De-bugging a law

The pesticides contamination case against corporate grower Ag-Mart goes on, but a good outcome from a state investigation of the company was a task force created by Governor Easley to suggest improvements in the state's pesticide laws. The Governor's Task Force on Preventing Agricultural Pesticide Exposure has turned over its findings to Easley, and its suggestions would result in tighter rules and better safety for workers.

A couple of caveats: The group left open a way for pesticide users to hide violation of the rules. Legislators should address that deficiency, and they need to ensure adequate protections to farm workers who allege illegal practices.

Florida-based Ag-Mart grows tomatoes in that state and North Carolina, and it has been accused of forcing workers, including a couple whose child was born with deformities, to return too soon to pesticide-treated fields. (The couple sued but recently agreed to an out-of-court settlement.) Ag-Mart is fighting state charges, denying that anyone was improperly exposed and saying that its records of when fields were sprayed were inconclusive.

The proposed rules would require better record-keeping, including recording specifically when the process of applying pesticides is started and finished. Growers would have to calculate when it was safe for workers to return to treated fields. Those are basic requirements that should have been in the law.

Missing from the recommendations is a requirement to record when workers actually are sent back into fields. It shouldn't be difficult for farmers to make those notations, especially since other recommendations involve better training for supervisors whose subordinates toil in treated fields.

Also, the legislature should accept the recommendation to penalize owners who retaliate against a worker who blows the whistle on violations. Farm workers largely are poor or migrants, and they reasonably fear punishment by powerful bosses if they tell authorities that the rules were broken. Without an anti-retaliation provision, the rest of the pesticide law becomes weak as water.