Regulating marketing of pesticide-treated foods  

The reported instructions from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) asking two relevant ministries to ensure enforcement of the mandatory requirements in the matters of safe consumption of farm produce, including vegetables, and poultry birds, do deserve serious attention. What the PMO asked a couple of ministries recently was the enforcement of mandatory requirement to maintain a time gap between use of pesticides and antibiotics on food crops and poultry birds and their marketing.

The suspicion about food contamination due to uninformed and indiscriminate use of pesticides on food crops and antibiotics on poultry birds is quite old and widespread. Yet no remedial or precautionary measures have been taken until now. Lots of concern has been aired over food adulteration; the government passed new laws and formed different bodies to ensure food safety. And strong punitive measures have been put in place against adulteration of food. But, unfortunately, few actions are there to address the far more serious form of contamination of food in its production process and supply-chain by harmful pesticides.

Undeniably, the improved farm practices that include cultivation of high-yielding varieties of crops have helped the country produce more food, vegetables and other crops than before. The switchover is considered more as a blessing to a country that is burdened by huge population. But there have been downsides. HYV food crops are largely dependent on chemical fertilizers and inorganic pesticides; abuse/overuse of both poses a threat to nature and human health. The residues of harmful chemicals---some pesticides are feared to have carcinogenic properties--- enter the food chain; these are passed on to humans, leading to their serious illness. The worrying part of the whole story is that all the damage is being done silently and unnoticed.

Similarly, if poultry birds that are treated with antibiotics and sold in the market without maintaining a gap, there is every chance that, as happens in the case of pesticides, antibiotic residues would also enter the bodies of people who would consume those. Most poultry farm owners and farmers are not aware of the harmful effect of either pesticides or antibiotics. They usually collect all those chemicals from the open market and use those, in most cases, without any advice from experts in the relevant fields.

There is strong suspicion that the rise in certain diseases, including   kidney failure, cancer, gastrointestinal troubles, in recent years is very much linked to the use of chemicals in food production. It is hard to expect the farmers would be concerned about others' health when they remain careless about their own physical safety. Thousands of farmers do spray their crop fields with pesticides without wearing any protective gear.

The Bangladesh Food Safety Authority (BFSA) feels that pesticides should be sold to farmers by traders only in accordance with the written recommendations from the agricultural extension workers. Similarly, it has suggested selling of antibiotics as per suggestions of veterinary doctors. The implementation of the BFSA suggestions might prove difficult, but the message that it has tried to convey is that the issue is serious and it needs to be addressed with due earnestness. The task of making all the relevant people, including consumers, aware of the dangers of consuming pesticide and antibiotics contaminated foods through a sustained campaign also remains an important one for the relevant authorities.