ARTICLE: Good for you? Choose veggies that are pesticide-free
Buffalo News, June 14th, 2010, By Charity Vogel / News Staff Reporter
If you’ve ever sliced a fruit or mashed a vegetable for a growing kid, you’ve no doubt had this thought:
This food is good for this child.
But is that really true?
To be sure, fruits and vegetables are loaded with nutrients that children need to develop in muscle, bone and brain: vitamins, calcium, minerals.
But a new analysis of government health data shows that many American children are also consuming eye-opening amounts of pesticides along with their healthy servings of produce — and that there is a link between pesticide residue in kids’ bodies and the incidence of attention-deficit disorder.
The study, published in the journal Pediatrics last month, showed that 94 percent of American kids had detectable levels of pesticide residue in their urine.
Higher levels of pesticide residue in children’s bodies were linked with a greater chance in children of having ADHD, according to the study.
ADHD, or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, is becoming more common among children, and involves the inability to focus for any length of time, hyperactive behavior and impulsivity. It can cause children to have trouble learning in school.
In Western New York, where fresh produce fills grocery stores and farm markets from this time of year until the fall, some observers are worried that local kids are consuming too much pesticide matter on their food — as well as in water, and breathing it in the air or walking across it on sprayed lawns.
“When you spray pesticides, you watch the bugs shake all over the place — and then die,” said Kathleen Frank. “It works on their nervous system. We’ve seen our own children having a lot of emotional problems, a lot of nervous problems.”
Frank, produce manager at Feel Rite Fresh Markets on Maple Road in Amherst, stocks the shelves in her store with nothing but organic produce. That means the soil in which the food was grown has no pesticides in it, and the produce itself was grown without pesticide application.
Frank said she knows from her own experience that eating a “cleaner diet” can make you feel better, and she strongly advocates organic produce to those she meets.
It’s not that much more expensive, she said, especially for apples and bananas — foods that children love and typically want to eat.
“[Your food] doesn’t have to have all those pesticides. It doesn’t have to have all that garbage on it,” she said. “Maybe don’t buy those Doritos — you are what you eat.”
At Wegmans, nutritionist Theresa Amborski said that many supermarkets are now offering organic options in most sections of the market, allowing families to pick and choose what they want to buy from those products.
“You can get organic dairy, breads, meats and produce,” stated Amborski, in an e-mail, “and I’m even seeing regular boxed grocery items start to reflect the trend.”
Amborski recommends that consumers educate themselves on organic produce and labeling. Wegmans has a “Shopping for Organics” page on its Web site, www.wegmans.com, with information on terminology and facts about organic products.
And, Amborski advises shoppers to review the “Dirty Dozen” guide published by the Environmental Working Group in Washington, D.C., which highlights the types of produce most likely to be contaminated by pesticides, as well as a “Clean 15″ of foods likely to be lowest in pesticide residue.
At Feel Rite, Frank recommended that consumers wash all produce items whether they are organic or not — fruits and vegetables, with skin and without — thoroughly before using, with a special produce wash or with regular soap.
Even a few small changes in choices, from regular to organic goods, can start the shift in people’s thinking and get them feeling better and healthier, Frank said.
“It’s a thinking process,” she said. “It’s an education process.”
Kathleen Frank, produce manager at Feel-Rite Fresh Market on Maple Road in Amherst, says her store stocks only organic produce.
Fair for Life Social & Fair Trade Certification includes high transparency, social responsibility audits, requirements for good environmental performance, and the ability to combine Fair Trade certification with other programs, such as organic certification, for all major world markets.
Discovery Islands Organics is an organic and Fair Trade importer and distributor for fresh produce. They carry several product lines, such as bananas from Peru, and avocados and mangos from Mexico, that are certified, and now also blueberries, apples and pears that are Fair for Life Fair Trade Certified. Discovery Islands Organics´ ethnical sourcing policy is to buy local and direct, first and foremost, and they also work primarily with grower cooperatives for the majority of their product sourcing. They help to educate their growers on fair trade, and have supported the implementation of fair trade certified systems with their growers.
: We are happy to see a pioneer in the Northwestern and Canadian organic movements embrace fair trade among its sourcing practices and company policy,! said Wolfgang Kathe, department manager for social and fairtrade at IMO.: The combination of organic and fair trade, both domestically and internationally are important in promoting sustainability through trade.!
In the rich soils of Tucumán, interrupcion* fair trade blueberries soak in warm sun while surrounded by the high Andes mountains and sugarcane fields. Berries del Aconquija S. A. & Berries del NOA are farms founded by Francisco and Pablo, two entrepreneurs that made social responsibility and sustainability their guiding principles. Back in 2005, when they were writing their business plan they contacted interrupcion* to help them to measure and maximize their social and environmental impact. We worked with them to identify their communities and their needs. At that time, they built strong ties with the local organizations giving them support and guidance in understanding of the main issues facing the community. As soon as both companies were formed and the farms went into production, Pablo and Fran decided to certify their operations with Nature´s Choice Certification and Global Gap Certification. Both certifications guarantee safe labor conditions, monitor and regulate environmental impact and establish guidelines for good relationships with workers.
One of the first projects implemented was to invite local bank representatives to the farm to help permanent and temporary workers open their own savings accounts, so they can manage their money safely and take the first steps toward establishing credit. They then realized that some local labor contractors were using false registrations to avoid paying the national minimum wage to temporary workers. In response, Pablo and Fran rewrote their agreement with labor contractors to guarantee proof of payment for each temporary worker and installed a fingerprint scanner on the farm to ensure that those working on the farm are getting paid.
In 2007, interrupcion* started the fair trade certification program and Pablo and Fran were enthusiastic about getting involved and working towards fair trade certification.
The good relationships that they had cultivated with workers, their genuine concern for labor & social issues, and their well defined and documented processes helped them to obtain Fair Trade certification. As time went by, sales of Fair Trade berries made the social Premium fund grow and the workers showed a serious commitment to their communities, eager to create positive social change. In this rural and poor area. Workers decided to invest some premium money to solve urgent problems that their community was facing: a lack of shoes for the children of the community school, a necessary but expensive surgery for a very ill child, and the purchase of a specialized wheel chair for a severely handicapped child.In addition, as Pablo, Fran, and interrupcion* taught during assemblies, workers need to be organized to create an institution governed by themselves to address the most important issues that they face as a community. From this awareness came the decision to create an independent branch of Asociación Civil Interrupción* in Tucumán to provide goods and services for all the workers and their communities, goods and services often basic but difficult to obtain. Two main projects are being evaluated by the workers and Asociación Civil Interrupción:
- The creation of a community bakery to provide affordable and healthy bread
- The creation of a community factory to produce bricks and provide affordable materials for housing and small construction projects in the community.
Fran and Pablo are supporting these projects on their farms through a commitment to Fair Trade practices and are advising and assisting workers by providing the tools and freedom necessary to create make them a reality. Asociación Civil Interrupción is working closely with the workers committee to bring their projects to life and to continue to define and implement projects that can harness the benefits of Fair Trade in this community.
We started today our North Region Certification Tour. We´ll be with Alejandra, the IMO Inspector, visiting our associate producers to renew the Fair Trade Certification.
