Naivasha Member of Parliament, John Matutho, is expected to
ask the Minister for Environment and Mineral Resources to immediately
ban the pesticide Furadan
during Thursday’s session of the tenth parliament. Hon. Matutho is also
expected to ask the Minister whether he is aware of a documentary about
lion deaths in Kenya aired in March 2009 by American broadcaster, CBS,
and is potentially damaging to Kenya’s image.
Matutho refers to an event on 29 March 2009 when American broadcaster, CBS, aired a documentary that exposed the deliberate poisoning of Kenya’s lions using Furadan , an agricultural pesticide, in their 60 Minutes program. Following the CBS report on 60 Minutes, the Philadelphia-based Furadan manufacturer, FMC, almost immediately announced the withdrawal of the pesticide from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
Furadan is the brand name for a carbofuran-based pesticide and nematicide manufactured by the American agrochemical, FMC Corporation . Carbofurans are cheap and highly effective agricultural pesticides reputed to be among the most toxic. They are used in Kenya to kill pests that attack crops such as coffee, potatoes, maize, beans, bananas, pyrethrum and tobacco. Furadan, in very small quantities, is fatal to humans.
The US Fish and Wildlife Authority, charged with preserving America’s wildlife, has in the past said that they found no way in which Furadan can be used without causing fatalities in birds. Late last year, the American equivalent of NEMA, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned Furadan in food. This in effect means that farmers cannot use Furadan as a pesticide on food crops.
The European Union has also banned Furadan throughout the entire bloc and Canada is set to follow suit in coming days.
The ban of this chemical in these developed countries has given conservationists the impetus to push for a total ban in Kenya. “How can Kenya continue to license a product that the US, with their advanced monitoring and enforcement systems has said cannot be used in any safe way?” asks Dr Paula Kahumbu, Executive Director of Nairobi-based conservation organisation, WildlifeDirect, Inc .
Kenyan conservationists have been reporting increasing cases of wildlife poisoning by farmers and herders using carbofurans. The most alarming cases reported are those of poisoning large predators such as lions and hyenas by herders in retaliation for having their cattle taken by these predators. In all reported cases, the carbofuran used was said to be Furadan.
Dr Laurence Frank, a lion conservationist with the Laikipia Predator Conservation Project, while speaking to conservation body, WildlifeDirect, said that he had received reports of more than 60 lions having been killed through poisoning, most of which are suspected to have been killed by Furadan.
Apart from pastoralists poisoning predators in retaliation, Furadan is being used in a much more sinister and dangerous way in Kenya to kill wild animals for human consumption.
An ongoing study into the use of Furadan for bird hunting has revealed alarming Furadan-induced bird mortalities in the Bunyala Rice Scheme. These birds are intended for human consumption oblivious of the human health risk posed by Furadan.
A report presented to the insect committee of Nature Kenya has also exposed the use of this lethal pesticide in fishing in Lake Victoria. There is no confirmation of where the catch ends up but a Kenyan Harvard PhD scholar, Dino J Martins, who conducted the study on Lake Victoria, reported that HIV/AIDS orphans were allowed to collect immature fish from the large by-catch that resulted from fish pesticide fishing method thereby exposing them to a known health risk.
Peter Otieno, an MSc student at the Egerton University did a survey in Laikipia and Isiolo Districts revealing levels of Furadan esceeding those approved in the US for toxicity in water that he sampled during along the Ngare Ndare River. Otieno has completed his thesis at Maseno University confirming the Furadan-induced fatalities of vultures. He also documented Furadan residues in soil and ground water.
Although there are both anectodal, and increasingly, actual evidence that Furadan is being misused and causing massive death of wildlife, and posing a human health risk, government ministries and pesticide regulatory body Pest Control Products Board (PCPB) are yet to acknowledged the threat. Hon. Matutho, in a communication to WildlifeDirect, said that the Ministry of Environment was in denial.
In a meeting to discuss the Furadan crisis, the PCPB is reported to have denied that the problem existed saying that there is no evidence that Furadan was causing these wildlife deaths. This hazardous assertion exposes the laxity in dealing with potential chemical hazards within this regulatory body.
Conservationists lament that PCPB has not come up with a mechanism to monitor the environmental effects of the pesticides that they have licenced. The conservationists accuse the PCPB of licensing pesticides and forgetting all about them until there is a crisis involving human deaths.
“Given the reported use of the pesticide in bushmeat hunting and fishing, it will not be long before human fatalities are reported”, says Dr Kahumbu. “Our Chairman, Dr Richard Leakey called for the ban of this agent of death long before FMC announced its withdrawal from Kenya, Uganda and T anzania”, she adds “but nobody listened.”
FMC had also announced that they had instructed the local Furadan dealer, Juanco Limited, to immediately launch a buy-back programme that would remove the stock of the deadly pesticide from the shelves of agro-veterinary shops throughout Kenya. This, however, according to conservationists who have continued to push for a total ban has not realy removed Furadan from the market. Furadan is still being bought although the cost has gone higher.
Dr Kahumbu hopes that the Ministry will effect an immediate ban on Furadan, even as a precautionary measure, pending further government investigation into the reported cases of misuse.
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