Musings: Beyond Wrong

The other day, I received an email that contained this photo and Facebook post by Kathryn Xian, an activist with the Alliance to Stop Slavery:

 

It was "liked" by 225 people, shared by a whopping 394 and followed by a string of 91 comments expressing sadness, grief, outrage and aloha for the man and his family. Others derided the Departments of Health and Agriculture and a few railed on Monsanto. Several lauded Kathryn for being a "true people's champion." Not one expressed any skeptism.

They all accepted the post as Truth, even though it had so many unanswered questions, and some of it didn't make any sense, like blaming the EPA for black market chemicals, or the misuse of restricted use pesticides that it heavily regulates?

My own curiosity was piqued. Why was Kathryn using a psuedonym for someone who is dead? What did that picture actually tell us about the man or the circumstances of his death? If you are trying to stop farm worker trafficking and misuse of pesticides, why not name the farm where the poisoning allegedly occured? Had authorities been notified? What's this about a pesticide black market? And since cancer takes a long time to develop, had "Tom" actually contracted it on a farm in Hawaii?

So I sent her this message:

Hi Kathryn, I saw your sad post about your friend "Tom." I was wondering if you could give me a little more information. How long was he working here in Hawaii? Did he report his pesticide exposure to DOH, and if so, how did DOH respond? When you mention there's a black market for restricted pesticides, do you mean RUPs that are banned in the US? Where are these chemicals coming from? Looking forward to learning more. aloha, joan

The answer, as I expected, was crickets. Which confirmed my initial suspicions that there was more thaCenter for Food Safety, n a whiff of bullshit in the post — aside from its description of Gary Hooser and HAPA, the Babes and Walter Ritte as "amazing advocates fighting to protect our 'aina and 'ohana."

Still, I was bothered by the idea of bootleg pesticides, unprotected farm workers. So I contacted a friend who is akamai about agriculture throughout the state, to see what he thought. His reply:

Cancer has many causes, that said, it's not outside the realm of possibility that this man died of pesticide induced cancer. The immigrant farmers are known to be very poorly trained in pesticide use on their own farms (you saw this in India). If a pesticide works they will use it regardless of whether it cleared for that crop or not, or even if it has an ag application at all. This is a well known fact in the ag community. The HDOA and CTAHR have outreach programs to educate immigrant farmers on safe practices but it's an uphill battle because of language and cultural barriers.

I think that it's unlikely that he was exposed to fatal doses of pesticides on a large ag operation; those guys are monitored by the regulatory agencies especially if they have employees. They are also aware that if residues of pesticides show up on their products it makes for very bad press. They would never use a black market product on their crops. As for the small immigrant farmers, I don't think it's a case of black market products as much as the misuse of restricted use pesticides. But even the sale of these products are tightly controlled and someone with a RUP license would have to purchase it for them. Importing black market pesticides would be hard to do and the penalties would be severe if you were caught.

If your goal is to reduce pesticide misuse and help immigrant farmworkers, it seems to me you'd support the DOH and CTAHR outreach efforts, make a report to the DOH of any possible pesticide poisoning and publicly hold the agency's feet to the fire, publicize the farm(s) that improperly use pesticides so that people could avoid their products, humanize a man who allegedly died from pesticide exposure by telling his story, using his real name, and providing some documentation to back it up.

But if your goal is to foster outrage, build blind opposition to GMO crops and conventional agriculture, promote a group of people and farms that you consider “pono,” garner support for your group and cause, well, then, you exploit an unnamed person's death in a tear-jerker post that tugs at the heartstrings and disengages the brain.

It's called propaganda, and it's being used widely and intensively by the anti-ag and anti-GMO groups in Hawaii and elsewhere. 

While it's always tragic to see people blatantly manipulated into believing a certain way, what really bothers me is this: Groups with no credibility and legitimacy have co-opted the pesticide issue in Hawaii and adopted antics like these that make it easy to dismiss valid concerns. 

They are actually setting back, rather than advancing, efforts to address real problems associated with pesticide misuse. 

And that's beyond wrong.