Tomato grower drops suspect pesticides

By Christine Stapleton & Christine Evans, Palm Beach Post, October 01, 2005

Ag-Mart Produce, the giant Florida tomato grower at the center of an investigation involving three deformed babies born to fieldworkers, announced Friday it will no longer use pesticides that have been linked to birth defects.
"The recent issues that have been brought to light have caused the company to look further and harder," Ag-Mart spokesman David Sheon said. "The company has a history of wanting to be a leader in the reduction of pesticides."
He added that there is "nothing in the investigation that will say we should do this. It's the right thing for the environment, as well as the workers overall."
Farmworker advocates who have lobbied for years for tighter pesticide controls were delighted but guarded.
"I think it's a good step forward," said Shelley Davis of the Farmworker Justice Fund in. "We would call on them to work with us so others in the industry will follow suit. It shows they can grow these products profitably without highly toxic pesticides, and hopefully that will be a model that others will adopt."
"That's really wonderful," said Lisa Butler, attorney for Florida Rural Legal Services and a former member of the state's now-defunct Pesticide Exposure Surveillance Board. "It's a major step in the direction of decreasing the risks that farmworkers face in the agricultural workplace."
Butler said the move by Ag-Mart might signal sweeping industry changes in pesticide use — and improved working conditions for farmworkers throughout the state — "if we can get similar changes from other agricultural interests." Whether other companies will follow suit remains to be seen. Ag-Mart's announcement at midday Friday came after the company had answered questions from The Palm Beach Post for a story about the company's pesticide practices.
In a few days, agricultural investigators in Florida and North Carolina are expected to issue pesticide-related notices of violation against the company. Officials would not elaborate on their findings.
A separate but related report by state and Collier County health officials will address the specific issue of whether chemicals used at Ag-Mart might have contributed to the babies' deformities. That report is expected in about a month.
Andrew Yaffa, the attorney representing one of the three babies, Carlos Candelario Herrera, who was born Dec. 17 with no arms and legs, said the company's decision to eliminate some pesticides is "essentially an admission that the chemicals they've been knowingly exposing these workers to do cause harm."

Methyl bromide remains

"I applaud their initial effort," Yaffa said. "However, if they were true in their desire to protect these workers from exposure and the harm it causes, why in the world would you continue to use methyl bromide, which you know causes birth defects?"
Methyl bromide is the only one of six "conventional agricultural chemicals that have been suspected to carry reproductive risks when applied at high dosage levels" that the company is not discontinuing, said Sheon, the Ag-Mart spokesman.
In a two-page statement, Ag-Mart said it "cannot at this time find a suitable" and cost-effective replacement for methyl bromide, a soil fumigant banned in the United States except for emergency or "critical use" exemptions, which Florida growers such as Ag-Mart readily obtain. The chemical is known to damage the ozone layer and at high levels has been linked to birth defects in baby rabbits.
Ag-Mart President Don Long said in a statement that the company is experimenting with alternatives "so that the chemical can be phased out as soon as possible." Scientific research is sketchy about the role pesticides might play in birth defects in humans. Studies can take years and often are inconclusive. But some research has found an association between pesticides and birth defects.
The case of los tres niños, as the investigation into the three births was dubbed, broke to big headlines last spring after outreach workers for a Catholic Charities program in the Southwest Florida town of Immokalee discovered that two boys and a girl had been born in rapid succession with significant deformities.
One has no arms or legs; another with no clear gender died after three days; a third suffers ajaw condition that causes his tongue to fall back into his throat.
The parents were fieldworkers who had taken jobs in Ag-Mart fields; the three women each had worked during at least the early, and critical, parts of their pregnancies.
The outreach workers for Guadalupe Social Services brought the babies to the attention of The Post in February, and a state investigation began soon after.
"It has taken a long time," said Deb Millsap of the Collier County Health Department. "They want to do a very complete investigation. They've been out there in the fields interviewing. They've pulled in experts."
The investigation was made more difficult, Millsap said, by its very nature: Farmworkers often migrate, and so do their supervisors. "We had to track them down."
In an interview last week, Long said his company had reviewed its pesticide management and that the company takes every measure possible to ensure the safety of its workers and its product.
We take a lot of care," he said. "Our employees are our number one concern."
And while he has publicly expressed sympathy for the three families, he said he does not think the deformities are linked to pesticides used in Ag-Mart fields: "We feel that we have completely used products within tolerance levels within this operation. We don't see any connection between our farms and these birth defects."
Since the investigation began in mid-March, several employees of the Plant City-based company have quit or been fired. Two had pesticide-related responsibilities in the Immokalee field where most of the parents worked, and a third said he was too worried about his own chemical "exposure" to stay on the job. An air of paranoia now drifts over the fields, some workers say.
For example, one Ag-Mart labor contractor said he was so concerned about the way pesticides were used on company farms that he has taken to carrying a camera to work — "so I can prove it."
Juan Anzualda, another crew leader, said he no longer works with Ag-Mart, but when he did, company officials would pump him to see what he had told investigators.
"Every day," he said, "a woman from HR (human resources) called to ask, 'Do you have any new information?' "
And a former employee who said he was fired recalled hopping onto a tractor to spray pesticides, only to be pelted with tomatoes by angry fieldworkers.
"They were yelling" because they were worried they would be hit by the mist, he said. "Man, it was so chaotic out there, you didn't know who was who and what was what."

Cooperation with state

All of this distresses Long, the company president, who has worked for Ag-Mart and an affiliated company since he got out of college 30 years ago.
The company, he stressed, has cooperated fully with investigators for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, giving them access to any records and employees they wish.
The company also recently set up a toll-free bilingual anonymous tip line so employees can report pesticide problems without fear of retribution. The company said it investigates the tips and issues the employee a tracking number so he can follow up anonymously. In addition, Ag-Mart has increased monitoring by an independent auditor who reviews pesticide practices and tests for residue on Ag-Mart tomatoes.
According to records from Florida's pesticide residue lab that were provided by Ag-Mart, the company's tomatoes from three states and Mexico have been tested 53 times in the past five years. In nearly half the samples, no pesticides were detected. In the other half, residue fell well within established tolerance levels.
Long, who said he tries to visit each Ag-Mart farm every two weeks and personally designs the pesticide programs, said he is focusing on developing innovative organic farming techniques that minimize the need for pesticides.
Some workers doubt the company's sincerity when it comes to worker safety.
The Post interviewed more than a dozen current and former crew leaders, supervisors, pickers and other workers with knowledge of Ag-Mart operations. The paper also reviewed state documents. The interviews and records reflected a concern that the company kept sloppy records, did not always train its workers properly and was sometimes indifferent to worker safety.
Most of the workers, past and present, would not allow their names to be used, saying they feared they would be blackballed in the tight-knit farming community.
"It would be my name in the paper against Ag-Mart," one said. "No way. I got a family to look out for."
A midlevel former employee with close knowledge of field operations said he once complained to an Ag-Mart supervisor after chemicals drifted onto workers in the field. The supervisor's response: "He said if we weren't pregnant, we shouldn't worry about it."
Another ex-employee, who said he acted as a low-level go-to guy, performing a variety of odd jobs — including spraying — described a chaotic operation in which ill-trained workers were told to spray pesticides and large work crews were sometimes asked to enter a portion of the field soon after.
"I'd spray this section, in front, and the people would be picking that section" in back, he said, "and as soon as I would be done, the people would be in the section I sprayed.... You just do what you're told."
Workers often complained, he said. "People would get mad. We'd spray when they'd be eating lunch. We'd be spraying 100 feet, maybe a little more away."

'Drift' poses problems

Like other Ag-Mart workers, and workers for other farming operations, the worker said "drift" from pesticides posed a persistent problem. Some field hands developed coughs, respiratory problems, rashes and headaches.
"It could drift, you could smell it. It could drift for hours.... Do I remember ever getting sick? Yeah, don't we all."
Anzualda, the crew leader, said, "If we had to pick, we picked. No question about it.... There was more than one (spraying) incident." Long, however, insisted that company policy clearly states that spraying will not be allowed when workers are so close that pesticides could drift onto them.
"We are not going to be spraying pesticides that will hit workers while they are working," he said. "Are the winds too great? Then we don't have people there."
A recent survey suggests otherwise.
The Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, an advocacy group, interviewed dozens of Ag-Mart field workers about pesticide exposure. Twenty-two percent of 78 workers surveyed said they had been sprayed directly with chemicals while working in Immokalee or Wimauma for Ag-Mart during a single month, May this year.
Forty percent said they had been "hit by pesticides drifting" from a nearby field during that same month. The survey did not ask about exposure during the rest of the season or other seasons.
Lawyer Greg Schell of the Justice Project said Friday's announcement by Ag-Mart was "fabulous." He said studies by his organization had shown the company was "particularly problematic" when it came to exposing workers to dangerous pesticides, so the company's policy change will be significant.
He cautioned, however, that Ag-Mart, like other Florida growers, will still be using chemicals that carry health risks: "We still have to keep an eye on them."
Long insisted that his company uses all pesticides prudently. But he said he was ready to do more.
"Why not push further?" he said. The new measures are "just one step we're taking toward creating the safest work environment possible and creating the safest produce available."

Farmworkers and pesticides: Special report on babies who were born disfigured to mothers and fathers who work together in Florida's fields.

 For Palm Beach Post series on farm worker exposure to pesticides and birth defects:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/news/special_reports/carlitos/