In countries such as Brazil, South Africa or Bangladesh, people fall ill and children are born deformed: they work as agricultural labourers, small farmers or live near fields or plantations and are therefore exposed to highly toxic pesticides.
The problem is that dangerous pesticides are marketed in countries of the Global South that are not (or no longer) allowed for use in the EU because they are harmful to people and/or the environment. German companies, above all Bayer and BASF, also profit from these unequal standards and export pesticides and pesticide active ingredients that are banned in Germany to countries where pesticides are less strictly regulated. German manufacturers exported almost 10,000 tonnes of these highly hazardous pesticides in 2018 and 2019.
Among other things, these pesticides contribute to around 385 million people suffering pesticide poisoning every year. The majority of those affected are people working in agriculture in the Global South. One reason for this is that the prescribed, proper application of pesticides cannot be guaranteed in many cases. Often, no protective clothing available, warnings are missing on labels or are not translated into local languages, the hazardous substances are sprayed by aeroplane and carried away by the wind, or they end up in the groundwater. Excessive quantities of pesticides are applied and minimum distances to settlements, bodies of water and Indigenous territories are not respected. And time and again, pesticides are used to displace Indigenous communities or landless people.
The highly hazardous active ingredients include cyanamide and propineb which are harmful to organs and the respiratory tract and very toxic to aquatic organisms. Cyanamide is also suspected of causing cancer and damage to unborn children. Large quantities of cyanamide - more than 2,500 tonnes - were exported from Germany to Brazil in 2018.
Large German companies also benefit from the lack of consumer and environmental protection in other countries. They export their dangerous products and make huge profits in the process. This points to a double standard that our partner organisations have been denouncing for many years and demanding that their governments put an end to this harmful business with better laws. They are show courage by standing up to companies, large landowners and their henchmen - who do not hesitate to use intimidation and violence to break the resistance.
We stand beside our partner organisations and are campaigning for an end to the double standards in Germany. The legal loophole means continued suffering for people who work in agriculture or live near soya fields, tropical fruit or tea plantations. And it is short-sighted, because the dangerous toxins end up in our stomachs via these very foods.
