brazilian government is currently legislating hard on the tobacco
control side but Christian Aid would like to see tougher regulation
on the supply side. However, in the face of huge global industries, it
may be the case that a legally-binding, global framework is needed to
force companies to adhere to national regulation.
The issue of disposal of pesticide containers is a very interesting example of this. It used to be the responsibility of the vendors of pesticides, so the tobacco companies in this case, to ensure that empty pesticide containers were taken away from farms. The law changed, as you point out, and it became the responsibility of municipal authorities. In both cases, pesticide containers were often left on farms. And the farmers, often unaware of the dangers, burn or bury them, which can add to environmental contamination.
This shows that regulation must be enforced, and enforcement must be adequately resourced so that checks can be made. On almost every tobacco farm visited by Christian Aid during our research for this report, we saw empty containers, often being put to alternative use. For instance, I saw several farmers using pesticide bottles cut in half as scoops to fill back-pack sprayers with water from nearby streams.
In a commercial context, this would be of great concern, but in the context of family farming it is terribly worrying. Farmers and their families live among their fields. They grow food in the same soil, wash clothes in local streams and drink from local springs.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has concerns about pesticide use in this context too. An additional problem is the climate which is sub-tropical. Pesticide compounds can often be more volatile in hot and humid conditions and at the same time farmers find the use of protective clothing very uncomfortable and difficult. The FAO points out that in these conditions, farmers will often not wear protective clothing.
The FAO also suggests that moderately or highly toxic pesticides - some of which are used by the tobacco farmers in Brazil - should not be sold unless high standards of safety and training can be guaranteed. Souza Cruz claims to ensure its farmers receive training in pesticide use and it sells them protective clothing. However, in Christian Aid's experience many farmers appear not to understand fully the risks and are often ignorant of some of the most basic protective measures. For instance, when asked by Christian Aid to put on and take off their protective clothing, it was common for farmers to remove their gloves first, thus potentially exposing the skin on their hands to pesticide-soaked fabric as they removed the cotton tunic and rubberized trousers.
Q4. Are there alternatives to using such pesticides to grow tobacco? You tell the stories of farmers who quit using pesticides and whose health problems disappeared. Could those experiences be more widely developed?
Andrew Pendleton: DESER in Brazil has looked in depth at the growth of tobacco with fewer
pesticides or pesticide free and I have met several farmers who
have felt forced by their ill health to stop using pesticides. They say
their health has improved as a result. But they also say that if they
are honest with the tobacco companies about not using pesticides they
are paid a poorer price for their crop.
It is possible to grow tobacco using fewer pesticides, perhaps none. But it is unrealistic for all farmers suddenly to cease using chemicals upon which they've come to rely. Christian Aid and DESER would like to see a gradual scaling down of the amount of pesticides sold by the industry to farmers, not least because of the enormous cost to the farmer of buying them.
But we also believe that an independent, epidemiological study of tobacco farmers in Brazil is essential in order to give a clearer indication as to whether the catalogue of illnesses farmers say they suffer from are related to their use of pesticides.
Q5. Is the tobacco trade fair? You state that on average 1kg of tobacco is paid $4 in the US while it is paid $1 in Brazil. Are there ways to correct this imbalance?
Andrew Pendleton: Industry specialists we consulted during the writing of our report told us
that while the quality of US flue-cured tobacco is still considered
to be the world's best, Brazilian is now a close second. As a result,
the lower average price is likely to be explained by lower costs of
production.
This is a conundrum Christian Aid confronts regularly in its work. Poorer countries are able to be involved in producing goods because they are able to offer cheap labor. That is their strength. However, there is a fine line between cheap labor and exploitation.
Christian Aid is concerned that farmers in Brazil may not be receiving a fair price for their crop. Farmers interviewed during the research for the report believed their tobacco was often downgraded by the tobacco companies, although Souza Cruz denies this and BAT says that a member of the tobacco growers union, AFUBRA, is present to scrutinize the process.
However, Christian Aid would feel more reassured about this process if it were open to wider scrutiny. Government officials can be present but rarely are and since the grading process takes place at the companies' processing plants rather than at the farm gate, farmers themselves rarely witness the process which decides how much they are paid for their crop.
Q6. Is there anything else you would like to add?
Andrew Pendleton: The immediate future for Christian Aid's work is to open up negotiation to try to improve conditions for farmers. Our partner organisation in Brazil, DESER, is keen to engage with Souza Cruz to put the points made in our report. But along with DESER we will continue to monitor the situation faced by tobacco farmers in Brazil.
As regards Nottingham University's International Centre for Corporate Responsibility,
which received a grant of almost £4 million from BAT, we have
requested that staff there take a look at the report. The new Director
of the centre, Jeremy Moon, takes up his post in March 2002 and he
already has a copy of Hooked on Tobacco, which he has promised to read
and comment on.
With globalizations, it is important to look at the conduct of corporations in the round. Many businesses are controversial and tobacco is among them, but when a company such as BAT claims to be a responsible company in a controversial industry, it is important that those claims of responsibility across its business are scrutinized. To fall into the trap of thinking that scrutiny of the tobacco industry is only about scrutiny of smoking and health would be rather naive.
Thanks for the opportunity to put Christian Aid's views.
Thank you Andrew for taking the time to be with us today.
P.S: I also want to remind you of the rendez-vous with Patricia Diaz-Romo on August 29, 2001 about similar problems in Mexico: http://www.tobacco.org/News/rendezvous/diazromo.html
In a complementary fact-sheet Christian Aid offers additional data like:
It would take a tobacco farmer in Brazil around 6 years to earn the daily salary of Martin Broughton and 2,140 years to earn his annual salary.
Brazilian tobacco workers will receive 1 pence or less than 0.25 per cent of the price of a packet of cigarettes sold in the UK.
The piece about the high rate of suicides among tobacco farmers with a visit to a cemetery is poignant: http://www.christian-aid.org/indepth/0201bat/story2.htm
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