Food and Pesticides: A Songbird Story

In today's New York Times, Bridget Stutchbury, a biology professor at Toronto's York University, writes about the devastating impact high levels of pesticides used in farming South American fruits and vegetables have on the North American songbird, the Bobolink. She cites a study that shows that the birds consume extremely high levels of deadly pesticides while wintering in South America. It's so bad that the Bobolink population has dropped by about 50% in the last 40 years.

Stutchbury makes clear that it is the North American and European appetite for fresh produce--tomatoes, bell peppers, strawberries and blueberries--that create the conditions for heavy pesticide use. South American farmers reply on pesticides and other chemical to mass produce crops in delicate monocultures, and as Michaal Pollan has written, these monocultures depend heavily on pesticides and chemicals to succeed.

So, as if it's not bad enough that we're unnecessarily killing animals to feed ourselves, she also writes about how we're exposing ourselves to pesticides by eating produce raised in South America. Stutchbury cites studies by the Food and Drug Administration that shows that fruits and vegetables from South America exceed Environmental Protection Agency standards for pesticide residues on foods grown inside the United States. She also writes that, "tests by the Center for Disease Control show that most Americans carry traces of pesticides in their blood." And, she goes on to say, "American consumers can discourage this poisoning [of ourselves and the Bobolinks] by avoiding foods that are bad for the environment, bad for farmers in Latin America, and, in the worst cases, bad for their own families."

Stutchburg suggests buying organic and fair-trade coffee and organic bananas as a way of protecting the birds and ourselves, and she suggests avoiding all other produce imported from Latin American because so few are raised organically.

UPDATE: Once again, The Ethicurean, has a great posting on Stutchbury's op-ed.