In the fiercely competitive banana trade, Chiquita Brands has made a strong effort to set itself apart as the industry's "environmental leader."
Chiquita's brochures, posters and company website proudly trumpet its partnership with the Rainforest Alliance, a New York-based environmental group known worldwide for setting up environmental -business partnerships.
Since 1993, the two have worked on the "ECO-O.K. - Better Banana" program, an environmental certification to assure protection for workers and the environment on Costa Rican farms of Chiquita's subsidiaries, Compania Bananera Atlantica Ltda. (COBAL) and the Chiriqui Land Company. The program, originally called "ECO-O.K." but later changed to "Better Banana," has since expanded to Chiquita subsidiary farms in Panama and Colombia.
But an Enquirer investigation into Chiquita's use of pesticides on plantations shows disregard not only of the company's stated environmental guidelines and partnership agreements with the alliance, but also the safety of its tens of thousands of field workers.
The Enquirer found:
These findings come as the "Better Banana" project is under criticism from scientists in Central America, Europe and the United States. Chiquita's showcase environmental program has been attacked as disingenuous, superficial and unverifiable.
"The changes are more aesthetic than anything else," said Catharina Wesseling, a scientist with the Karolinska Institute of
Environmental Medicine in Stockholm, Sweden, and author of the book Health Effects from Pesticide Use in Costa Rica. "They don't address the real problems."
However, an executive of a Washington, D.C. - based conservation group, Conservation International hired by Chiquita to visit its certified subsidiary farms called the project "very positive."
Scientists critical of the program say it doesn't adequately address a problem that the entire banana industry has been wrestling with for decades: use of pesticides that endanger the health of workers, villagers or the environment in Latin America.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for checking pesticide levels on bananas imported for American consumers, said the overwhelming majority of bananas brought into the United States and tested by the administration show pesticideresidue well within safety standards set by EPA. However, scientists and environmentalists said the methods and amount of pesticide use practiced by Chiquita and other large banana growers endangers banana workers and the environment where the bananas are grown.
Aerial spraying
Chiquita's "Environmental Charter" states that the company works "to protect the rainforest; to maintain clean water; to minimize the use of agrochemicals; to reduce, re-use and recycle waste; to support environmental education; and to ensure our workforce is well-trained and works safely." Those guidelines also are supported by the Rainforest Alliance.
But the Enquirer has found that Chiquita subsidiaries have sprayed toxic cocktails, varying mixtures of potent chemicals, on their plantations without removing workers first. These aerial sprayings can take place more than 40 times a year on plantations that are threatened by a widespread banana disease. Often these pesticides fall on workers, nearby villages, rivers or forests.
Eric Holst, coordinator for the Rainforest Alliance's "Better Banana" certification program in New York, said that aerial spraying while workers are in the fields would be a violation of the certification program. "We require that workers have protection from the application of chemicals. That clearly is a violation."
Through its attorneys, Chiquita provided the Enquirer with a list of chemicals it has approved for use on its banana farms. For aerial spraying, the company uses the fungicides propiconazole, benomyl, mancozeb, azoxystrobin, thiophanate-methyl, tridemorph and bitertanol.
Propiconazole and benomyl have both been found to be possibly cancer-causing for humans by the EPA. Mancozeb, azoxystrobin, thiophanate-methyl and tridemorph are considered hazards to fish by the EPA. Bitertanol is not allowed for use on farms in the United States, while azoxystrobin and tridemorph are not allowed for use in Canada.
A source at Chiquita's headquarters in Cincinnati provided the Enquirer with tape recordings of internal voice-mail messages, several of which dealt with the issue of aerial spraying while workers are in the fields.
After the Enquirer asked Chiquita's attorneys and a Rainforest Alliance official about the company's aerial spraying policy, Robert Kistinger, president of Chiquita Banana Group based in Cincinnati, said in an Oct. 29, 1997 voice-mail message to John Ordman, Chiquita's senior vice president of finance, that he wanted officials to figure out "how quickly we can begin to implement a procedure for taking our workers out of the fields when we spray ... It is something we have to think about getting done fairly quickly."
For workers, the unannounced aerial spraying is a constant fear.
"Some of the workers are affected by the aerial spraying, especially with rashes," Luis Perez Jimenez, 31, a leaf cutter on COBAL's Cocobola plantation, said through a translator. "They never tell us about the aerial spraying. We just see it coming and boom, it's here."
Small crop dusters will fly low over the banana trees and emit clouds of pesticides that settle over the tall, leafy plants. They also settle on workers, nearby villagers, animals, and open water. As two Enquirer reporters witnessed, on recently sprayed farms the air is heavy with a stifling chemical stench. Breathing is difficult and the pesticide residue covers everything.
At Cocobola, one of COBAL's larger farms, and nearby COBAL's Gavilan farm hundreds of employees can be working in the fields at any one time. The plantation, laced with irrigation canals, is adjacent to Rio Sucio, a large river in northeast Costa Rica.
Mr. Perez, through a translator, said that a white film gets all over his clothes and body when spraying occurs.
"I don't get any protective clothing," said Mr. Perez, whose job is to cut diseased leaves from plants. "The white stuff gets all over my arms and on my clothes. I get a lot of rashes."
Jose Gomez, 45, another worker on the Cocobola plantation, also said the planes come over with no warning.
"You're just working and then suddenly you see it coming," he told the Enquirer as he stood amid lush rows of banana plants. "I try to hide under the banana leaves when I hear the planes. If the chemicals get on me, I get rashes on my back. I try to be careful when the planes come. I try to protect myself under these leaves."
Mr. Gomez, through a translator, said that he was afraid of the long-term impact of the pesticides on his health, but this job was the only work he could find in the region.
Under the "Better Banana" certification program touted by Chiquita, workers who apply pesticides with spray packs are supplied with protective clothing and training on how to handle pesticides. But thousands of other field workers like Mr. Gomez, who do not apply pesticides, receive no protective clothing. Enquirer reporters observed, and were told by workers, union leaders and company officials, that field workers not directly involved in the application or storage of pesticides do not receive protective clothing.
Speaking of the industry-wide problem of aerial spraying on banana workers, Sandra Marquardt, an environmental consultant in San Francisco who formerly headed up Greenpeace International's efforts to stop the U.S. export of banned pesticides, said, "These airplanes come over and just nail the suckers."
Dole and Del Monte, the two other large U.S. banana companies, also employ aerial spraying. But neither has joined the "Better Banana" program or publicly acknowledged any alliance with an environmental group claiming to limit workers' exposure to pesticides.
In response to Enquirer questions, Chiquita, through its attorneys, issued a three-page statement on aerial spraying but did not address the issue of workers being sprayed in the fields.
The company stated that the spraying was necessary to combat a banana disease called Black Sigatoka.The airborne fungus causes streaks on the plants, makes the fruit smaller and eventually kills the plant if unchecked.
The attorneys said the company has hired environmental consulting groups to conduct water monitoring of nearby rivers, and those groups have found almost no contamination.
Despite the concerns ex-pressed by Mr. Kistinger in his October voice-mail message, aerial spraying of fields while workers were in them was still going on four months later.
In a Feb. 23 voice-mail message to Mr. Ordman, Mr. Kistinger pointed out the company's political and public relations problem with continuing aerial spraying while workers are in the fields.
"One of the key focuses that we have not been successful so far ...has been the issue of aerial spraying," Mr. Kistinger said. "The environmental groups, the social groups, the NGO (non-governmental organizations) say it is not right to be spraying people when they are working in the field. ... And so far we have been able to make very little progress in this regard."
Prodding his executives to develop an alternative to spraying workers, Mr. Kistinger added that there is "enormous build-up of pressure" from the public in Europe to protect banana workers. Noting that steps must be taken to curb the practice, "even if they're small at this point" it is "very necessary to do from a public relations' standpoint."
Chiquita recently has created an "environmental" website on which it has posted a position paper on aerial spraying. On the website, Chiquita states that spraying is necessary to protect the banana crop. But the company stated it is working on several methods of applying the pesticides from the ground, which it claims would reduce pesticide exposure to workers and the environment.
Earth College science professor Jorge Arce Portuguez said Sigatoka has become the major pest threatening the banana industry in recent years. Earth College is an agricultural science college in central Costa Rica partially funded by the U.S. government and supported by dozens of major American universities. The industry's only answer so far has been to increase the potency and regularity of aerial spraying, he said. But the disease has adapted quickly, becoming resistant to many of the chemicals.
"In 1990, we controlled Sigatoka with more or less 25 to 30 aerial sprayings per year," he said. "Now, seven years later ... we are dropping by plane more than 40 times per year."
Anti-Sigatoka chemicals make up the bulk of pesticides used on most banana plantations, according to Lori Ann Thrupp, senior associate and expert on sustainable agriculture at the World Resources Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank on environmental issues.
Drifting pesticides
In a 1996 edition of the science journal Ambio, Scott Witter, associate professor at Michigan State University's Institute of International Agriculture, and colleague Carlos Hernandez published a report on the Costa Rican banana industry that found that 15 percent of aerial pesticides completely drifted off the studied plantations because of wind; 40 percent drifted away from the plants and into the ground; and 35 percent washed off in the rain. Only 10 percent of the fungicide sprayed actually stayed on the plant.
"There's considerable debate about how much drift there is," Professor Witter told the Enquirer. "We had in that article references for as much as 90 percent of it not ending up on the banana plants. Some of the transnationals say 'no, no, it's more like only 40 percent that's lost.' But still that's a lot of fungicides going off into the water supply. You have a lot of the poor folks who take their water directly from surface sources. They end up ingesting these. Costa Rica is blessed with a tremendous amount of rainfall, and so dilution in many instances becomes a solution to some of the pollution.
But over time, it does tend to bio-accumulate."
In a statement issued through its attorneys, Chiquita stated that it is aware of the drift problem and has worked in recent years to reduce drift by installing special pesticide spray nozzles on its airplanes and other measures.
In the village of Bananito Norte, in the heart of banana country southeast of the coastal city of Limon, Esther Rodriguez Anchia lives with her husband and three children in a one-room wooden shack next to Chiquita's Super Amigo packing plant and Chiquita subsidiary plantations.
When the crop dusters come over, her family is sprayed with the chemicals, she said.
"There is no warning," Mrs. Rodriguez said through a translator.
"It just comes, usually once a week but sometimes twice. My children get very rashy when the planes come. I just have them run inside, but we usually are stuck with the rashes. I'm very allergic myself, so it's much worse for me. I have to visit the doctor all the time.," she said.
Mrs. Rodriguez, 52, said the aerial spraying has made her hate the village.
"I would love to fly away from here," she said.
(Copyright 1998)
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