SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
[...] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt signed an order denying a petition that sought to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide crucial to U.S. agriculture.
[...] In October 2015, under the previous Administration, EPA proposed to revoke all food residue tolerances for chlorpyrifos, an active ingredient in insecticides. This proposal was issued in response to a petition from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Pesticide Action Network North America. The October 2015 proposal largely relied on certain epidemiological study outcomes, whose application is novel and uncertain, to reach its conclusions.
The public record lays out serious scientific concerns and substantive process gaps in the proposal.
Last month, Trump's Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, freed up the country to continue using a pesticide called chlorpyrifos on everything from strawberries and almonds to Brussels sprouts and broccoli.
This despite a warning from the National Institutes of Health that chlorpyrifos can cause "adverse developmental, reproductive, neurological and immune effects" in human beings. This despite scientific studies indicating that chlorpyrifos can interfere with fetal brain development, leading to higher rates of autism and lower intelligence.
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch via Arizona Daily Sun (editorial)
More than 50 farm workers were exposed to a pesticide drift [...] southwest of Bakersfield.
[...] Twelve people reported symptoms of vomiting, nausea and one person fainted.
[...] The active ingredient in the insecticide the workers were exposed is Chlorpyrifos.
[...] It has been banned for residential use for more than 15 years, but can still be used in agriculture.
Chlorpyrifos is manufactured by the AgroSciences division of Dow Chemical Company.
A total of 47 farm workers were harvesting cabbage at the time and subsequently complained of a bad odor, nausea and vomiting. One was taken to hospital with four other workers visiting doctors in the following days.
On Monday [15 May], the agency shelved a proposal, originally scheduled to go into effect on March 6, intended to ensure that such poisons are safely applied.
Currently, anyone who applies pesticides on the restricted-use list has to have safety training. The proposed rule would have required workers who use the pesticides to be re-trained every five years, and to "verify the identity of persons seeking certification." It also established a minimum age for applying these chemicals: 18 years old.
Citing the regulatory freeze the Trump administration issued soon after the inauguration, the EPA announced Monday [15 May] it was putting the new requirements on ice until May 22, 2018. In addition, as Environmental Working Group noted, the agency is accepting comments on the decision only until May 19, "giving the public only a few days to comment on the rule, instead of the customary 30 days."
—Mother Jones (links in original)
Additional coverage:
Related stories:
EPA Dismisses Half of its Scientific Advisers on Key Board, Citing 'Clean Break' With Obama Govt
U.S. EPA Updates Web Sites
The Science March on Washington DC
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Thursday May 25 2017, @08:26PM (7 children)
They used to be. Coming from a family of farmers in the Midwest, farming and harvesting is very much for "white" people (everyone actually). It's hard work though, so I'm not surprised that many people would balk at doing hard manual labor in general. I would say it has more to do with Americans growing soft, period.
EH is an idiot. This already went down in Georgia (IIRC?). Anyways, one of the Southern states did something with driver's licenses or something, but the gist of it was that illegals were going to have a very bad time. It worked, and this state saw the majority of the illegals leave for other states and sanctuary cities.
Come harvest time there were articles about entire farms rotting because they could not find any help to harvest. Those white people EH thinks will do the work, didn't show up to do the work. So it is a fact that this has largely been tried, and no white people showed up to work. Hardly anybody showed up to work, white or not.
It became such a problem that a controversy was started when they used *prison* labor to harvest the crops.
Everything you've alluded to, has already come to pass. White people didn't show up. Prisons sent prisoners instead.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @12:37AM
Farms can pay fair wages or rot. Their greed was their downfall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @12:58AM (3 children)
Well, did they offer the "not third-world" (i.e., high) wages ethanol-fueled says white pickers will demand?
Of course not -- they can't afford those wages, and still sell the produce at reasonable prices. And they can't just raise the prices, because everyone would buy cheaper produce from the next state over.
Whereas if you kick all the illegals out of the whole USA, creating a nationwide shortage of pickers, then the price of produce will skyrocket, and wages will increase at least modestly. (And you can raise tariffs as needed to keep us from buying cheap produce elsewhere.) I'm not convinced you'll find enough people willing to do hard work in a hot field at any reasonable wage to match current production, but then, with the increased prices, you won't need to -- as produce becomes a luxury for the rich, you'll need a lot less of it. Us not-so-rich folks will just have to live on staples that can be mechanically harvested, and pray for the coming of the self-driving robocalypse to disruptively innovate the produce industry.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Friday May 26 2017, @10:12AM (1 child)
Only for crops that you can't import, or where there are significant import duties. Otherwise, you simply won't be able to grow them cost effectively in the US.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @04:59PM
Because reading the next sentence "(And you can raise tariffs as needed to keep us from buying cheap produce elsewhere.)" would have been too hard?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday May 26 2017, @06:53PM
It's so interesting that everybody wants to kick the shit out of the illegals for "causing" problems, but nobody wants to kick the shit out of the Owning Class and the avaricious mother fuckers that cause all of this in the first place.
The executives are the real enemy here. Not some poor brown people that are abused, not allowed documentation, kept scared and abused, abused further by law enforcement, abused further by paying taxes without representation. Yep. Those dirty illegals are the enemy! Those God fearing decent executives constantly in a race to the bottom, meaning the lowest they can pay a worker, and the least they can contribute back to society, are the not the problem at all! Nope. Them's good people right there.
You even bring up how even if American workers (aka the Middle Class) started picking fruit again, that they could not compete with the illegals in a different state, and then how can anyone compete with foreign workers in other countries. Yet, none of that is falling on the heads of the executives that lobbied to escape proper tariffs, and to escape the wages that domestic workers would demand.
Truth is, the executives are only interested in paying the rate they would pay to illegals, because damned if they're ever going to pay an American a living wage.
It's a nasty cycle that will never be broken when we are not going after the right people. Illegals are just fine. Deport the executives.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday May 28 2017, @01:05PM
According to delish.com, prison labourers were used in Georgia and Idaho; as of 2011 Alabama planned to do the same.
http://www.delish.com/food/news/a38794/idaho-inmates-hired-for-potato-harvest/ [delish.com]
more links regarding Georgia:
https://thinkprogress.org/georgia-again-tries-to-replace-immigrant-farm-workers-with-inmates-d7bd134f9be6?gi=af9eb3fb95f3 [thinkprogress.org]
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204774604576630972860034248 [wsj.com] (pay walled)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 29 2017, @02:07PM
Oh yeah, that's what I want on my table, food harvested by prisoners. They would *never* do anything bad to that food because they're too *afraid* that it might extend their life sentence, right?
🌻🌻 [google.com]