Toxic Free Tip of the Week: Cost of Tomatoes?

Last Thursday 2/19, the North Carolina Pesticide Board finished their case against Ag-Mart, the tomato company accused of the largest pesticide violations case in NC state history. More than 200 charges of worker endangerment were at issue in the case. In the end, the Pesticide Board found Ag-Mart guilty of just six charges of sending workers back into fields before the “re-entry interval” (REI) had expired, for a total fine of just $3,000.

The N&O has been covering this case since it first began back in early 2005, so some of you may be familiar with it, but in case you’re not, here’s the quick version: Ag-Mart’s a pretty big corporate tomato grower with fields in Southeastern NC (Currently in Brunswick county, formerly in Pender & New Hanover counties), and also in FL, NJ and Mexico. In late 2004 and very early 2005, three Ag-Mart employees had children with severe birth defects, all within a few months of one another. One of the children - Carlos Candelario - was born with no arms or legs, and has appeared on the front page of the N&O and in lots of other press about the case over the years. A second child was born with no external genitalia and some other defects, and died shortly after birth. The third child has a jaw deformity.

The three families came forward sometime in 2005, contending that Ag-Mart repeatedly broke federal rules about pesticide safety - spraying much too close while they worked, denying them adequate safety equipment, and so on - and may have caused their children’s birth defects. At least one family - Carlos’ parents - filed a private lawsuit against the company.

It’s been four years of back and forth about the hundreds of pesticide violations in this case. Ag-Mart has made some really shameful arguments in their defense - things like it could have been thalidomide, and you can’t trust our records of when we applied pesticides, because we’re not required to have those records anyway.

In the mean time, lots has happened - you can catch up on the details on Toxic Free NC’s website and blog, and on the N&O’s archives page for this topic. A few highlights and low-lights:
* NC Division of Public Health tries to prove something un-prove-able, and sort of misses the giant elephant in the room: the use of pesticides that are known to cause serious birth defects in laboratory animals on our food sounds like a pretty bad idea, and certainly, no one should be allowed to use them anywhere near pregnant women.
* Ag-Mart is charged with other violations of worker protection standards and housing standards in NC (1, 2) and NJ.
* Ag-Mart settles out of the private lawsuit, providing enough money to for Carlos’ medical care.

As advocates for reducing toxic pesticide pollution in NC, and for health and safety for farm workers and their families, Toxic Free NC has kept a close eye on the proceedings of this case. We’ve been fighting along side our allies in the NC Farm Worker Advocacy Network for reforms that would prevent such a terrible thing from happening here again. Last year, we won a few important changes, and this year, we’re going back for more. You can keep up with the action all through the ’09 – ’10 legislative session by signing up for our Action Alerts, and visiting our website.

So, now for this week’s tip: There’s no Ag-Mart boycott going on that I know of, but I for one am not buying their tomatoes. It’s a little tricky to figure out what they are – they’re sold under the brand names “Santa Sweets” and “Ugly Ripe.” I’ve also seen roma tomatoes with the “Santa Sweets” label. Some Ag-Mart tomatoes are labeled organic, but organic or no, I’d rather not support a company with this kind of track record, regardless of how my specific tomato was grown.