Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird?

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Published on Monday, March 31, 2008 by the International Herald

Tribune

Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird?

by Bridget Stutchbury

Though a consumer may not be able to tell the difference, a striking

red and blue Thomas the Tank Engine made in Wisconsin is not the same

as one manufactured in China - the paint on the Chinese twin may

contain dangerous levels of lead. In the same way, a plump red tomato

from Florida is often not the same as one grown in Mexico. The

imported fruits and vegetables found in our shopping carts in winter

and early spring are grown with types and amounts of pesticides that

would often be illegal in the United States.

 

In this case, the victims are North American songbirds. Bobolinks,

called skunk blackbirds in some places, were once a common sight in

the Eastern United States. In mating season, the male in his handsome

tuxedo-like suit sings deliriously as he whirrs madly over the

hayfields. Bobolink numbers have plummeted almost 50 percent in the

last four decades, according to the North American Breeding Bird

Survey.

 

The birds are being poisoned on their wintering grounds by highly

toxic pesticides. Rosalind Renfrew, a biologist at the Vermont Center

for Ecostudies, captured bobolinks feeding in rice fields in Bolivia

and took samples of their blood to test for pesticide exposure. She

found that about half of the birds had drastically reduced levels of

cholinesterase, an enzyme that affects brain and nerve cells - a sign

of exposure to toxic chemicals.

 

Since the 1980s, pesticide use has increased fivefold in Latin America

as countries have expanded their production of nontraditional crops to

fuel the demand for fresh produce during winter in North America and

Europe. Rice farmers in the region use monocrotophos, methamidophos

and carbofuran, all agricultural chemicals that are rated Class I

toxins by the World Health Organization, are highly toxic to birds,

and are either restricted or banned in the United States. In countries

like Guatemala, Honduras and Ecuador, researchers have found that

farmers spray their crops heavily and repeatedly with a chemical

cocktail of dangerous pesticides.

 

In the mid-1990s, American biologists used satellite tracking to

follow Swainson's hawks to their wintering grounds in Argentina, where

thousands of them were found dead from monocrotophos poisoning.

 

Migratory songbirds like bobolinks, barn swallows and Eastern

kingbirds are suffering mysterious population declines, and pesticides

may well be to blame. A single application of a highly toxic pesticide

to a field can kill seven to 25 songbirds per acre. About half the

birds that researchers capture after such spraying are found to suffer

from severely depressed neurological function.

 

Migratory birds, modern-day canaries in the coal mine, reveal an

environmental problem hidden to consumers.

 

Testing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shows that fruits and

vegetables imported from Latin America are three times as likely to

violate Environmental Protection Agency standards for pesticide

residues as the same foods grown in the United States. Some but not

all pesticide residues can be removed by washing or peeling produce,

but tests by the Centers for Disease Control show that most Americans

carry traces of pesticides in their blood. American consumers can

discourage this poisoning by avoiding foods that are bad for the

environment, bad for farmers in Latin America and, in the worst cases,

bad for their own families.

 

What should you put on your bird-friendly grocery list? Organic

coffee, for one thing. Most mass-produced coffee is grown in open

fields heavily treated with fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides and

insecticides. In contrast, traditional small coffee farmers grow their

beans under a canopy of tropical trees, which provide shade and

essential nitrogen, and fertilize their soil naturally with leaf

litter. Their organic, fair-trade coffee is now available in many

coffee shops and supermarkets, and it is recommended by the Audubon

Society, the American Bird Conservancy and the Smithsonian Migratory

Bird Center.

 

Organic bananas should also be on your list. Bananas are typically

grown with one of the highest pesticide loads of any tropical crop.

 

Although bananas present little risk of pesticide ingestion to the

consumer, the environment where they are grown is heavily

contaminated.

 

When it comes to nontraditional Latin American crops like melons,

green beans, tomatoes, bell peppers and strawberries, it can be

difficult to find any that are organically grown. We should buy these

foods only if they are not imported from Latin America.

 

Now that spring is here, we take it for granted that the birds'

cheerful songs will fill the air when our apple trees blossom.

 

But each year, as we continue to demand out-of-season fruits and

vegetables, we ensure that fewer and fewer songbirds will return.

 

Bridget Stutchbury, a professor of biology at York University in

Toronto, is the author of " Silence of the Songbirds. "

 

Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune

 

 

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure

that just ain't so.

- Mark Twain