Farmworkers Association of Florida: Take Action Now!

Help Farmworkers With a Win!

TELL EPA to REQUIRE SPANISH LANGUAGE PESTICIDE LABELS

Help Protect the Health and Safety of Farmworkers

[Deadline is June 28, 2011!]

It is not too often that we have something that we have a chance of winning in protecting the health and safety of farmowrkers. That is why, we are asking for your support in helping us win a victory by notifying the EPA to require bilingual labels on agricultural and other pesticides. SEE LETTER AT BOTTOM!

We at the Farmworker Association of Florida and other social justice, labor, health, and humanitarian organizations would like the EPA to integrate a simple piece of legislation that would improve the health and safety of farmworkers across the nation. Most pesticide labels are still only in English, whereas most of the people who apply pesticides are Hispanic immigrants, and thus are much more likely to sufficiently understand labels in Spanish rather than English. Providing written warnings and instructions in the language that farmworkers are most likely to understand will greatly reduce the probability of accidental exposure.

YOU CAN HELP! You can submit your own comments to EPA by going to the direct link at: http://www.regulations.gov/#!searchResults;rpp=50;po=0;s=EPA-HQ-OPP-2011-0014.

The original EPA announcement in the Federal Registrar can be found at http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-HQ-OPP-2011-0014-0001.

You can, also, sign the on-line petition at http://action.panna.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7026.

While employers are required to provide workers with appropriate Personal Protective Equipment and to properly train handlers and applicators on the correct use of pesticide products, this is currently the best-case scenario. The farmworkers inability to check what they have been told against required written warnings and instructions on a pesticide label leaves them without a method of checks and balances to ensure they are doing all that is necessary to best protect their personal health and safety.

Our opportunity now is critical to helping improve the health and safety of the nations farmworkers. We have been working with other farmworker groups around the country on this, and now EPA has responded by opening up a public comment period to solicit input from all sectors in the country. It might be our only opportunity to do this for a long while, so we are trying to get a critical mass of official comments to the EPA from a diversity of organizations and farmworker supporters.

THE DEADLINE FOR COMMENTS IS JUNE 28^TH. DON'T HESITATE!

SUBMIT YOUR COMMENTS TO EPA TODAY!

We only have until June 28th when the comment period ends. So, we are working hard to try to get as many favorable comments as possible. We know that the pesticide companies are going to try to give all kinds of reasons and excuses why they cannot translate pesticide labels into Spanish. We have to be ready with hundreds of comments from farmworker supporters to demonstrate the importance of bilingual pesticide labels to farmworker health and safety.

Thank you for your help! Thank you for working for social and environmental justice for farmoworkers!

SAMPLE LETTER

Katie Weyrauch
Pesticide Re-evaluation Division
Office of Pesticide Programs
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW.
Washington, DC 20460 (Date)

Dear Ms. Weyrauch:

I am writing on behalf of [your organization] in support of the proposal to provide pesticide labels in English and Spanish. [Describe your organizations mission and your interest in bilingual labeling, e.g. improving farmworker safety, protecting the environment]

Requiring pesticide manufacturers to label their products in English and Spanish will increase pesticide user safety. Pesticide labels communicate information critical to the prevention of harm to human health and the environment. This includes warnings and precautionary statements, first aid information, personal protective equipment, and directions for safe use. According to national surveys, the agricultural workforce is overwhelmingly foreign born and Spanish speaking, and most cannot read English. Workers who handle pesticides thus are unable to understand information contained on the labels that is critical to protecting human health and the environment. Providing pesticide handlers access to this information in a language they can read and understand will greatly reduce the risks of needless and dangerous exposures to themselves, to other workers, and to the environment.

Workers inability to read pesticide labels puts them at risk. In a recent study in Washington State, farmworkers who could not read English exhibited higher rates of pesticide exposure than workers who could read English.

Current EPA regulations seem to recognize the prevalence of Spanish speakers in the workforce but do next to nothing to address this reality. Instead, they place heavy burdens on both workers and employers to provide their own translations. The following statement appears in Spanish on labels of the two most toxic categories of pesticides: If you do not understand the label, find someone to explain it to you in detail. 40 CRF 156.206(e). In short, the current labeling requirements are grossly inadequate to protect Spanish-speaking farmworkers.

Puerto Rico is an example both of how Spanish translations are feasible and why bilingual labeling is needed. Restricted Use Pesticides (RUPs) sold in Puerto Rico have Spanish labels, which shows it is feasible for pesticide manufacturers to translate their labels. However, non-RUPs can be sold in Puerto Rico with English labels, even though Spanish is the official language. There is important safety information on non-RUP labels, and it should be written in a language that users can read.

Bilingual labeling is both a fundamental and practical means of protecting workers health and environmental safety. Pesticide manufacturers already translate many of their labels into Spanish and other languages in order to sell them internationally. In addition, Canada recently implemented a bilingual labeling requirement for pesticides (French and English).

We urge the EPA to adopt regulations to require pesticide manufacturers to translate labels into Spanish. This is a common sense approach that recognizes the realities of todays agricultural workforce and would provide increased protections to workers, their families, rural communities and the environment.

Sincerely,

RMALC: It’s time to rescue and defend Mexico by putting an end to NAFTA

Red Mexicana de Accion Frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC)

Mexico City. January 11, 2011: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was implemented on the first of January 17 years ago, an anniversary that just passed by and that most Mexicans were unaware of. Not surprising really since NAFTA isn’t something to be celebrated. Rather this deal should be roundly condemned as an action taken by the Mexican government that has lead to the dismantling of our industrial infrastructure, the loss of thousands of jobs, and the deepening of poverty. And as if that weren’t enough, the country has lost its food sovereignty and has seen its rural agricultural base decimated.

Alejandro Villamar, a member the Executive Council of the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC acronym in Spanish) says “I don’t know anyone in their right mind who after 17 years would say that the government got it right. Today even industrialists are willing to say that the deal has been a crap-shoot with businesses going under, companies being shuttered, and jobs destroyed.”

It is shameful that we now import 46 per cent of all the food we consume in this country. Shameful as well that we are down to producing 20 million tons of corn while having to import a further 12 million tons of subsidized (U.S.) corn - leading inexorably to the destruction of both small farmer and indigenous economies.

“And then the government is apparently shocked by the fact that so many people after being deprived of their livelihoods in the rural areas, seek to better their lives by heading to the cities, or by going north and thereby putting their very lives at risk,” states Villamar.

Alberto Arroyo Picard, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Mexico and also a member of the Executive Council of RMALC adds, “Hidden behind the propaganda lauding the growth in exports and increased direct investments is the reality that those export sales are built on prior imports, and that all of this has lead to the disintegration of the country’s chains of production while our productive infrastructure is being de-nationalized. Under NAFTA Mexico hasn’t morphed into an exporting powerhouse, rather it serves as a platform for transnational corporations to do their exporting from”.

Following a meeting held in Mexico City on the 10^th of January, the NAFTA Free Trade Commission Ministers repeated a list of supposed benefits accruing from this commercial agreement, this despite NAFTA having failed to meet its own objectives.

Mexico’s Economy Secretary Bruno Ferrari, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, and Canadian Minister of International Trade Peter Van Loan, together advanced the argument that opening up the borders and eliminating any remaining regulatory controls over commerce and investment are key principles that need to be deepened in order to make the North American economy more competitive. They claimed that NAFTA is the “catalyst for our economic recovery.” However, they seem to have forgotten that the economic model that this treaty is built upon is precisely the one that has caused the global crisis that we are now experiencing.

For RMALC these last 17 years have pointed out just how hollow government promises were when NAFTA was signed. At that time the officials were working to convince the public that NAFTA was going to be Mexico’s ticket to becoming a first world country replete with better salaries, better jobs, and enhanced industrial capacity, etc. Paradise was surely at hand!*

Even though NAFTA has meant that Mexico’s integration with the U.S. has been as a subordinate resulting in the loss of national sovereignty, the current government is not only insisting on deepening this dependency but it is also seeking to rekindle the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) made up of the top CEOs from the three countries - a grouping originally struck under the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

For Mexico’s Economy Ministry it is very important to count “once again on recommendations coming from the region’s private sector”. In other words, the Ministry wants to get its marching orders from the heads of U.S. and Canadian transnational corporations plus the 10 Mexican corporate heads (NACC members) – all of whom the Ministry would call on to help shape national policy. In making this request of the private sector the Mexican government is clearly showing a foolish willingness to submit to that sector’s dictates.

The government is not even capable of adopting forceful measures when faced with the controversial halting by the U.S. of cross-border trucking. Rather, the government appears to be willing to accept the U.S. proposal for a ‘pilot program’ (not an option found in the NAFTA) with inspections and supervision (of Mexican trucks) to take place at the pleasure of the U.S. government.

For these and many other reasons RMALC believes that all Mexicans need to express their opposition to these types of developments. The time has come to rescue and to defend our Nation.

Press contacts: Marco Antonio Velásquez - secretario.rmalc@gmail.com , Alejandro Villamar - avillamarc@hotmail.com .

_______

* RMALC has published a series of occasional papers that point out the negative impact that NAFTA has had on most Mexicans – these can be searched for (in Spanish) under the Seccion de Libros on the web page www.rmalc.org.mx.

Translation: Rick Arnold. Common Frontiers-Canada