OP News : August 2008

Exciting news! Last week OPIN had a message from the Pesticide Action Network (PAN UK), asking if OPIN would support PAN International in requesting the People’s Permanent Tribunal in The Hague to accept a case against a number of trans-national chemical companies for human rights abuses and other crimes.

They are looking for organisations and people who have been affected by pesticides (and veterinary medicines such as sheep-dips and other chemicals used to destroy insect pests on farm animals) to become complainants in the case. This would include damage to health, life-style and income.

PAN International is a network of over 600 participating non-governmental organizations, institutions and individuals in more than 90 countries working to eliminate the human and environmental harm caused by pesticides.

PAN is now preparing cases and will present an appeal to the Peoples' Permanent Tribunal (PPT), asking them to take on the issue. They have asked if OPIN will be willing to sign on to this initiative, and join in being complainants in the case. OPIN has written to PAN agreeing to participate in this action, and has asked three individuals to write a brief history of their exposure to OPs and the resulting ill-health from this exposure. As OPIN has 800 names of OP sufferers on its database, and a large library of evidence to submit, PAN has expressed its delight that we are willing to join in this case.

The PPT is an international tribunal founded in 1979 in Italy. It uses rigorous conventional court format, and looks into human rights complaints submitted by communities facing abuses. It issues indictments, names relevant laws and documents findings. It sets out to ensure that agrochemical corporations that produce, distribute and use pesticides are held accountable for the consequences of their actions.

OPIN will now be supporting the political objectives of the PPT on agrochemical transnational companies, and will be one of the complainants in the charge sheets that the lawyers will prepare.

We have frequently marvelled at the horrific effects of OPs upon those obliged in law to use them. We know that people in poor backward countries have ordered workers, often without reading skills and with no protective clothing, to use OPs. We must fight for them as well as ourselves.

We hope that this new move to bring your case before the Peoples' Permanent Tribunal in the Hague will succeed. We have written a comprehensive account of the history of the OP story, which will be submitted by the Pesticide Action Network in due course. No individual names will be used by OPIN in this case, unless a person specifically writes to OPIN stating that they wish their name to be used. The DEFRA-funded study of cognitive impairment among UK sheep-dippers will be of immense value in this case, and we are told that a preliminary report is shortly to be presented to DEFRA. If you wish to receive a copy of the documents sent to OPIN by PAN International about this case please either send a self-addressed stamped A4 envelope to OPIN or contact us by email. Let us hope and pray that this international initiative will prove to bring justice to the thousands of people whose lives have been blighted - or indeed ended - by exposure to these chemicals.

There is news of three studies into OPs and the health of farmworkers; the first one is Tony Fletcher’s SHAPE study (Study of Health and Pesticide Exposure), it is - at last - complete and has been sent to DEFRA. The same with the Manchester study SHAW (Study of Health in Agricultural Work) and now Sarah Mackenzie Ross' study of cognitive impairment among sheep dippers exposed to low levels of OPs, which has gone to DEFRA and is awaiting a response. It will be interesting to see what DEFRA and the Department of Health make of them.

It is interesting to observe that in the period 1981-1990 there were 29 chemical companies making 47 OP products in the UK; the latest list from the VMD says that there are now only two companies, making three OP products. Although it is little comfort to those among you whose health has been ruined by exposure to OPs in the past, the use of OPs now is almost extinct.