Melinda Wiggins
To: Dr. Ricky Langley, Chairman, and the members of the N.C. Pesticide Board:
On behalf of the Farmworker Advocacy Network and 12 other allied health and advocacy organizations, I write to express our dismay at the recent settlement the board approved with Ag-Mart Produce and Jeffrey Oxley.
First, we are glad that this long and painful chapter of our state’s history has come to a close. In 2005, the state found hundreds of pesticide safety violations in what would become the Department of Agriculture’s largest enforcement case ever. Three families alleged that their children’s birth defects were related to pesticide exposure that pregnant workers experienced while working for Ag-Mart on tomato farms in Florida and North Carolina.
An investigation by the N.C. Division of Public Health could not prove whether the pesticide exposures to pregnant workers caused the birth defects, but found that they were almost certainly a contributing factor. One of the children died, and another, Carlitos, became a symbol of this case through stirring photography and reporting in the Raleigh News & Observer and the Palm Beach Post. People across the country were riveted by this case and by the children affected.
For more than five years, the Pesticide Section staff worked diligently with the resources they had available to collect good evidence and make a case for Ag-Mart’s accountability in this matter. We understand that settling this case brought an end to significant public expense and extra workloads for the Pesticide Section staff.
However, in the final settlement, the Pesticide Board chose to back away from its own findings. In agreeing to make a public statement absolving Ag-Mart and Mr. Oxley from any negligence or responsibility in the matter, the board sent a much louder statement that the state ultimately will not hold violators responsible when a preventable pesticide incident has the potential to cause irreparable harm to farmworkers and their families. How much worse would a case have to be in order to make the charges stick?
The Pesticide Board has now completed five years of hearings on this heartbreaking case. In all of those years, the board has only once touched on the underlying problems that gave rise to this case – when it was ordered to do so by the N.C. General Assembly. Even then, board members chose to do so in the narrowest possible way. As observers of your work throughout these five years, we have been astounded that members did not seriously discuss what the board could do to prevent such pesticide violations from ever happening in our state again. The N.C. Pesticide Board has the authority and the power to make significant changes in the working conditions of farmworkers, who face some of the most difficult and dangerous conditions of any workers in North Carolina, yet have chosen instead to absolve the worst violator in our state’s history.
When you reflect on this case, on the extraordinary hazards faced by the families involved and on the potential for harm, we do not believe that you have put into place the appropriate policies or procedures that will ensure that this will never happen again. We believe that farmworkers and their families still face unacceptable risks of grievous harm on farms in North Carolina. Over the last five years, the Farmworker Advocacy Network has submitted many recommendations for changes that we believe could improve safety significantly, and we stand ready to assist the board further.
We urge the Pesticide Board to ensure that its members never have to hear another case like the Ag-Mart case again. Now that this case has been closed, we urge you to take up this critical question at the next meeting of the Pesticide Board.
Melinda Wiggins is the executive director of Student Action with Farmworkers.