Law project that seeks to reduce agrochemical use advances in Brazilian Parliament

 

The project that creates a National Policy for the Reduction of Agrochemicals (Pnara), which aims to gradually stop the use of pesticides harmful to health, is progressing in the Brazilian Parliament. The proposal goes head-on against another project, PL nº 6.299 / 02, also called the "PL of the Pesticides", authored by the Minister of Agriculture, Blairo Maggi, which also awaits a vote.

 

Pnara is a bill of the society: it was presented in December 2016 by the Brazilian Association of Collective Health (Abrasco), an organization that involves physicians, public health researchers and scientists. To support Pnara, Abrasco and the Brazilian Association of Agroecology (Aba) have published a dossier that justifies, through scientific studies, the need to reduce the amount of pesticides and to ban highly toxic pesticides in the country.

 

One of the documents was produced by the Instituto de Cancer José de Alencar (Inca) of the Ministry of Health. The text highlighted that "among the effects on human health associated with the exposure to pesticides, the most worrying are chronic intoxications, characterized by infertility, impotence, miscarriages, malformations, neurotoxicity manifested through cognitive and behavioral disorders and neuropathy and hormonal dysregulation". 

 

The chair of the Special Committee, Alessandro Molon (PSB-RJ), said he was confident that the rapporteur, Nilo Tatto (PT-SP), would approve the opinion. "This project was well discussed in public hearings. Science and public opinion are moving toward reducing pesticides," he said.

 

Fernando Carneiro, a researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Ceará (Fiocruz / CE) and a member of Abrasco's Thematic Group on Health and Environment, said that from the point of view of science, there is no justification for the project not being approved. "More than 2 million people have signed an application for the creation of Pnara. The project should have already been approved by the Rousseff government, but it was not, under pressure from the ruralists (pro-agribusiness deputies), " he said.

 

The report by Tatto argued that the adoption of an agro-ecological model does not cause harm to the producer. Citing agronomist Nelson Correa Netto from Cooperafloresta (Paraná), the document said that participating families came to bill R$5,000 per 500m² cultivated in four months. "The figure represents 30 times more than the yield of sugarcane," said the report.