Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Local versus Organic Markets
Stories of food contamination and poisoning are not uncommon
these days, from outbreaks of multidrug-resistant salmonella in American
chicken supplies to milk laced with melamine from China. It often seems
as if the food produced in our globalized food system cannot be trusted.
A particularly horrific story of food contamination broke recently in
India: In the summer of 2013, twenty-
three elementary school children in
the North Indian state of Bihar died after eating free school lunches that
had traces of a pesticide called monocrotophos. Like endosulfan and DDT,
monocrotophos is a persistent organic pollutant, banned in the United
States and the European Union. However, it is still used in Indian agri-
culture to control pest outbreaks in crops like rice. Authorities speculate
that the school lunches came into direct contact with monocrotophos be-
cause the cooking oil used to prepare the food may have been stored in an
old drum that once contained the pesticide. Monocrotophos is extremely
toxic.1
W hat happened in Bihar is not an isolated incident. Traces of pesticides
continue to be found on vegetables sold in Kerala's markets. One recent
study by K AU discovered “dangerous levels” of the pesticide profenofos
on several vegetables.2
P. J. Chackochan, Indocert's first certified organic farmer, did not
express surprise when I shared such stories with him. “Wayanad's own
bananas have been the object of such scares,” he told me. Consumers
and stores had unoicially boycoted bananas from his home district of