The question A: Pesticides and fair trade

[Gregconstruct]

This evening, RTBF broadcast the program Question à La Une.

The subjects covered were, for the first, pesticides on fruits and vegetables, for the second, fair trade.

It appears after the investigations carried out by the journalists of the RTBF that on the 2 subjects one laughs royally of our mouth!

I'm preparing a little summary!

[Gregconstruct]

Pesticides

Or los pesticidos, because that's where the bone is.

It turns out that with our Iberian friends everything or almost everything is allowed with regard to pesticides.
Not only do they use banned pesticides everywhere on the rest of the European market but there is also a black market for its products!
Black market products come mainly from Asian countries (as if by chance) and do not bear any label, which makes them impossible to identify.
In addition, the molecules that make up these products are not listed. These filths are therefore undetectable when looking for pesticides.

In France, in Belgium, in Germany, we find reasoned agriculture. In this case, an agricultural technician goes around the plantations and advises the farmers. But do not rejoice too quickly, we still proceed with 15 or 20 spraying per year.

What are these pesticides used for?
To "fight" a number of parasites, disease and other fungi. But they also serve to accelerate the growth of the fruit, to give it color (but do we still know the true color of the fruits?), To slow down its fall (fortunately, Newton has already picked up his apple in the gu *** e for a long time) and also to the smoothness!

What do you find when you analyze the fruit?
On average, 2 or 3 different pesticides per type of fruit sometimes this goes up to 6 (or +?).
The highest concentrations are found in Spanish fruits. The height is that the Spanish even use pesticides that have no use for the processed fruit!

Implications?
More and more scientists agree that pesticides cause serious and chronic illnesses.
To cite only a few examples, we have found links with diseases such as Parkinson's (in young people), increased risks of prostate or bladder cancer, ...
To top it all off, the European Union has raised acceptable pesticide concentrations.
The pesticide lobbies therefore have a bright future ahead of them !!!

[Gregconstruct]

The scam eeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuh sorry, fair trade

Fair trade, what a beautiful idea at the base ...
Except that so-called fair trade is nothing more than a big joke.

Paid label:
And yes, you are not dreaming, a label such as Max Havelaar is paying! And everyone pays for it, including the small producers who are supposed to be "helped" by this kind of label. Producers must relinquish a franchise of 3500 euros per year. Which is perfectly impossible for them unless they regroup into a cooperative.
This means that those who do not have the possibility of forming a cooperative will not be able to benefit from this label.
Obviously, the people of Max Havelaar are serious and come 4 days a year to control the producer at his expense.
In addition, Max Havelaar gets 4 or 5 euro cents per unit at each stage from the end of production to the arrival in the basket of the housewife.
Which in the end more than tripled the cost price of the product between the end of production and our shopping cart arrived.

The report was about Max Havelaar but there is no doubt that the other fair trade labels are all in the same basket or almost.

[swift2540]

the program is available in video here

http://www.rtbf.be/info/

Please note, it is not available for a long time