by Carey Gillam
Kauai County Council member Hooser, who became somewhat of a legendary figure for fighting the agrochemical industry on his home island, began the quest simply as a response to concerns raised by constituents and never expected the issue to spiral into the drawn-out and highly charged battle it became. He was surprised when he first approached industry representatives to ask for data on pesticide usage only to be rebuffed. And over time, he said, he witnessed tactics that he thought were unethical, such as chemical companies paying people to hold places in line outside council meetings so that industry representatives could fill public hearing rooms, or filling buses with employees to show up at council meetings to oppose the measure. He also said he was personally threatened and vilified by supporters of agrochemical interests. Some of the threats became so alarming that he reported them to local authorities, he said.
“At first I just thought maybe we needed closer regulation, but after seeing these companies up close and personal—I want them gone. They are bad news,” Hooser told me. “They act like, and say, they are highly regulated. But they aren’t. I’ve asked them repeatedly to tell me how much glyphosate they’re using. And they refuse to do it. And they always say no one is going to be sick, but that is not true. I’ve come to realize there is very little accountability, and I’m concerned about my community.”18
Hooser has lived on the islands since moving to Honolulu with his family in the 1970s as a high school student. He worked odd jobs, moved to South Africa briefly to pursue the woman who would become his wife, and then returned to the islands, where he settled on Kauai and ran first a video arcade and then a series of small businesses, including a local magazine. He described his decision to run for public office after he turned forty as a “midlife crisis,” prompted in part by a desire to help support certain social issues, such as same-sex marriage. He served on the county council and then spent eight years in the Hawaii State Senate before returning to the council, where he started hearing from constituents about pesticide companies.
“This was a wide cross section of the community, not just environmentalists who were concerned about what was going on along the west side of Kauai,” he said. “The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was when I found out there were about 150 residents suing DuPont Pioneer. This is unheard of, to sue the largest employer. The combined concern made me aware that I needed to do something, at least start asking questions.” Hooser said he arranged meetings with Dow, BASF, DuPont, and Syngenta but was unable to get straight answers about what types and amounts of pesticides were being used.
“They don’t want anyone to tell them what to do. But the more they’ve fought and pushed and lied, the more committed I’ve become to fight them,” said Hooser. “There is no doubt in my mind that we are on the right side of history in this issue.”
In the spring of 2015, Hooser traveled to Basel, Switzerland, to address shareholders at Syngenta’s annual meeting, held at the company’s headquarters. He was allowed to address the shareholders and present them with a petition, asking them to compel Syngenta to “honor the laws of our community.” Another representative from Kauai who traveled with Hooser was able to video record the first few minutes of his speech before a security guard ordered her to stop. “We are very, very concerned about our community and the impacts that Syngenta has in our small community,” Hooser told the shareholders. But his plea was unsuccessful.
Hooser and his wife raised two children on the island and became grandparents in the fall of 2016, giving Hooser added motivation to work for pesticide reductions. Hooser lost his seat on the county council in the November 2016 elections, but he has continued to work for what he calls a “common quest” to improve and protect the environment.
“This has been a life-changing experience for many people,” he said. “With the birth of my grandson, it really has made me think long and hard about this more than ever before. The issue to me actually is about corporate greed and what it is doing to the world.”19
Another longtime Hawaii resident who is worried about the pesticides is lawyer Paul Achitoff. After graduating from Harvard University and then Columbia Law School, Achitoff spent eleven years practicing business and environmental litigation in Los Angeles and Honululu, defending companies and individuals, including those who were breaking environmental laws and harming consumers. The work didn’t sit well with his conscience, and Achitoff eventually switched sides, joining the nationwide nonprofit public interest law group Earthjustice in 1994. There, he built a career protecting endangered species, migratory birds, and the health of waterways. As managing attorney for Earth-justice’s mid-Pacific office in Honolulu, Achitoff became one of the key legal experts participating in the islands’ efforts to understand and address pesticide risks.
Like others engaged in the fight, Achitoff sees a lack of government-collected data, and a lack of interest in collecting that data, as a real barrier to understanding.
“Neither the department of health, nor the department of agriculture, nor any other government agency has bothered to collect such data. And since none has committed to doing so in the future, we can expect that residents and workers will continue to at best worry and at worst get sick while industry and government continue to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about,” he said.20
Some state lawmakers did try to push through a measure that would have required monthly disclosure of the types and amounts of pesticides being used and where they were being used across the state, somewhat similar to the action Kauai tried and failed to implement. California has had such requirements for more than two decades, and the data are plugged into a map so residents can see what types of pesticides are being sprayed near them. The data also help researchers to study whether there are correlations between types and amounts of chemicals being sprayed and reported health problems. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, were able to use the state-gathered data in a 2011 study that found exposure to a combination of paraquat and the fungicide maneb increased the risk of Parkinson’s disease.21
A bill to set up a similar data collection program in Hawaii passed through the state senate but stalled in the house after agricultural industry representatives argued that the reporting requirements would be overly burdensome on their businesses.
Achitoff sees the lack of data collection as only one part of a much bigger problem. All the local efforts to rein in pesticide use have lost in court on the basis of assertions that it is up to state and federal governments, not localities, to oversee pesticide use. But the state has failed for years to provide such oversight, according to Achitoff. Government records obtained by Achitoff through the Freedom of Information Act show that the state has fallen far behind in its inspection and enforcement duties, failing to follow up on years of required examinations of possible pesticide use violations. The EPA noted as much in reviews of the Hawaii Department of Agriculture (HDOA) in 2013 and 2015, citing approximately 700 inspection files in need of review, some dating back to 2008.
Achitoff filed a formal complaint with the EPA in August 2016 over the HDOA’s lack of oversight, saying the state’s “lackadaisical approach to enforcement allows pesticide users to imagine that careless practices, or even knowing violations, have no consequences.” The state’s “refusal to take seriously the effects of pesticides on health and the environment, also have created a crisis of confidence, with Hawaii residents understandably convinced the foxes are guarding the henhouse,” Achitoff told the EPA in his August 2016 complaint.22
In response, the EPA acknowledged the problems and said it would work to secure additional funding to provide near-term help for the HDOA and it planned to keep a close eye on the state’s progress in reducing its backlog and improving oversight.
Achitoff also registered a formal complaint with the EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice alleging that the lack of regulation by Hawaii authorities violated the civil rights of native Hawaiians by causing adverse impacts on the people. He cited many examples to
back his claim, including data showing that restrictions on pesticide discharges into a drainage ditch system on West Kauai were lifted in 2015, a move that translated into violations of the Clean Water Act:
Millions of gallons of drainage waters containing toxic pollutants flow through the system and populated areas, and into the nearshore ocean waters, without any regulation or monitoring…. Testing has shown the presence of harmful pesticides including atrazine, chlorpyrifos, glyphosate, and metolachlor in the drainage ditches, in addition to many other pollutants.
These unregulated and unmonitored discharges are of particular concern since Native Hawaiians gather limu and fish in these areas. The open ditches are not fenced off or marked with warning signs to prevent children from playing in them. The outfalls funnel polluted waters into areas popular for fishing surfing, swimming, and boating.23
It’s all intensely frustrating for Achitoff, who believes corporate profits are taking precedence over people’s lives. “The genetic engineering companies have a very big role here, and they don’t care about things like sustainability, the environment, or growing food for the people on the islands,” he said. “They think of farming in terms of inputs and outputs and the bottom line.”24
The corporations and the people of Hawaii are in for a long battle, according to Peter Adler, a consultant who specializes in mediation and conflict resolution. Adler helped lead the joint fact-finding group on Kauai and has stayed engaged in the debate. Advocates continue to push for more disclosure, more research, and more caution related to pesticide use.
“This battle is not going to go away,” he said. “This is a political storm. The winds are shifting around a bit, but it’s not clear where the winds are going to blow next.”25
CHAPTER 8
Angst in Argentina
American farmland has long been the largest market for genetically engineered seeds and the glyphosate herbicides used on them, but the United States is by no means the only country to have adopted the new technology with open arms. Farmers in Argentina started using genetically engineered seeds about the same time farmers in the United States did, after regulators in Argentina approved Monsanto Company’s Roundup Ready soybeans in 1996. Soy production soared over the next decade as farmers who previously had been tending to grass-fed cattle, growing rice and potatoes, or running dairy farms shifted their focus to growing soybeans. Many farmers plowed up pastures to become part of what was billed as a biotech revolution. Because the beans tolerated direct sprays of glyphosate herbicide, controlling weeds was easier than ever, and, like the Americans, Argentine farmers quickly became eager buyers of both the specialty seeds and the glyphosate chemicals. The timing was perfect. Rising demand for protein—translation: meat—was fueling strong global demand for soy needed to feed livestock that would end up on dinner plates around the world. Argentina soon became the world’s third-largest soybean supplier, and genetically modified soybeans became Argentina’s most important export. Argentine farmers adopted biotech cotton and corn as well, with roughly 24 million acres of the nation’s farmland planted with biotech seeds by 2014, most of which were designed to be sprayed with glyphosate.
As in the United States, aggressive use of glyphosate year after year on farm fields led to a rise in glyphosate-resistant weeds, spurring many farmers to use more and more of the herbicide, often alongside other chemicals, to fight back. According to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, total pesticide use in Argentina rose by 90 percent between 1997, when the country was beginning to adopt the new type of farming, and 2011, when it was well established. Use of herbicides, including glyphosate, rose by 185 percent during that time frame. And, just as in the United States, concerns for human health and for the environment have emerged.
By 2002, less than a decade after Roundup Ready soybeans were launched, some doctors in soybean-growing areas started reporting a suspicious rise in health problems in their patients, including birth defects and several types of cancer. People living in rural soybean-growing areas were notably affected, with sharply increased rates of miscarriage as well, according to scientists and physicians. In Santa Fe, cancer rates were documented at two to four times higher than the national average. In Chaco, regional birth reports showed a quadrupling of congenital defects, from 19.1 per 10,000 to 85.3 per 10,000 in the decade after GMO crops and glyphosate took hold in Argentina. Doctors there found that more of the diseases and birth defects occurred in villages near the soy fields than near cattle ranches.1 A government study also noted troubling levels of agrochemical residues in the soil and drinking water in certain areas, with roughly 12 million people living in the country’s farm belt potentially at risk.
Worried parents started complaining to government officials about their children getting sick; they blamed the increased illness on intensive chemical use on GMO soybean fields and cornfields surrounding their towns and villages. As did the people of Hawaii, many Argentines sought tighter controls on how and where glyphosate and other agro-chemicals were used—demanding that schools and neighborhoods be protected. Protesters, including doctors, parents, and scientists, argued that liberal spraying of pesticides near populated areas, particularly aerial spraying by planes, was clearly dangerous to people, both through the nearly invisible chemical drifts that traveled on breezes off the fields and through residues that lingered in water and soil.
By 2006, the voices of protest were loud enough to convince a division of Argentina’s agriculture ministry to recommend adding warning labels to glyphosate mixtures; the labels would have advised users to spray the chemicals only in farm areas, far away from homes and other well-populated areas. Agrochemical companies pushed back, and the ministry failed to fully implement the recommendation. Concerns persisted, and by 2009 President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was motivated to set up a commission to study agrochemical impacts on human health. The commission found there was a need for more controls over herbicide mixing and use and for more studies of formulations containing glyphosate. But both U.S. authorities and the agrochemical industry argued that glyphosate and the other chemicals used on the soy fields and cornfields were important for maximizing production and had been shown to be safe to use on the fields. Argentine authorities found themselves caught between the farming and chemical industry interests, who had profits to protect, and protesters, who claimed their very lives were at stake.
For one small and mostly poor community in Argentina’s central farming belt, a town called Ituzaingó, the concerns turned poignantly painful as children there began to fall ill with what seemed to be increasing frequency after the area adopted intensive production of GMO soy. One Ituzaingó woman, Sofia Gatica, felt driven to act after her newborn daughter died of kidney failure in 1999. Gatica, a working-class mother of three, had only a high school education, but she was convinced her daughter’s death was tied to her own exposure while pregnant to the active spraying of agrochemicals on the soy fields that surrounded her community. Gatica began to knock on door after door around her town, talking with other mothers about their children and curious ailments. She learned that she was not alone in fearing the chemicals from the farm fields. Gatica and several other women eventually formed a group called the Mothers of Ituzaingó and filed multiple complaints with local leaders, protesting corporate influence in what the group called the poisoning of their town’s population of 5,000 residents.
The complaints from Gatica’s group and others got the attention of regulators and helped spur studies that revealed residues of glyphosate and the insecticide endosulfan in and around people’s homes in the Ituzaingó area. Both chemicals were commonly sprayed from the air onto area farm fields, a practice that many feared encouraged the pesticide’s drift into the town. At that time, glyphosate was touted as safe, but endosulfan was considered especially toxic and dangerous to human health and the environment.
By 2008, government officials were so concerned that the nation’s minister of health bega
n an investigation of the impact of the pesticide use in Ituzaingó. Research revealed that traces of herbicide and insecticide were detected in the blood of 80 percent of the children from the Ituzaingó area. Data also showed that cancer cases had jumped by 50 percent, to 300 from 2001 to 2009, an incidence rate forty-one times the national average. The evidence of harm was enough to lead authorities to pass a local prohibition on aerial spraying in Ituzaingó at a distance of 2,500 meters (a little more than a mile and a half) or less from residences.
Gatica was honored as an environmental hero for her work and was named a 2012 recipient of the international Goldman Environmental Prize. In a videotaped interview conducted as part of the award program, Gatica explained why she was so motivated: “For me, these soybeans mean only destruction and death. When they spray the soy, they also spray us. At first I didn’t associate my daughter’s illness with pesticide spray. I felt horrible. It was very hard on me.” Eventually, she said, she realized her family was not alone. “What happened in Ituzaingó is a hidden genocide because they poison you slowly and silently.”
Gatica said she was warned against going after the pesticide industry, told to “stop messing with the soy,” and even threatened once at gunpoint, ordered to stop her anti-pesticide protests.2 Gatica said many of her neighbors also were angry with her for her work, complaining their home values were diminished by the attention she drew to the area’s health problems.
Use of the insecticide endosulfan is now banned in Argentina, and in many countries around the world, after representatives from 127 governments added it to a United Nations list of pollutants to be eliminated because of its ability to cause reproductive and developmental damage in both animals and humans. Use of glyphosate has continued, however. Gatica has called for it to be banned as well and has continued her protest work.3
