Afrikkalainen näkemys:
Fake campaigns on pesticides will hurt food security plansIt is a gap we are facing in Kenya, today, in a crescendo of false statements that may yet shape our future, as local NGOs funded by Germany’s Green Party distribute rounds of videos starring local celebrities holding up tomatoes and sukuma wiki stating that they are poisonous.
The poison, they claim, comes from the pest control products used to produce them.
The same type of blanket campaigning against pesticides has already worked in Europe, which, like the rest of the world, is used to assess pest control products for their safety, scientifically.
It does not do that anymore. It changed its approach. The scientists were approving products that were safe to use and necessary for food production.
Once the European public had been told so many times that all pesticides were poisonous, it was just too politically damaging to keep approving pesticides.
The European Union (EU) banned them without any evidence of risk, just in case they might, one day, be found to be harmful, calling it the ‘precautionary principle’.
It has created a big mess. The EU banned one set of pesticides in case they might ever be found to be endocrine disruptors, which interfere with human hormone systems, causing reproductive and other issues.
Under more political pressure, the EU banned the use of these same pesticides on imported foods from other nations, dozens of countries launched a world trade dispute against Europe, calling the ban a trade barrier, and demanding the EU deliver evidence any of the chemicals were endocrine disruptors.
Tuontikieltojen kautta torjunta-aineiden summittainen vähentäminen uhkaa siis muidenkin maanosien ruokaturvaa?
Plus tuo kampanjointi eurooppalaisella rahoituksella.