AGROCHEMICALS: more poisons in times of rights setbacks

Abstract

Brazil is one of the world's largest consumers of pesticides. This has contributed to the scenario of intensifying the exposure of the population and the environment to these dangerous substances, especially after the implementation of the legal/media/parliamentary coup in Brazil in 2016. Therefore, as has occurred in several areas of health, education and labor, this study aims to analyze the main decisions, laws and post-coup public policies on the subject of pesticides, and their impact on the Brazilian population. Since the recent change in the criteria for disseminating the results of the Pesticides Food Residues Analysis Program (PARA), until the approval of PL 6299/2002, known as the “poison package”, there is a great confluence of economic forces linked to the industry multinational chemistry in hiding risks, manipulating information and liberalizing the widespread use of pesticides to the detriment of the health of the population. On the occasion, the almost obligatory linkage of the consumption of pesticides with transgenic plants (agricultural commodities) is also approached as an industry strategy that has potentiated this worrisome picture, where the role of advertising and the discourse of hate and attack against researchers, professionals and independent institutions. At the end, technological alternatives and propositions of political strategies to resist the hegemonic pesticide/transgenic model are pointed out, especially against PL 6299/02 and the necessary ways to defend SUS, health and food sovereignty of the Brazilian population.