Along a magical Florida coastline, nestled westward off the highway, are lush vegetable fields stretching out for miles and miles into the distance. One can easily find many thriving vegetable farms growing hordes of tomatoes and the like. California has them as well, and they provide the nation with millions of juicy vegetables and other produce, almost year round. It is a huge industry, cranking out produce and fruit for an entire nation. But behind the myriad of choices at your local grocer’s counter is a migrant worker, who labors tirelessly in the heat, in deplorable conditions, with zero protection from the harmful pesticides that bombard the lungs, skin, eyes, and every other organ in the body.
Picture this scene: a tiny Mexican woman wearing no shoes (she cannot afford them) walks through the mud and briar, cracks in her worn feet, and stoops down to pick a tomato to add to her bucket. She coughs from a lingering respiratory “condition” that is always with her, as she carries not one load, but two. There is a 30-pound bucket of tomatoes and another one that grows in her belly; you see she is 7 months pregnant and must work to pay the rent and provide food for her poor family. At home, a caretaker holds the woman’s young child born with no arms; a commonality among migrant workers is that many of their babies are born with birth defects of various kinds. The workers claim it is the pesticides, their field bosses want to deny it and cover up. After all, they don’t want attention drawn to them that may cause them to lose their job. They have families too, right?
It is a sad reality to thousands, and it seems that not much is being done to help these migrant workers or improve their working conditions. Rosie Ramirez, a clinical assistant at the Marion E. Fether Medical Center in Immokalee, Florida estimates that “a good 180 of every 200 women” the clinic sees have worked in the fields. Of those, perhaps 75 women keep on working right through their seventh month of pregnancy. Immokalee is the home of three different babies born with birth defects from migrant mothers, who worked in the fields there. They call them los tres niños, and they have drawn some attention to the pesticide debate.
Top EPA officials have read about the three babies from Immokalee: they conclude that there is no obvious link between the pesticides and these babies birth defects. (A fact the Gorilla has a tough time believing.) These women are sick and pregnant and yet they keep right on working. Not working is simply not an option for these ladies. So the result is, the children of these women suffer. One woman tells the story of not one, but two of her daughters having Lupus. She was told by doctors that it was from “exposure to chemicals.” The girls used to play in the nearby fields, while she picked. Another woman talks of how she would crawl on her pregnant belly to pick endive since that was how she was taught by her field boss. Her baby, a son named Matthew, was born with deformities of his hands most likely caused by them being crushed inutero, while she was crawling. The boy is now older and has a different opinion. “My brother always said it was the pesticides,” Matthew says. He says, “If Mama hadn’t been in those fields, I wouldn’t have been born like this.”
These are just a few of many stories of deformed babies, sick mothers (and let’s not forget the men here who suffer too), and the results of working in pesticide-laden fields for a lifetime. The company that employs these women, was found to have 457 different violations in pesticide use, resulting in a lawsuit from the women and pressure to make changes. The company agreed that it will go organic in the coming years and many others are expected to follow suit. Up in Washington, the EPA has made a choice, too. The deputy director of the EPA’s Office of Pesticides programs, said her agency is designing a new study based on the Immokalee babies. It will look at the use, or misuse, of the applicable chemicals and deepen the existing research, possibly even providing some answers. Well, the Gorilla hopes they get them too. There are a lot of eager people in Florida, California, North Carolina, and other states that need some answers and soon! Going organic sounds like an appropriate choice and seems long overdue to the Gorilla. What do you think?