On June 13, Swiss voters decide whether they want to implement agriculture free of synthetic pesticides. If these initiatives manage to pass, Switzerland would be the first country where you can produce, import, and buy exclusively pesticide-free and bio/organic fruits, vegetables, nuts, and edible animal products. It will also be a country, which took decisive measures to protect its drinking water supply from further contamination.
The arguments from both sides are compelling – remove synthetic pesticides from agriculture and prices of domestic food go up while import requirements become very stringent over the next 10 years; keep them and face real health and environmental issues presently and way past the foreseen adjustment period. So why should you care about this issue? Well, the link between pesticide use, your health (current and future), and environmental issues is as clear as day, as you will read. Whether proposed initiatives are the best way to go about eliminating or phasing out pesticides is another topic.
Please note that this is not a post about environmental elitism telling you to eat exclusively bio/organic food and that if you do not do it, you are killing the planet. This is a story about what you can do for yourself and your family today and for the future, regardless of whether an explicit precedent is set by Switzerland or not. In fact, we are given a choice every time we do groceries, and this sends a signal to the producers and grocers of what we want to be serving on a dinner plate. This everyday question is way more basic than your political or economic view on proposed initiatives.
To begin, synthetic pesticides are man-made chemicals used to destroy or prevent the onset of pests like weed, bugs, rodents, fungi, etc. to increase the yield of the target crop. They are designed to eliminate (a very nice way of saying kill) what we don’t want to or don’t have the manpower to deal with; they reduce the need for intensive labor for weed picking and plant disease control. The flip side of the same coin are, therefore, direct health & environmental implications of their use. Pesticides are unselectively sprayed across entire fields, so they end up killing what we want, but also what we don’t want. Furthermore, after application, they decompose in nature (e.g. under sunlight) into so-called metabolites which can create new problems. Neither are simply trapped in the soil; they infiltrate our drinking water supply, and combined with their traces on fruit & veg, can cause acute and chronic health issues - everything from headaches, rashes, and nausea to hormonal disruption, cancer and birth defects.
People are exposed to these chemicals through ingestion (food, water), inhalation, or skin contact. Let me give you a recent severe example of pesticides' adverse health effects. In 2015, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified the world's most widely used herbicide glyphosate (brand name RoundUp by Monsanto) as "probably carcinogenic to humans". Just think about this for a second – the world's most prevailing weed control "may be carcinogenic". Well, when Bayer (German pharma giant) acquired Monsanto (American agrochemical and GMO giant) in 2018, Bayer was faced with 125.000 lawsuits and now a class action in the USA. Farmers sued RoundUp's owner for cancer (non-Hodgkin lymphoma) pandemics in their ranks and got close to $10 billion in damages. Since it takes some 10-15 years from the exposure to the onset of symptoms, their nightmare of corporate litigation will continue with a new class action suit, as more people are likely to become seriously ill in the future. This is an unbelievable story, which, given its scale and importance seems to fly under the radar. For reference, the Green Party in Switzerland lost its fight to ban this herbicide domestically in 2017 and glyphosate remains in active use.
Besides exposure at work, and direct ingestion via water, crops, fruit & veg, there is the issue of bioaccumulation of pesticides in the food chain. As bigger animals eat crops with traces of pesticides in/on them, these accumulate in animal bodies and when humans eat chicken breast or a steak, they are served with an animal's lifetime portion of pesticides. The most sensitive group to these and other pollutants are of course children; being the smallest and most vulnerable, they can tolerate much less than adults.
The application of pesticides also has a substantial effect on other creatures, causing real biodiversity issues like the ongoing decimation of insects or poisoning of animals that ingest field runoff water. Bees, 🦋, wasps, 🐞, bugs, 🐜, flies, 🐧, small mammals, etc. that roam crop fields and orchards play an important role in our food security. These creatures act as pollinators for virtually all seed plants on the Earth; they transfer pollen grains from flower to flower and facilitate reproduction & creation of grain, fruit, or veg we eat. They are essential ecosystem service providers to nature & our farmers. So why do bees, bugs, and other pollinators that keep the ecosystems going - die from pesticide exposure? Simply, they can also tolerate much less, since they are much smaller than the smallest humans. If they constantly ingest pesticide-spiked water, flower nectar, pollen they get "saturated" faster, can't process it, and die from the consequences. This is why Angelina Jolie did a recent photoshoot with 🐝 to raise awareness on the importance of this tinny & mighty creature, the Queen of all pollinators (Queen B if I may).
After all, pesticides are what sparked the environmentalist movement in the 60's. When her book Silent Spring came out in 1962, Rachel Carson instilled a clear link between DDT (an insecticide against mosquitos for malaria control) and its detrimental consequences on animal life and the environment. The spring was silent precisely because birds and non-mosquito insects were decimated due to DDT. In the meantime, DDT also got classified as "probably carcinogenic" to humans, has been regulated and widely banned (except in India and South Korea!). Outright "chemical warfare on life continues" through other substances to quote another author. And to add to it, DDT will be around for a while since it is classified as a persistent organic pollutant; it does not decompose in any way.
IP Suisse strawberry field. IP farms do not use synthetic pesticides except in case of "force majeure". You are welcome to come and pick on your own and pay at the end.
If you feel scared or just taken aback, good news! There are ways for you to go about this smartly! Here are my top 5 suggestions for your health and for encouraging good production practices:
1) Always wash your fruit & veg well. 💦 🧽 Well means rub under running water and wipe with a clean cloth or kitchen towel (wash those at high temperature and without softeners). Do this before peeling to avoid bringing contaminants in with the knife! Don’t just soak your fresh food in still water and eat it straight – this will not do anything.
2) You can use fruit & veg wash, cleaning sprays, or homemade alternatives.🧴These products are based on sodium bicarbonate, vinegar, citric acid, essential oils, or other naturally present compounds that dissolve or bind traces of pesticides, chemicals, finishing wax, etc. Different products are readily available on the market or you can opt for homemade ones.
3) Prefer products with established labels (like BIO/IP) whenever possible - IP Suisse, BioSuisse, BIO Landwirtschaft (Germany, Austria), AB Agriculture Biologique (France) are examples of what you will find in Switzerland. These labels are a guarantee of certain production practices. Search for your local equivalents. For reference, I love to get my IP Suisse strawberries this time of the year.
4) In the grocery store, look for BIO/IP products close to the expiration date. This is a good trick on a budget to get higher quality food as most supermarkets offer 25-75% discount if the product expires soon. Not to mention, whatever is not sold must be destroyed so you do two good things at the same time – reduce food waste and get quality for yourself. When we do groceries, this is really a thing and feels like a bargain.
5) Commit to easy switches. Think of switching to bio for fruits & veg that you eat regularly so to decrease your exposure to pesticide traces. Onions, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, apples, blueberries, bananas… Take your pick and try to stick to it to the best of your ability and in line with your budget.
And here is a bonus one: Don’t kill little bugs when you encounter them at home – catch them and throw them out. Being a big sister to a complete bug panicker I know this is not always easy to do but these creatures have their function in our joined system.
Whether you think that proposed Swiss "bans" on pesticides are too severe or absolutely necessary, it is a tricky business to decisively reduce the risks of pesticides without impairing the agriculture. A staggering 2000 tonnes of pesticides are sprayed each year on Swiss fields (they have to go somewhere?!). Whatever Europe's "water castle" does about protecting its waters and public health has a literal spillover effect on the entire continent through rivers like Rhein, Rhone, Inn (later Danube) or Ticino (later Po). In an era where start-up tech for robotic recognition of weeds and their targeted chemical and mechanical treatment is emerging together with largescale hydroponics and urban gardens, I chose to believe that environmentally driven solutions are coming to everyone's benefit. Until then, I recommend you also iterate between the 5 suggestions above.
Honestly, consciously and informedly,
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Picture from personal collection.
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