O trágico Pacote do Veneno: lições para a sociedade e a Saúde Coletiva

Abstract

Bill of Law (PL, for its acronymun in Portuguese) n. 6,299/2002 has been called the "Poison Package" in a joint dossier prepared by the Brazilian Association of Public Health (Abrasco) and the Brazilian Association of Agroecology (ABA) and delivered to the National Congress in late May 2018. The bill is tragic and emblematic for analyzing the country's current political and institutional scenario based on the socioecological and public health problems caused by the country's prevailing agricultural development model. Since the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, the Federal Government and the National Congress have accelerated changes in public policies and legislation that adhere to the "market" agenda, this strange entity in the neoliberal ideology that orients economic globalization and defends financial investors and powerful transnational groups. Essentially, PL 6,299 combines several other bills circulating in the National Congress from 1999 to 2017. It assumes the primacy of agribusiness's economic interests rather than defending health and the environment, starting with the replacement of the concept of agrotoxic (as pesticide is defined in the legislation to highlight the danger to human health and the environment) with the term "phytosanitary products". It removes from Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa) and Brazilian Institute of Environmental and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) various attributions in the licensing process, while expanding the regulatory powers of the Ministry of Agriculture. PL 6,299 replaces Law n. 7,802 of 1989, known as the Agrotoxic Law, an important milestone in the process of Brazil's re-democratization and in the political link between collective health and environmentalism, with broad support from labor unions, social movements, and sectors of civil society. The Poison Package dismantles this wide legal framework and prevailing institutional structure in the country, which had only failed to make further progress because of the gap between the legislation and the practice by institutions. The gap reveals intense contradictions generated by the economic, political, and media forces that sustain the agribusiness model. The pesticides issue gained national attention in 2008, when it was announced that Brazil had become the world's leading pesticides consumer. The year 2011 witnessed the creation of the Permanent Campaign against Pesticides and in Defense of Life, convening numerous social movements, unions, NGOs, universities, and research institutions. That same year saw the release of the documentary Poison is on the Table, by filmmaker Silvio Tendler, and in 2015 the book ABRASCO Dossier: A Warning on The Impacts of Pesticides was published 1. In addition to the exposés, these initiatives present

Os incentivos fiscais aos agrotóxicos como política contrária à saúde e ao meio ambiente

“…Desse modo, a tributação ajudaria a acabar com a distorção econômica na preferência dos agricultores em utilizar métodos de controle convencionais em vez de métodos e práticas aliados à produção orgânica e agroecológica. Dessa maneira, fortalecer práticas agrícolas alternativas mais saudáveis e sustentáveis poderia fazer com que o Brasil deixasse de ser um paraíso da poluição do mercado internacional 36 .…”

Decision-making under uncertainty in environmental health policy: new approaches

“…The role of legal regulation, which can impede access to data [53], as well as the influence of media, advertisement bias and lobbyist pressure, have been scrutinized in several cases, including topics of finance [54] and health policy [55–57]. In environmental health policy, such studies need to address specific issues, such as pesticide use [58], albeit in a multidisciplinary manner. As with public nutrition, diet and/or hygiene recommendations associated with dissuasive taxation on consumer products (e.g.…”

Socio-Ecological Implications of Soy in the Brazilian Cerrado

“…One of many recent attempts to relax agrotoxin regulations came in June 2018, through a special committee that approved a report recommending the adoption of what has come to be known as the Poison Bill [163]. The agrotoxin regulatory process is currently overseen by the Ministries of Agriculture, Health and the Environment, however if the bill is passed into law, it will transfer oversight directly to the Ministry of Agriculture.…”

“…However, it also leads to more inequality [176,177], is immunized by technological processes, and incentivized by low-cost chemical registration, subsidies, and low taxes for agrotoxin manufacturers. These, and other agribusiness incentives, engineered by the Brazil's agricultural lobby and explosive industry growth, exploit fragilities in environmental legislation in favor of chemical-dependent farming [147,151,160,163]. Large-scale agriculture receives the lion's share of total public agricultural expenditure, dispensed in the form of credit lines, insurance, minimum price guarantees/deficiency payments and technological innovation transfers [178,179].…”