Spin Control on Pest Control
It hasn’t been released yet, but a study by the National Academy of Sciences concerning the effects of agricultural pesticide residues on children is already causing a stir.
Many in the produce industry fear that the NAS report will spark a replay of a similar--but less authoritative--environmental group report issued in 1989. That report spawned the Alar crisis.
Hoping to neutralize the disclosures of the study, expected in early 1993, the Center for Produce Quality recently launched a sophisticated series of media briefings.
The group hopes to improve agriculture’s image in major metropolitan areas. It claims that dietary pesticide residues are not a health threat--and in any case, growers have significantly reduced chemical usage in recent years.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, are calling the industry’s current media campaign political “spin control,” a calculated attempt to sway public opinion regardless of the facts.
The NAS study focuses on whether current allowable levels of pesticide use are a risk to children. Infants and children are considered particularly vulnerable to pesticide residues because their diet often contains more fruit and vegetables per body weight than that of adults. This means they theoretically would ingest proportionately higher levels of pesticide residues.
The Center for Produce Quality planned four media briefings to tell agriculture’s side of the story before the NAS report is released. The second in the series of briefings was held last week in Los Angeles following a recent presentation in Chicago. Similar programs will be held in Washington and New York.
“It’s clear that the industry is very concerned about the release of the NAS report, and they’re doing everything they can to get the public to believe that there are no hazards from pesticides in food,” said Jennifer Curtis, senior research associate for the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco. “We believe that there are hazards. According to government data, there are 65 chemicals used on food crops that are potential human carcinogens. And roughly 40% of the fruits and vegetables analyzed by state and federal agencies contain at least some kind of residue.”
Indeed, the industry’s analysis of the forthcoming report predicts that it will cause the federal government to “drastically” revamp the procedures it uses to determine dietary risk from farm chemicals. And so the media briefings have consisted of presentations from family farmers who insist they are using far fewer chemicals than they once did.
“When we first started farming,” said Carolyn Leavens, of Leavens Ranches in Ventura, “pesticides were used to wipe out all the insects that were present (in the fields regardless of whether they were beneficial to the particular crop). Now there is more balance and care in using chemicals . . . there have been tremendous reductions.”
David Funk, an Idaho potato grower, said that part of the pesticide problem is an inaccurate perception of farming. “People have lost their roots to agriculture,” he said. “There was a time in America when at least one family relative worked or lived on a farm. But not today. We hope to persuade people that we are still friends. We don’t want to appear adversarial.”
