- After a nine-month investigation, a Peruvian Congressional
Subcommittee has found significant evidence of criminal responsibility
by both the agrochemical company Bayer and the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture
in the poisoning of 42 children in the remote Andean village of Tauccamarca
in October 1999.
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- The children were stricken after eating a school breakfast
contaminated with the organophosphate pesticide methyl parathion. Twenty-four
children died before they could reach medical treatment, 18 others survived
with significant long-term health and developmental consequences. The pesticide
was heavily marketed under the name of Folidol to small farmers throughout
Peru, the great majority of whom speak Quechua only and are illiterate.
Bayer packaged the pesticide, a white powder that resembles powdered milk
and has no strong chemical odor, in small plastic bags, labeled in Spanish
and displaying a picture of vegetables. The labels provided no usable safety
information, such as pictograms, for the majority of users in remote villages,
and little indication of the danger of the product.
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- The Peruvian Congressional Report also found that Bayer,
should compensate the families and surviving children for the losses they
have suffered.
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- Headquartered in Germany, Bayer has been a principle
Peruvian importer and distributor of both methyl and ethyl parathion.
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- The families filed a suit against Bayer in October of
2001 asserting that the company should have taken steps to prevent the
foreseeable misuse of this extremely toxic product, given the severe health
risks presented by methyl parathion, and the indigenous language use in
the Peruvian countryside. Two days after the suit was filed, the judge
of the Superior Court in Lima found the case inadmissible on procedural
grounds, and concluded summarily--and illegally--that the plaintiffs had
not adequately made out the underlying substantive case. Under Peruvian
law, in the initial stage of litigation the judge is authorized only to
review the completeness of the filing papers, and may not decide substantive
matters of law. The families successfully appealed the illegal resolution,
and are currently waiting for a hearing date to be set for later this year.
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- The suit seeks justice for the children that perished,
guarantees of medical monitoring for the surviving children, and regulatory
reforms to prevent future tragedies. It also names the Ministry of Agriculture
for failure to enforce pesticide regulations; uncontrolled sales of "restricted
use" pesticides including parathion are common throughout Peru.
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- The efforts of the Tauccamarca families and allied Peruvian
non-governmental organizations have been backed by a wave of public support
and have won important changes. In February 2002, the Peruvian National
Agrarian Health Service indefinitely suspended the registration of all
pesticides classified by the World Health Organization as Ia (extremely
hazardous) or Ib (highly hazardous).
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- As the World Summit on Sustainable Development takes
place in Johannesburg, South Africa, the families have written to UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan requesting that he exclude Bayer from the UN Global
Compact because of Bayer's actions in Peru. The Global Compact is a UN
partnership with corporations that pledge to abide by human rights and
environmental principles. The letter was signed by Victoriano Huarayo Torres,
representing the village of Tauccamarca. Two of Mr. Torres' children were
among the twenty-four fatally poisoned. He relates in the letter, "In
the intervening years [since the 1999 poisoning] grieving parents in my
village cannot understand how the United Nations could support a company
like Bayer that has continued to sell its most toxic pesticides (classified
by the WHO as extremely or highly hazardous) for many years after publicly
promising to withdraw them in 1995. Nor can we understand why the United
Nations would support a company that allowed methyl parathion to be sold
in a region where they knew that the people would not be able to read the
label instructions."
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- > Sources: Peruvian Congressional Investigative Committee,
Mr. Torres' letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, UN Global Compact,
http://65.214.34.30/un/gc/unweb.nsf/, Greenwash + 10--The UN's Global Compact,
Corporate Accountability, and the Johannesburg 'Earth Summit, Corpwatch
at http://www.corpwatch.org/campaigns/PCD.jsp?articleid=1348, CorpWatch;
email corpwatch@corpwatch.org; Web site http://www.corpwatch.org.
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- > Pesticide Action Network Latin America (Red de Acción
en > Plaguicidas y sus Alternativas en América Latina, RAPAL);
phone (510) 550-6752; email erosenthal@earthjustice.org; Red de Acción
en Alternativas al uso Agroquímicos (RAAA); Lima, Peru; fax (511)
3375170 / 4257955; email > raaaper@terra.com.pe >
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