Our Daily Poison

From Pesticides to Packaging, How Chemicals Have Contaminated the Food Chain and Are Making Us Sick

Marie-Monique Robin

• Publisher: The New Press
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781595589309
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica pubblica a livello agricolo

"An enlightening and deeply disturbing account" of the dangerous chemicals that have infiltrated our food, by the Rachel Carson Prize–winning journalist (Booklist ). Our Daily Poison is "a gripping and urgent book" for anyone concerned about democracy, corporate power, or public health (Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved ). In it, award-winning journalist and filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin travels across North America, Europe, and Asia to document the shocking array of chemicals we encounter in our daily lives—from the pesticides that blanket our crops to the additives and plastics that contaminate our food—and their effects on our health over time. Following the trail of the synthetic molecules in our environment and our food, Robin traces the ugly history of industrial chemical production, as well as the shoddy regulatory system for chemical products that still operates today. Using scientific studies, expert testimony, and interviews with farmworkers suffering from acute chronic poisoning, Robin demonstrates how corporate interests—and our own ignorance—may be costing us our lives. "What Rachel Carson's groundbreaking Silent Spring did for the environmental movement, Robin is doing for awareness of toxins in the food chain." — Publishers Weekly "This may be one of the most important books of the year." — Kirkus Reviews "Full of facts, stories, and wisdom." — The Huffington Post

PART I

Pesticides Are Poisons

1

The Ruffec Appeal and the Battle of Paul François

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

—Albert Schweitzer

It was a beautiful winter day, cold and sunny. And the date, Sunday, January 17, 2010, will remain forever stamped on my memory, and also on the history of French agriculture. Thirty farmers, suffering from serious illnesses—cancer, leukemia, or Parkinson’s disease—had agreed to meet at the initiative of the Movement for Law and Respect for Future Generations (Mouvement pour le droit et le respect des générations futures, MDRGF),¹ an association that has been fighting for fifteen years against the ravages of pesticides. Planned far in advance, this first meeting of its kind in the world had been organized in Ruffec, a town of 3,500 in Charente. I had left Paris the day before on a TGV with Guillaume Marin, cameraman, and Marc Duployer, sound engineer, my two unfailing associates who have traveled with me to the four corners of the earth to film the investigation that is the source of this book.

As soon as I was settled in the train, I had opened my laptop, thinking I would use the two and a half hours of the trip to work. But as the countryside rolled past the misted-up window, I was unable to write a line. Overwhelmed with memories, I explained to my two companions why this trip had a special meaning for me, blending a professional search by an investigative journalist with a more personal quest of a daughter of farmers, born just fifty years ago on a farm in Deux-Sèvres, located in a town in Gâtine a hundred kilometers from Ruffec.

The Tremendous Promises of the Green Revolution

When I was born in 1960, the green revolution was in its infancy. A few years earlier, more precisely on April 1, 1952, the first Renault tractor had replaced the team of oxen on my family’s farm, soon followed by the first tanks of pesticides, including the deadly atrazine—a herbicide that I will discuss at length. Very involved with the Catholic Agricultural Youth (Jeunesse agricole catholique, JAC), a breeding ground for political and union leaders in the rural world, my father had welcomed these “tools from America” as a “new opportunity.”² They would, he thought, relieve farmers from the heaviest labor while at the same time guaranteeing France’s food independence. No more shortages or famines: industrial agriculture would be able to “feed the world” by providing cheap, abundant food.

Proud to have “the greatest profession on earth,” because all human activity depends on it, my father was a committed participant in the inexorable process of the transformation of agricultural production that was radically changing the countryside, as the baby boom generation was experiencing the euphoria of postwar prosperity. Mechanization, the massive use of “inputs”—fertilizer and chemical pesticides—replacement of mixed farming with grain monoculture, consolidation, expansion of planted areas, indebtedness to the unavoidable agricultural bank: the farm of my forebears became a laboratory for the green revolution, breaking away from the family-farming model that had prevailed for generations. Inspired by the teachings of the JAC and subsequently the Christians in the Rural World (Chrétiens dans le monde rural, CMR)—who wanted to “change the world” even before May 1968—my parents established one of the first collective farming groups (Groupement agricole d’exploitation en commun, GAEC). Based on pooling the means of production and equal shares of income, this agricultural community, which included three associates and three paid employees, made it possible to go on vacation, a rare privilege among farming families.

Unusual in this very conservative region, the experiment caused a lot of talk, to the point that at the village school I was called the “girl from the kolkhoz.” From those years, I recall a happy childhood amid a swarm of kids, where I was taught to stand up proudly for my peasant origins, because the emancipation of the rural world would come through the unselfconscious assertion of one’s identity. Thanks to the green revolution, supposed to be a step in the irresistible march of humanity toward universal progress and well-being, people sometimes called rubes or hicks were standing up and embarking on the “Adventure,” a little-known song that Jacques Brel wrote in 1958 at the request of the JAC.

“It was a wonderful time,” my father told me recently. “How could we imagine that this new agricultural model was going to sow the seeds of destruction and death?” After a troubled silence, he went on: “How could we imagine that the pesticides the agricultural cooperative sold us were highly toxic products that would pollute the environment and make farmers ill?” It would indeed be unjust to cast stones only at farmers, who performed amazing feats to fit into a technological and chemical agricultural model promoted as a panacea by the National Federation of Agricultural Holders’ Unions (Federation nationale des syndicats d’exploitants agricoles, FNSEA)—the largest farmers’ organization—and the Ministry of Agriculture, at the cost of a rural exodus as massive as it was painful and countless suicides.³

It was not until I produced the film and book, The World According to Monsanto⁴ in 2008 that all of a sudden hitherto private questions could be spoken aloud in my family: suppose illnesses and premature deaths were due to pesticides. Were they the cause of the Parkinson’s disease that struck one of my father’s cousins before he was fifty? Of the prostate cancer of one of my uncles, a former associate in the GAEC? Of the liver cancer of another associate, who died before he was sixty? Of the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis of a neighbor, former activist in the CMR, recently deceased? And the list is far from exhaustive.

The Ruffec Appeal

“Why is this meeting being held today? We have been working on chemical pollution for fifteen years, particularly pollution related to pesticides, and for fifteen years in rural France we have seen farmers who are ill or who tell us they have colleagues who are ill. This day is intended to allow you to express yourselves and to find some answers to questions you have been asking yourselves about toxicology, both medical and legal questions, because we have experts here at your disposal.” With these words, François Veillerette, president and founder of the MDRGF, opened the special meeting on January 17, 2010, which closed with the “Ruffec Appeal.” Having lived for twenty-five years in Oise—a region of intensive agriculture where he developed his ecological convictions—this teacher who headed Greenpeace France from 2003 to 2006 before being elected vice president of the Picardy region on the Europe Écologie ticket is one of the best French specialists on the issue of pesticides. His book, Pesticides, le piège se referme (Pesticides: The Trap Closes),⁵ is a treasure trove of scientific references which I went through exhaustively before embarking on my investigation.

Among the experts he had invited to Ruffec was André Picot, a chemist who worked for the pharmaceutical giant Roussel-Uclaf before joining the National Scientific Research Center (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS). Renowned for his courageous independence, in a milieu where complicity with industry is frequent, he quit the French Food Safety Agency (Agence Française de sécurité sanitaire des aliments, AFSSA)⁶ in 2002, because he dissented from the institution’s manner of dealing with sensitive issues. Also present was Genon Jensen, executive director of the Health and Environmental Alliance (HEAL), a nongovernmental organization based in Brussels that coordinates a network of sixty-five European associations, including the MDRGF; in November 2008 it launched a campaign titled Pesticides and Cancer, backed by the European Union. Also in attendance were Maître Stéphane Cottineau, the MDRGF’s lawyer, and Maître François Lafforgue, an adviser to the National Association for the Defense of Asbestos Victims (Association nationale de défense des victimes de l’amiante, ANDEVA), as well as to the Association of Veterans of Nuclear Tests, and the association of the victims of the catastrophe at the AZF factory in Toulouse.

Lafforgue also represents Paul François, a farmer suffering from serious chronic ailments caused by an accidental acute poisoning in 2004, who has become the emblem of the Network for the Defense of Victims of Pesticides established in June 2009 by the MDRGF.⁷ Operating a farm in Bernac, a few kilometers from Ruffec, it was he who had suggested organizing the meeting on his land, because his story has become a symbol of the tragedy tearing apart many farming families everywhere in France. François Veillerette asked him to open the session of personal testimony as a reverent silence fell over the conference room of the Escargot Hotel amid the corn fields on the outskirts of Ruffec.

Sitting in a circle like a support group, some of the farmers and their wives had traveled several hundred kilometers to come to the little Charente town despite their debilitating illness. Among them was Jean-Marie Desdion, from the Centre region, suffering from myeloma, a bone cancer; Dominique Marshall, from the Vosges, being treated for myeloproliferative disorder, a leukemia-like disease; Gilbert Vendé, a farmer from Cher suffering from Parkinson’s disease; and Jean-Marie Bony, who worked in an agricultural cooperative in Languedoc-Roussillon until he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. As we shall see, some of their ailments had been recognized as occupational diseases by the agricultural social mutual fund after a long battle, and others were in the process of being recognized (see Chapter 3).

Aware of the reticence of these men and women, hard-working and not inclined to complain outside the family circle, I had no difficulty recognizing the effort they had to make to participate in the Ruffec Appeal, addressed to the public authorities to have them withdraw from the market as quickly as possible pesticides dangerous to the health, and to farmers so that they might stop experiencing their diseases as their fate, and eventually take their cases to court.

“I’m glad you came,” said Paul François, visibly moved, “because I know it’s not easy. Diseases caused by pesticides are a taboo subject. But it’s time we broke the silence. It’s true that we share responsibility for the pollution contaminating the water, air, and food, but we must not forget that we are using products approved by the authorities and that we are also the first victims.”

Victim of Acute Poisoning by Monsanto’s Lasso Herbicide

This wasn’t the first time I’d met Paul François. In April 2008, I had participated in a showing of my film The World According to Monsanto, at the request of an association in Ruffec headed by Yves Manguy, a former member of the JAC who had known my father well and was the first spokesman of the small farmers’ confederation (Confédération paysanne) when it was established in 1987.⁸ More than five hundred people had packed the village hall and the evening had concluded with a book-signing session. A man approached and asked to speak to me. He was Paul François, forty-four at the time, and amid the crowd he began to tell me his story. Encouraged by Yves Manguy, who had led me to understand that his case was serious, I invited the farmer to visit me in my home near Paris whenever he came to the capital. He arrived a few weeks later, with a huge file under his arm and we spent the day dissecting it together.

Operating a six-hundred-acre farm, where he grew wheat, corn, and rapeseed, Paul François acknowledged with a contrite smile that he had been a “prototype of the conventional farmer.” He meant a practitioner of chemical agriculture who had no qualms about using the many molecules—herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides—recommended by his cooperative for the treatment of grains. Until the sunny day in April 2004 when his “life was turned upside down,”⁹ after a serious accident due to what toxicologists call “acute poisoning,” caused by the inhalation of a large quantity of pesticide.

The farmer had just sprayed his corn fields with Lasso, a herbicide manufactured by the American multinational Monsanto. In the firm’s television advertisement praising the qualities of the herbicide one can see a forty-year-old farmer, a cap jammed on his head, who, after enumerating the weeds “polluting” his fields, concludes, staring into the camera: “My answer is chemical weed control. When properly used, nobody gets hurt, only the weeds.” This kind of spot was commonplace in the United States in the 1970s, when chemical manufacturers had no hesitation in using the TV screen to persuade farmers, and consumers as well, of the usefulness of their products for the good of all.

After spraying, Paul François went about other business and came back a few hours later to verify that the sprayer tank had been thoroughly rinsed by the automatic cleaning system. Contrary to what he thought, the tank was not empty but contained residues of Lasso, in particular of monochlorobenzene (also known as chlorobenzene), the compound’s principal solvent. The heat of the sun had turned it into a gas whose vapors the farmer inhaled. “I was taken with violent nausea and hot flashes,” he told me. “I immediately told my wife, who is a nurse, and she took me to the emergency room in Ruffec, being careful to bring the Lasso label. I lost consciousness when I got to the hospital, where I stayed for four days, spitting blood, with terrible headaches, memory loss, inability to speak, and loss of balance.”

The first strange anomaly (we shall see that Paul François’s file is full of them) was that, when contacted by the Ruffec emergency physician, who had been informed of the product inhaled, the Bordeaux poison center twice advised against taking blood and urine samples, which would have made it possible to measure the level of poisoning by detecting traces of Lasso’s active ingredient,¹⁰ alachlor, as well as of chlorophenol, the major metabolite—that is, the product of its degradation by the organism—of chlorobenzene. The lack of these samples was felt severely when the farmer sued the St. Louis multinational. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After his hospitalization, Paul François was on sick leave for five weeks, during which he suffered from stammering and spells of amnesia of varying lengths. Then, despite profound fatigue, he decided to go back to work. In early November 2004, more than six months after his accident, he had a momentary lapse: while driving his combine, he abruptly left the field he was harvesting and crossed a road. “I was completely unconscious,” he says today. “I might very well have run into a tree or landed in a ditch.” Thinking it was an aftereffect of the April poisoning, his treating doctor contacted the A...