New Pesticides

[smerchly]

In todays Standard I read a story that intrigues me to say the least . A farmer complains that we by tons of produce from the U.S .& Mexico that are laden with pesticides that we do not allow to be used in Canada .Our consumers demand this perfect fruit & vegs. & this can be more easily achieved by using chemicals , some of which are toxic. So , Canada is set to mirror the rules of Mexico & the U.S.with this new "SSP" which means , Security & Prosperity Partnership . For decades Can.farmers have wanted to use the same chemicals to compete saying we are eating the stuff anyway .

David Boyd ,enviro.lawyer found 60 toxic chemicals in 1130 pesticides registered for use in Canada that were banned in other indust.nations due to health & enviro. reasons .In some cases , Canada had levels hundreds of times higher than some Euro.countries and SPP will make it worse !

Now I don't blame the farmers for wanting to compete on a level playing field since most consumers could care less where any product come from , but I'm beginning to think we are wasting our money donating to cancer research etc. The same thing is happening in industry with very lax pollution laws and work standards so we will never compete unless we bring our standards down to their level .

If we allow these toxic chemicals to be used on our fruits & veggies , we will also see these chemicals in our Great Lakes and in the fish & our tap water etc. via runoff from the fields.This is just another example of the costs of free trade and our children will be the ones to pay the price . It looks like our standards are too high in this country .

[bigugli]

We have banned such pesticides as Temik for years because of the serious harm they can cause, yet trace levels of such chemicals can be routinely fond in watermelon, cantaloupe, tomatoes,etc... brought in from Latin America. Our farmers get p u'd because it is unfair, but the public's health is jeopardized for the sake of free trade and economic stability for the Latinos.