Olivier de Schutter denounces a Europe that manufactures and exports products that it judges “too dangerous for us, but apparently not too dangerous for populations in developing countries”. He underlines the paradox of this same Europe which, in return, matters and consumes products therefore “contaminated”.
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“It’s environmental racism!”protested Tuesday, August 19 on Franceinfo, Olivier de Schutter, special rapporteur of the United Nations on Human Rights, Belgian lawyer and professor of international law at the Catholic University of Louvain. Fastac, a pesticide prohibited in Europe, continues to be made in large quantities in France, near Lyon, on the site of the Basf chemical group in Genay, according to a report. It is then exported abroad.
“I do not see why we should tolerate that products too dangerous for us are not too dangerous in populations in developing countries”denounces Olivier de Schutter. “France, and other countries, continue to tolerate that companies like Basf, but also Bayer or Syngenta, continue to produce in the European Union, pesticides prohibited often for many years because of their toxicity to humans, to export them to developing countries” Like India, Brazil, South Africa or Vietnam. Irony, “These are then countries that we will import food products, which raises the question of the protection of consumer health, but also the health of agricultural workers in these countries”, points the special rapporteur.
La Commission “has undertaken to prohibit this type of production for export”, more “For the moment, in the European Union we continue to tolerate that pesticides too dangerous for us are produced, but apparently not too dangerous for populations in developing countries”. “With this paradox that the European consumer ultimately imports products, tea, coffee, spices, citrus, bananas which are very contaminated by these products”, he underlines.
“The European Union must mobilize on this”, pleads Olivier de Schutter, who recognizes that it is complicated for a country alone like France to take this initiative because “Let’s not forget that pesticide producers are 1.2 million people employed in the European Union.” Faced with the risk that the production of pesticides is simply relocated outside the EU, and nevertheless returns to the consomamctors, it summarizes: “We must go to the prohibition of these products which are extremely dangerous and whose health effects have been proven for many years.” As long as we will not banish these products, it will not be possible for their alternatives to emerge “points the specialist.
“There is a lot of hypocrisy in the current situation, where we claim to protect the health of consumers, but where we want, despite everything, maintain the economic benefits of the presence on our territory of chemical producers who produce these dangerous products, provided that we do not see these products used in us, and provided that they are exported to states where corruption is more important and the environmental regulations weaker”he sums up.
