FEATURE - Indians Struggle to Digest Claims of Poisoned Foods
Date: 20-Sep-06
Country: INDIA
Author: Nita Bhalla
The one-acre plot, divided into patches of rapeseed, maize, rice paddy and radish, has helped Babu and his family eke out a modest living -- something he says would have been impossible without the use of pesticides.
"We farmers need pesticides as they protect our crops and make our vegetables grow healthy and strong very quickly," said the 40-year-old farmer. "If we didn't have them, we would not make a good living."
But Babu, like millions of India's farmers, is unaware that his dependency on pesticides over the years may have led to dangerously high levels of the toxins making their way into everyday foods such as fruit, vegetables and even milk.
"I don't believe pesticides are harmful and that they stay inside the crops," he said. "I am the first to eat the vegetables that I grow and I would be dead by now if they were harmful."
The use of pesticides in India has come under public scrutiny in recent weeks after a report published by an environmental group, the Centre for Science and Environment, found traces of pesticides in Coca-Cola and Pepsi far above recommended safety levels.
The report by the New Delhi-based group triggered a ban on the sale of the beverages at or near state-run schools, colleges and hospitals in several Indian states.
The companies that produce Coca Cola and Pepsi maintain their products are safe. They say that groundwater, which is believed to be contaminated with pesticides, is treated thoroughly before being used to make the beverages.
DANGEROUS DINNERS
Consumer groups say the discovery of pesticide traces in Coke and Pepsi soft drinks has highlighted the dangers of widespread pesticide usage in India.
They believe that most farm products are contaminated with chemicals such as DDT, which are widely used despite being banned.
"There are numerous studies showing very high levels of contaminants in our food chain," said Bejon Misra of Consumer Voice, a leading consumer protection group in New Delhi. "It is extremely concerning and it needs to be addressed."
While there has been no comprehensive national study testing foods from all across the country for pesticide residues, activists say the scattered studies which have been carried out are worrying.
Preliminary tests done by the ministry of agriculture in August on samples of fruit and vegetables from a New Delhi market found items contained 30 to 50 percent more than the country's permitted levels of pesticides and heavy metals.
But health experts say the most accurate way to measure the amount of toxins consumed by Indians is to do a broad diet study, where prepared meals are tested, rather than random samples.
They add that even if there are higher than permissible levels in foods, there is no way of knowing how harmful they are and whether they can cause diseases like cancer, blood disorders and stomach ulcers in the long term as claimed by critics. "When a person gets cancer or any other ailment, it is very difficult to trace back to what has caused it," said Alex Hilderbrand, the World Health Organisation's environmental health adviser for South Asia.
"It could be through smoking, it could be genetic, it could be pesticides, it could be anything."
FOOD AT WHAT COST?
In the 1960s, India instituted a "Green Revolution" in which high-yielding seeds and pesticides were widely introduced, helping the country become self-sufficient in food grains.
But advocates of organic farming say the Green Revolution left farmers over-dependent on pesticides which they call "ecological narcotics."
"The more pesticides they use, the more they need," said Vandana Shiva from Navdanya, a non-governmental organisation that teaches thousands of rural small-scale farmers how to make the switch back to traditional organic methods of farming.
"The soil has lost its productivity because of too many chemicals and there are no nutrients left, so they keep a
