Posters with the phrase “They want more poison in their food” and a photo of seven Brazilian parliamentarians – the president of the Chamber, the minister of Agriculture and members of the ruralist caucus – were pasted on walls in São Paulo and Brasília this Wednesday. (9).
The intervention dubs the group the “cancer bench” and is part of a protest by a group of environmental activists against the vote on the urgency requirement of bill 6,922 of 2002, which was approved on Wednesday afternoon (9) in the Chamber of Deputies.
With the approval of urgency, the project is being voted on in plenary without going through the committees where the controversial content of the proposal would be more widely debated.
At the center of the panel is the photo of the president of the house, Arthur Lira (PP-AL) flanked by the licensed deputy and minister of Agriculture, Tereza Cristina (DEM), who was already the rapporteur of the project in 2018, when she was nicknamed “muse of poison”, and by the current rapporteur of the so-called “poison package”, Federal Deputy Luiz Nishimori (PL-PR).
Decorated with the design of skulls on two crossed bones, symbol of poisons, the posters also bring the photos of deputies Evair de Mello (PP-ES), Domingos Savio (PSDB-MG), Sérgio Sousa (MDB-PR) and Aline Sleutjes (PSL-PR), all classified as “cancer deputies”.
According to the group, Arthur Lira received a prominent place in the intervention because, as president of the House, he commands the voting agenda and welcomed an urgent request for a project that has been going through for 20 years at a time when Brazilians face emergencies such as hunger, inflation and unemployment.
According to civil society organizations, PL 6,922, known as the “poison package”, puts Brazil against the world in relation to the use of pesticides.
Its critics point out that the project makes several aspects of the country’s policy in relation to pesticides more flexible, from the process of approving the use of new substances to their monitoring and inspection by health agencies, such as Anvisa, and the environment, such as IBAMA (Brazilian Institute for the Environment).
In the view of the government and PL supporters, the changes will increase competition and promote the entry into the market of more modern, less toxic and lower-cost products for producers.
Since 2019, the Bolsonaro government has released about 1,500 new pesticides, which represents 40% of the entire record in the country’s history. That year, 620,000 tons of pesticides were sold in Brazil, according to an Ibama bulletin. Of this total, 38.3% are ”highly” or ”very dangerous”, and 59.3%, ”dangerous”. The remainder, 2.4%, are ”less dangerous”.
Glyphosate, the most used pesticide in the country, for example, was associated with the death of 503 children a year in Brazil, according to a study carried out by Princeton University, Fundação Getúlio Vargas and Insper. According to the study, the use of glyphosate in soybean crops corresponds to a 5% increase in infant mortality in municipalities in the South and Midwest that receive water from soybean growing regions.
Brazil is the third country that uses pesticides the most in absolute numbers, after China and the USA, according to data from FAO, the UN agency for food and agriculture.
According to a spokesperson for the activists responsible for the intervention, who preferred not to be identified, the situation of farmers, who have greater contact with substances during work, is still worrying.
The member of the group of activists also stated that, in his view, the deputies exposed in the posters defend the profit of pesticide manufacturers to the detriment of the health of the population and the environment.
According to the creators of the posters, the exposure of these politicians through an urban intervention brings the issue closer to the population and gains special importance in an election year like this.
