I. Identification

1. The Issue

Philippine is one of the world’s largest banana exporters. For Japan, Philippine banana is the major trade partner. Significant tracts of land are devoted to banana production in the regions of Southern Mindanao, Southern Tagalog, the CARAGA, and Western Visayas. Large contiguous areas are devoted for commercial production in four provinces in Mindanao, namely Davao del Norte, Davao del Sur, South Cotabato, and Misamis Oriental. Japan has consistently been the largest importer of Philippine bananas, accounting for more than 60% of the country’s total fresh banana export and about 15% of banana chips export.
Banana is considered as the most important fruit crop in the country in terms of volume of production and export earnings. Banana production contributes significantly not only to the national income in terms of export earnings but also to employment. But banana production, aside from the benefits, has said to have negative effects not only to the health of its workers who apply the pesticides during banana production, but also to the environment.

2. Description

The issue of pesticides and Philippine bananas is fundamentally an issue of human rights and environmental issue. The Philippine bananas contained measurable levels of benomyl, thiophanate-methyl, TBZ, and mancozeb. The reason of the pesticide usage is obvious. It is to achieve high productivity and low cost to meet the demand. Because of the this reason, many large companies in Japan relies on usage of pesticide. Japanese government is setting the limits on usage of pesticide, though, the residues concerned people who worried about health risks from long-term exposure to the dangerous chemicals. It was a natural reaction of consumers to worry first about their own health, but a criticism arose among the Japanese consumers themselves that this concern was egocentric because people engaged in banana production in the Philippines were more directly and liberally exposed to the chemicals.

A leader of the Filipino banana workers' union visited Japan in 1986 to relate to consumers' groups the plight of chemical applicators on the banana plantations. The Stop the Philippine Banana Pesticides Campaign decided to pressure multinational corporations to improve working conditions on banana plantations by changing pesticide use. The campaign's first target was Sumitomo Corporation, a Japanese multinational corporation that operates banana plantations in Mindanao through the joint-venture company Davao Fruits Corporation (DFC).

In 1986 the "Stop the Philippine Banana Pesticides" campaign sent a team to investigate pesticide use on Davao Fruits Corporation’s Mindanao plantations. The field survey confirmed that at least 26 kinds of chemicals were used on DFC plantations, including World Health Organization (WHO) Class I-A (extremely hazardous) pesticides aldicarb, phenamiphos, ethoprop; the Class I-B (highly hazardous) carbofuran; Class 2 (moderately hazardous) pesticides paraquat, chorpyriphos, fenitrothion, and diazinon; and other pesticides including malathion, mancozeb, phosphamidon, and methyl bromide. Extremely hazardous chemicals like aldicarb, phenamiphos and ethoprop are not registered for use in Japan. Aldicarb, malathion and phosphamidon are not even registered for banana use in the Philippines.

Additionally, pesticides such as paraquat, ethoprop, and phenamifos are only approved for institutional use because they are too hazardous for general use.
Workers on both DFC plantations handle very dangerous chemicals without gloves or masks. As a result numerous workers are suffering physical disabilities. Workers who apply ethoprop complain that the smell of the chemical stays on them all the time, their skin becomes wrinkled, and they suffer from stomach aches and poor appetite. Many workers who deal with phenamiphos complain of sterility. One worker complained that he got purple rashes on both of his hands after applying chlorpyriphos, despite the use of gloves.

4. Author and Date: Reina Azuma August 2004

II. Legal Clusters

5. Discourse and Status: Disagreement and in Progress

Law in The Philippines

In 1977, Presidential Decree No.1144 was issued creating the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority (FPA) and abolishing the Fertilizer and Industry Authority created in 1973. The FPA was created mainly for the following reasons: to assure the agricultural sector of adequate supplies of fertilizers and pesticides at reasonable prices, to rationalize the manufacturing and marketing of fertilizers, to protect the public from the risks inherent in the use of pesticides and to educate the agricultural sector in the use of pesticides. The FPA today requires the registration of all pesticides intoduced into the market.

Law in Japan

In Japan, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries implemented the first pesticide residue standard set on apples in 1956 (Sapporo City Institute of Public Health of Japan, 19979). By 1978, pesticide residue standards were extended to 53 food items and 28 pesticides. But for the pesticides usage in other countries that export food to Japan, are never screened for in food imports. Thus, the existing system is not at all practical to cope with current levels of world pesticide use and food trade. The laws effectively control pesticide residues in Japanese products, but they are powerless in the case of imported food, especially fresh food.

6. Forum and Scope: Philippines and unilateral

7. Decision Breadth: Unilateral

8. Legal Standing: Law

III. Geographic Clusters

9. Geographic Locations

a. Geographic Domain: Asia

b. Geographic Site: South Asia

c. Geographic Impact: The Philippines

10. Sub-National Factors: None

11. Type of Habitat: Tropical

IV. Trade Clusters

12. Type of Measure: Regulatory Standard

13. Direct v. Indirect Impacts: Direct

14. Relation of Trade Measure to Environmental Impact

a. Directly Related to Product: Yes, banana

b. Indirectly Related to Product: No

c. Not Related to Product: No, banana

d. Related to Process: Pollution

15. Trade Product Identification: Banana

16. Economic Data

Bananas are the main fruit in international trade and the most popular one in the world. In terms of volume they are the first exported fruit, while they rank second after citrus fruit in terms of value. Banana is a very delicate commodity on economic, social, environmental and political grounds. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Statistics estimations, world total exports of banana accounted for 14,7 million tonnes in 2002. As it is the case for most tropical products, due to the special climatic conditions needed to grow bananas, they are mainly produced in developing countries. Around 98% of world production is grown in developing countries. Developed countries are the usual destination for export bananas. In 2003, a total of 123 countries produced bananas. Bananas are imported mainly by the European Union, the United States of America and Japan, which together accounted for about 70% of world total imports in 2002.

Distribution of the world Banana exports
Average on the 1998-2002 period

Ecuador	Costa Rica	Philippines	Columbia	Guatemala
27.5%	14.6%	11.0%	10.4%	5.7%

As seen from above, Ecuador exports more bananas than any other country in the world, and has been the top exporter of banana to the EU. Leading importer of the Costa Rican banans are the US, Argentina, Chile and Japan.

Distribution of the world Banana imports
Average on the 1998-2002 period

EU	USA	Russia	Japan	China
33.8%	38.9%	3.8%	7%	3.4%

From the above table on distribution of the world banana imports, United States is the world top importer. United States, as well, was having a dispute on banana with Costa Rica. The controversial issue was on pesticide usage during the production of banana in Costa Rica. See COSTPEST.

Distribution of the Japan banana imports

20. Environmental Problem Type: Pollution Land

21. Name, Type, and Diversity of Species: Banana

Environmental damages and causes attributed to banana production

Causes

• Application of extremely toxic substances (when prevailing criteria are for efficiency and cost reduction)
• Clear cuttings at river banks, and tributaries
• Inadequate waste disposal
• Manual application of pesticides without adequate equipment for tropical conditions
• Working population and their neighbors exposed to pesticides
• Inadequate warehouses for storing pesticides
• Waste water with chemical residues coming from packaging plants and plantations ending up in rivers without any treatment
• Lack of monitoring system for water, soil and air conditions in relation to pesticides

Damages

• Water, soil, marine, and air contamination
• Permanent soil contamination with copper resulting in permanent effects
• Sediment production and transport to watersheds and seas
• Death of animals, especially fish, caused by pesticide poisoning
• Pesticide intoxication of workers and neighbors
• Appearance of secondary plagues resulting from excessive application of pesticides
• Deforestation
• Water euthrophication

• Regulatory requirements
• Banned and restricted pesticides in the Philippines

PANNA Pesticide Action Network North America

To Spray or Not to Spray: Pesticides, Banana Exports, and Food Safety John S. Wilson Tsunehiro Otsuki Development Research Group (DECRG)

Banana and Japanese Yoshiyuki Tsurumi

FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

MAFF Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishery of Japan