Australia’s peak farm lobby tries to silence members after ABC investigation exposes Parkinson’s link to controversial chemical
VFF president Emma Germano says there are “reasonable questions” to be answered about paraquat. (ABC News/Supplied)
In short:
A leaked email from the National Farmers Federation is directing its members to stay silent on a story linking the common farm chemical paraquat to Parkinson’s disease.
But the leader of the Victorian state branch has ignored the directive, saying she believes a debate needs to be had about the safe use of the chemical and the health of farmers.
What’s next?
The widely used herbicide has been under safety review by the chemical regulator since 1997. Last month proposed regulatory changes were announced, which are open for public consultation until the end of October.
Australia’s peak farm lobby has called on its members to avoid discussion of an ABC Landline program that investigated the link between the herbicide paraquat, and Parkinson’s disease.
In a leaked email seen by the ABC, the National Farmers Federation (NFF) head office encourages its members to “avoid prolonging the story”.
“Essentially as we expected the story has had very little traction beyond the ABC online and Landline story and that’s how we’d like to keep it,” the email reads.
“The APVMA’s technical report for the current paraquat review has already considered and dismissed the Parkinson’s link, the APVMA’s proposed restrictions on paraquat relate instead to environmental concerns.
“To avoid conflating the PD link with the issues being considered by the APVMA review, and also to avoid prolonging the story, the NFF has chosen not to proactively comment on the story, and our suggestion is that members take the same approach.”
The ABC has revealed that the science underpinning the APVMA’s advice on paraquat was based on an unpublished paper funded by the maker of the chemical, Syngenta.
The National Farmers Federation emailed its members encouraging them to “avoid prolonging the story”. (Supplied)
The leader of the NFF’s Victorian branch has broken ranks, warning her organisation risks being “on the wrong side of history”.
Her comments came amid revelations that the family featured in the Landline program had come under attack from some farm group leaders.
Emma Germano, a farmer from Gippsland and the state membership president of the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF), has ignored the internal directive from her national counterparts to stay silent after watching the Landline report last week.
The story detailed a cluster of Parkinson’s disease cases in a Victorian farming community, and revealed a growing number of independent studies linking paraquat with the incurable neurodegenerative condition.
The global agricultural chemical giant Syngenta is the original manufacturer, and it maintains that paraquat does not cause Parkinson’s.
“These people, they’re experiencing something really quite horrific … that was the impression that I was left with after I watched the program,” she said.
“They’re asking a question. For that to be shut down when these people who have diligently been part of our industry, salt-of-the-earth kind of farmers … that’s inexcusable.”
Ms Germano said she was not a scientist but she believed a debate needed to be had about the safe use of paraquat and the health of farmers.
“I would say there are reasonable questions that were asked, and for them not to be reasonably answered is doing a disservice to those farmers and to the community,” she said.
Ms Germano is concerned the directive from the NFF compromised its role as an advocate for its members.
“Where farmers have concerns, it’s our job to represent those concerns,” she said.
“There should never be a sense that, you know, we’re parroting lines off each other, or [saying], ‘Let’s make it go away as quickly as possible.’ I think that helps no-one.”
The NFF declined an interview but said in a statement it acknowledged and sympathised with the farmers and families featured in Landline’s program.
“As farmers it is absolutely critical that the products we use are safe for humans and the environment,” it said.
The NFF said Australian farmers put their faith in the science-based regulator, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicine Authority (APVMA), to determine what products they could use and how to use them safely.
“The NFF continues to inform and guide our members and the industry more broadly on what is a complex, technical and highly sensitive issue,” it said.
“We will also continue to reinforce the importance of trust in our independent regulator and discourage commentary on misinformation and issues outside our technical expertise.”
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Emma Germano said maintaining trust in the industry meant having difficult conversations that might be at odds with industry interests.
“You don’t just tell the good stories; you have to tell the bad stories as well,” she said.
Ms Germano said that contrary to the NFF email, the farmers she worked with were aware of the questions surrounding paraquat, which is already banned in 67 countries including the EU and China because of the risk it presents to health and the environment.
“Particularly within the farming community, I know that story is something that everybody is aware of,” she said.
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Ms Germano said she was not opposing the use of chemicals, but was concerned about the potential consequences of not speaking up.
“And you say, ‘Why did I not want to speak about it? Was it because of a fear of upsetting people within the industry or the regulator,’ … That means to me that you would be standing on the wrong side of history.”
Family targeted
Ms Germano said the families featured in the ABC Landline story had faced unwarranted attacks from sections of the farming industry.
Last week WA Farmers grains president Mark Fowler accused the family of having “connections to the organic industry” and being people who “want the use of paraquat restricted”.
The public post from WA Farmers member Mark Fowler alleging the Myers family had an anti-chemical agenda. (ABC News)
“I felt a responsibility to talk about this issue because I have seen the pressure that the family have come under, and I think it’s unfair and unwarranted,” Ms Germano said.
“When we start attacking people, that’s just not helpful.
Mark Fowler said he stood by his public comments and criticism of the ABC reporting.
An internal Syngenta presentation from June 2003 included a slide on the company’s strategy around research. Its researchers were instructed to avoid measuring paraquat levels in the brain, since any detection would “not be perceived externally in a positive light”. (Supplied)
Ms Germano said the broader Australian community needed to have trust in the regulator, and there were “reasonable” questions still to be answered.
“I think that there’s a real opportunity here for the APVMA to demonstrate that regulating chemicals is exactly what they’re going to do and that there’s a framework that every Australian can trust in,” she said.
Last year, an independent report by Clayton Utz investigated the APVMA and found serious allegations of industry capture.
“Alignment with industry interests also appears to be embedded into the APVMA’s regulatory priorities and culture,” the report found.
Over the weekend, leading Australian research body Fight Parkinson’s updated its position on paraquat. It now supports a ban on the herbicide.
However it also acknowledged a distinction needed to be made about correlation and causation.
“A correlation indicates a relationship between two things but doesn’t prove one causes the other,” the statement said.
“There is currently no definitive ‘scientific proof’ that paraquat causes Parkinson’s disease in an individual.
“It is difficult to isolate a single cause, such as exposure to a specific herbicide.”
But it said animal models had provided evidence of paraquat causing Parkinson’s disease.
“Given the body of current evidence, Fight Parkinson’s supports a ban of paraquat to mitigate risk to farmers and their families and the wider Australian community,” the statement said.
Scientist questions regulator
A senior consultant to the APVMA says he provided information to the regulator six years ago about the toxic dangers of paraquat, a farm chemical that continues to be widely used across Australia’s agricultural sector.
But that information was never acted on.
Chris Lee-Steere is a former consultant to the chemical regulator. (ABC News.)
Chris Lee-Steere has a decades-long career consulting to industry and the regulator on the environmental safety of chemical products.
In 2019, he was asked by the-then CEO of the APVMA to run human health modelling on paraquat for internal use to test new software.
Mr Lee-Steere informed the regulator that the controls around the chemical were not stringent enough. He says they took a further six years to act on that modelling.
Part of his advice centred around buffer zones and setting limits to protect bystanders from chemical spray drift.
“I think there was a statement on labels saying, don’t expose bystanders to the drift cloud or something like that, which doesn’t quite meet current requirements,” Mr Lee-Steere said.
“There was no figure given as to how far a distance you needed between application and the downwind exposure area.
“When you have language like, ‘Don’t expose bystanders to the spray cloud,’ it assumes you can see the spray cloud, and that’s not always the case.”
As Australian farmers have adopted zero-till farming, they have relied more on chemicals to control weeds. (Clint Jasper)
Mr Lee-Steere’s modelling showed the regulator that changes could be made to the label, including at least a 30-metre buffer zone between bystanders.
He also demonstrated a much higher standard of personal protection for users, and longer re-entry times after spraying would be appropriate.
“I didn’t ever hear anything back from them,” he said.
Paraquat is listed as a schedule 7 poison in Australia, which requires a licence to purchase. (Supplied)
Paraquat and diquat have been under review since 1997, and last month the APVMA released a draft recommendation.
It addressed some of the concerns Mr Lee-Steere raised in 2019. Other report recommendations include reductions in the rates of chemical that could be used, and restricting other uses such as defoliating crops before harvest.
Mr Lee-Steere said the issue with paraquat was the tip of the iceberg for chemical reviews in Australia, with dozens of potentially dangerous chemicals having been under review due to safety concerns since 1995.
“At the moment, we’ve got 92 chemicals on various lists that are either in progress for review, prioritised for review, or nominated for review, or up for a spray-drift review,” he said.
“Many of those chemicals were originally prioritised in 1995 and they haven’t had any work started on them.
“There’s 11 chemicals prioritised to have reviews start between 2024 and 2029. Six of those were prioritised 30 years ago.”
The APVMA did not answer detailed questions regarding Mr Lee-Steere’s allegations.
In a short statement, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority said:
“The APVMA engages External Scientific Reviewers to conduct specific technical assessments.”
“The APVMA considers the assessments provided by External Scientific Reviewers and makes decisions in accordance with the legislation, taking into consideration specific technical assessment provided, as well as other information where relevant”
Mr Lee-Steere said there were many more chemicals in wide use that were not even on the radar.
“[Paraquat], it’s not an isolated case. We’ve done lots of work on chemicals that aren’t formally under review and come up and demonstrate problems,” he said.
“There’s many, many more that aren’t even on the lists that haven’t undergone a contemporary review, so exposure to environment and communities is probably greater than we actually realise.”
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