Cut-flower industry relies on heavy pesticide use
Provided by: Associated Press
Written by: JOSHUA GOODMAN
11/02/2007

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - It's probably the last thing most people think about when buying roses.

But by the time the velvety, vibrant-coloured flowers reach a Valentine's Day buyer, they will have been sprayed, rinsed and dipped in a battery of potentially lethal chemicals.

Most of the toxic assault takes place in the waterlogged savannah surrounding the capital of Colombia, which has the world's second-largest cut-flower industry after the Netherlands, producing 62 per cent of all flowers sold in the United States.

With 110,000 employees - many of them single mothers - and annual exports of US$1 billion, the industry provides an important alternative to growing coca, source crop of the Andean country's better-known illegal export: cocaine.

But these economic gains come at a cost to workers' health and Colombia's environment, said consumer advocates who complain of an over-reliance on chemical pesticides.

Colombia's flower exporters association responded by launching Florverde, which has certified 86 of its 200 members for taking steps to improve worker safety and welfare. Florverde said its members have reduced pesticide use by 38 per cent since 1998, to an average of 97 kilograms of active ingredient to every hectare a year.

"Every day, we're making more progress," said Florverde director Juan Carlos Isaza.

"The value of Florverde is that these best practices have now been standardized and are being adopted by the industry."

Nevertheless, 36 per cent of the toxic chemicals applied by Florverde farms in 2005 were listed as "extremely" or "highly" toxic by the World Health Organization, Isaza acknowledged.

Colombia has no government regulations about pesticide use inside greenhouses, where toxicity levels tend to rise.

Even with more stringent guidelines, accidents happen.

On Nov. 25, 2003, some 200 workers at Flores Aposentos were taken to hospital after fainting and developing sores inside their mouths. Authorities determined this mass-poisoning could have been caused by any number of pesticide-handling violations but fined the company just US$5,770.

There are no reliable statistics about chemicals used by Colombia's 600-plus flower farms, in part because only one-third belong to Asocolflores, the exporters' association, which does keep good records.

Causal links between these chemicals and individual illnesses are hard to prove because chronic pesticide exposure has not been studied in enough detail.

But researchers have found some disturbing data: the Harvard School of Public Health examined 72 children ages seven to eight in a flower-growing region of Ecuador whose mothers were exposed to pesticides during pregnancy and found they had developmental delays of up to four years on aptitude tests.

"Every time we look, we're finding out these pesticides are more dangerous than we ever thought before and more toxic at lower levels," said Philippe Grandjean, who led the Harvard study published last year.

Carmen Orjuela began suffering dizzy spells and repeated falls in 1997, while working at a flower farm outside Bogota. During the peak season before Valentine's Day, she said her employer forced workers to enter greenhouses only a half-hour after they had been fumigated.

"Those who refused were told they could leave - that 20 people were outside waiting to take their job," said Orjuela, who quit in 2004.

Orjuela's employer, Flores de la Sabana, denied ever disregarding manufacturer-recommended re-entry times but a toxicology study from Colombia's National University confirmed Orjuela's illness was "directly related to an important exposure to potentially toxic chemical substances." A government arbiter finally ordered the company to pay her a pension equal to monthly minimum wage earned by most workers.

Such problems apparently aren't isolated: a survey of 84 farms between 2000 and 2002, partly financed by Asocolflores, found only 16.7 per cent respected Florverde's recommendation that workers wait 24 hours before re-entering greenhouses sprayed with the most toxic of pesticides.

Producers say they would love to go organic, especially given the high costs of pesticides. But their risks include infestations and stiff competition from emerging flower growers in Africa and China.

"The biggest hurdle to going organic is that once you're there you have to be prepared to lose your crop," said John Amaya, president of the Miami-based flower unit of Dole Food Co., Colombia's largest flower grower.