[HN Gopher] Companies continue to export chlorpyrifos from the E...
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Companies continue to export chlorpyrifos from the EU to poorer
countries
Author : osivertsson
Score : 101 points
Date : 2024-03-08 12:25 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (unearthed.greenpeace.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (unearthed.greenpeace.org)
| password54321 wrote:
| "The EU's behaviour demonstrated a "double standard", added
| Ramirez Munoz: "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?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> 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.
| password54321 wrote:
| 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.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| 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?
| mc32 wrote:
| 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| 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.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _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.
| anilakar wrote:
| 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.
|
| Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
| remotefonts wrote:
| 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.
| Kognito wrote:
| Bad analogy.
|
| 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.
| linguistbreaker wrote:
| 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...
| nairboon wrote:
| > It's like blaming the homeless person eating rotten food he
| received at he food bank
|
| I don't think these companies are donating Chlorpyrifos, so
| this analogy is not quite right.
| mc32 wrote:
| Exactly!
|
| 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.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Due to the difference in wealth, it is very easy to shift
| opinions in these types of situations.
|
| Providing a known-bad chemical that is just going to, at the
| end of the day, impact everyone in this world is just plain
| wrong.
| mc32 wrote:
| So China should stop making fentanyl, right, or any other
| number of chemicals known to be bad, rather than the US
| control entry?
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that the US tries to control entry of
| drugs like fentanyl. They would be more successful if
| China clamped down on the exports.
| mc32 wrote:
| 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.
| aaomidi wrote:
| China and US is not comparable to {EU Country} and
| Pakistan.
| mc32 wrote:
| All of the above have nukes.
| Kognito wrote:
| 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.
| 6510 wrote:
| I wouldn't put it that way. I would prefer it if anything we
| sell is up to our own standards. Just like any kind of
| branding.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| They don't "need a saving from themselves" they need a
| protection from powerful entities that are incentivized to
| harm them for economic gain.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > 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.
| rightbyte wrote:
| A weak gov. that can't piss off farmer interests might
| benefit a lot from external bans though.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _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.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| Europe sometimes opts for not providing seriously harmful
| products - like the pharmaceuticals used for executions in
| the US.
|
| But I think that's pressure group driven, and so might see a
| change in handling chlorpyrifos eventually.
| mtrovo wrote:
| Lobbying or straight up corruption payed in euros go a long way
| on poor countries.
|
| Pesticides usage lobbying in particular was a very vocal issue
| during the last election in Brazil
| https://friendsoftheearth.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Toxi...
| ysofunny wrote:
| but so many things work like this:
|
| "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?
| okasaki wrote:
| I don't think that quote demonstrates any of the things you
| say.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| 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
| nairboon wrote:
| The actual title of the article is quite dishonest:
|
| > Europe shipping banned pesticide linked to child brain damage
| to Global South
|
| As if the whole continent packs up these pesticides and sends
| them southwards.
|
| Later they clarify:
|
| >Almost all of Europe's 2022 exports of the chemical - sent from
| Belgium and Denmark by the multinational pesticide companies UPL
| and FMC
|
| But i guess the proper headline of "US and Indian multinationals
| export pesticides from Belgium and Denmark" is less
| sensationalist.
| dig1 wrote:
| > 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.
| aaomidi wrote:
| 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".
| abdellah123 wrote:
| lol, that's fine ...
|
| They export bombs that kill hundreds (of children and women) per
| day in Gaza !
| JoshTko wrote:
| This is just evil.
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