"The EU’s behaviour demonstrated a “double standard”, added Ramírez Muñoz: “It prohibits the use of this substance in its territories for health reasons, especially in children, but continues with its production and shipment to other countries where it is used for food production, as if in these countries the lives of infants who are exposed to chlorpyrifos have no value.”"
The blame is put squarely on Europe but do these countries that import have no responsibility for themselves?
>The blame is put squarely on Europe but do these countries that import have no responsibility for themselves?
Poorer countries are a lot more vulnerable that richer ones. It's like blaming the homeless person eating rotten food he received at he food bank for lacking personal responsibility for his food poisoning.
No, the difference is these countries are aware that the pesticide is banned in Europe. Last I checked they don't have a label saying "food poisoning" at food banks.
Ok, let me rephrase my example. If you wouldn't sell poison to your own people, why would you in good conscience sell poison to others who are "OK" with it?
We allow people to poison themselves with narcotics. We are legalizing this more and more knowing it's poison. The argument is people can make their own determination --but here the argument is whole countries can't make a determination?
We, the US, allow things to be imported to the US which are banned in The EU too. We ban but sell to them things they don't ban. It's up to each jurisdiction to make their own determination. All countries have access to the toxicity information on things they import and can do what they want with that information.
I don't think using the US as an example here is very strong for your position. The US has fewer restrictions than the EU for exactly the same reason the EU sells poisonous shit to poorer countries: there's a lot of money to be made that way.
>It's like blaming the homeless person eating rotten food he received at he food bank for lacking personal responsibility for his food poisoning.
I agree with your sentiment, but I think this is a bad example: presumably, the rotten food is no one's fault. Someone gets sick, there's uproar, rules and regulations are put in place, and next thing you know it's difficult or restrictive to even provide food at a food bank. Everyone is worse off. This isn't a stretch, we see it all the time.
If exporting said pesticide was banned, people would be blaming EU for famine instead. Regarding your example, I have a concrete counterexample: Companies are already receiving blame for throwing expired food in the trash compactor instead of donating it to food banks.
You know why throwing away even good food is preferable to donating it? Because if you throw it away you just account for it as a loss, but if you donate it you still owe the government the VAT just like if you sold it.
I know it's how it works in Portugal and I wouldn't be surprised if it was because of some EU tax directive that it's like that. There are some exceptions, ofcourse.
That's surprising! So say I buy a bunch of produce from a farmer for my shop in Portugal. In the case where I sell it I'd expect to pay VAT on my margin. But how would my accounting differ between putting it in trash bags and putting it in a box labeled "free"?
It’s more like your average lower income family eats more fast food than average high income families
We could ban fast food because it increases cancer risk and say the poor people don’t understand the risk so we need to save them from themselves. Meanwhile they just lost their main source of low cost food.
Europe is more stringent about sunscreens too. They publish these standards. Each country has to set its own standards, and there are plenty to follow if they want a starting point...
It's like saying the EU is poisoning the US because there are things we don't ban but they do. It's up to us to make that determination and stop the importation. They like raw cheese, that's great, we prefer to avoid the low chance of food poisoning. But that goes for lots of chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Each economic zone or country makes its own determination.
That's what national standards and regulations are for. If the countries don't care to even have laws to protect their citizens, then the blame is greatly on them.
But, instead of making hay with those governments, it's more attractive to say the EU is to blame. No, go protest those countries --that's where they should make hay, but it's probably not as sexy and they'd probably be run out.
Ok so we should be up in arms about them manufacturing these drugs, is that correct, given they directly result in the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans yearly?
I’ll hang around for the author to take up the cause.
Yeah, tend to agree here. The idea that the west knows best and less developed countries need a saving from themselves feels wrong to me.
The data is out there, it’s trivial for these countries to ban chemicals if they wish to do so, but it may not be trivial for their industries to switch to cleaner, greener and potentially more expensive alternatives.
> I would prefer it if anything we sell is up to our own standards. Just like any kind of branding.
the strong form of the standards argument is "health and safety standards", where we don't want DDT or chloroflourocarbons (if I have that right) used anywhere in the world, nor to inflict them on other people. However, we don't live in malarial swamps (any more). A country where malaria is a major health problem might have a different rational optimum for pesticides.
But as you move down rungs of the standards ladder, it becomes a less defensible argument. "3rd world" economies might not be able to afford cars nor have the infrastructure to support "our standards" for bumpers, air bags, etc., or be willing to use cheaper quality ladders because they are cheaper.
Then there is a strong economic argument that, if you give up the bottom of a market because it's not profitable, you will create new competitors who climb up from the bottom and overwhelm you. This is a good part of how the post-WWII Japanese manufacturing companies overwhelmed Western companies. (and essentially the path followed by all of the Asian Tigers, and before them America vs Europe) The reason this phenomenon takes place is that if you make a million crappy little cars a year, and you save $0.01 on each nut and bolt, or on installing each nut and bolt, those savings are important because they multiply, even to the point where you can afford to study and look for things like that. If you're making luxury cars only, you don't pay attention to stuff like that, but that means, ultimately, your manufacturing technology falls behind, and when the efficient producers decide to make luxury cars efficiently, they are just plain better cars. (for more information see "learning curve advantages" and "McKinsey, British Motorcyle Industry". Learning curve advantages are not scale advantages, but they work better at scale. Learning curve advantages are thought to be more or less logarythmic to scale, somewhat like moving out the tail of a Gaussian, first you eliminate the 1 of 100 problems, then you eliminate the 1 of 1000 problems, etc.)
So, for international commodity chemical companies, why stop manufacturing a chemical that the purchasers can simply buy somewhere else? It makes you smaller and helps your competitors.
The headline should not read "continue to export", it should read "continue to import", because that is what is happening; unless you show that the "Nestle of hardware stores" not only manufactures the products, but also controls the retailers in the foreign countries.
> Yeah, tend to agree here. The idea that the west knows best and less developed countries need a saving from themselves feels wrong to me.
If the global south countries at hand have scientific data that shows these substances are not harmful, then sure. But somehow I doubt that's the case. I think it's far more likely that it's a cheaper product that they can (possibly) afford, and their people who did nothing wrong and had no say in that decision will bear the cost of it.
It's frankly some wild mental gymnastics to take "The West shouldn't make decisions for the global south" and turn that into "so, if western corporations want to dump toxic products that regulatory bodies have forbid the sale of in said western countries, then they're free to do it in the global south." Holy fuck.
>The blame is put squarely on Europe but do these countries that import have no responsibility for themselves?
This one is tough, because I agree it's the responsibility of the importer. But it's also strange to knowingly provide seriously harmful products. One is a legal argument, the other ethical.
"global south" countries, i.e. former eruopean colonies have resources that get shipped to the industrialized north, things get industrially transformed and then sold back to the resource originating countries
this makes it easy to imagine that the food once grown using those pesticides may well get exported back to europe. so maybe it's eruopean corporations doing the pesticide importing, growing the food, exporting the food. that's why the blame is put in europe.
mining really does work like this, why not agriculture?
The ironic bit is that the food produced outside of the EU with the use of products banned by the EU is making its way back into the EU and being sold cheaper than the EU produced items.
Of course they share responsibility, but also, in aggregate, circumstances worked out such that they are less capable of enforcing laws even if the compounds or their uses are completely banned
> The main destinations were Algeria, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Costa Rica.
These countries are known to have bad regulations and are easy to bribe, which creates a loophole for big corporations to get richer (and let's put aside how they get to the point of having bad regulations). However, remember that many developed countries import ingredients from the named countries, so saying "it's not my problem" can't be applied here.
It is near impossible to have a poor country that isn't easy to bribe. EU and these companies know this too.
Even if you say the responsibility is on these countries to ban them themselves, you know that's not going to happen due to the wealth disparity leading to corruption. What then?
Folks thinking this is a "not my problem" situation, put yourself in the shoes of the parents in the other country. They know they are generally powerless to protect their kids from these, and people from European countries producing these chemicals are saying "not my problem".
The blame is put squarely on Europe but do these countries that import have no responsibility for themselves?
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