Student Printz, University of Southern Mississippi, David McRaney
Published February 14, 2006
What's in a name?
That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet - and cost as cheap thanks to indigent labor in Central and South America.
What’s in a name?
That which we call a stillbirth, by any other name would still turn the stomach. Thanks to Valentines Day, women south of the border call them aborto espontáneos.
When you lay down $60 for a dozen roses, or receive them at work in front of your friends, consider where they come from.
You already know a lot of what we own, from our remote controls to our sneakers, is produced by pseudo-slave labor in mostly third-world countries.
So this should come as no surprise.
More than 400,000 boxes of flowers are shipped from Ecuador to the United States in the two weeks leading up to Valentine's Day.
Workers in Ecuador and Colombia, usually women, labor from 7 a.m. to 3 a.m. during this time of year. Most do not work again until Mother’s Day approaches.
They work around 100 varieties of pesticides, many outlawed in America, without protection.
The story is the same in Thailand, Malaysia and Zambia – anywhere February isn’t frozen over and poor people are willing to work for pennies.
In 1991, the Andean Trade Preference Act made it possible for America to import roses from countries whose previous exports were mostly drugs. Since then, the flower market in Ecuador exploded.
In 1993, Ecuador exported over $38 million in cut flowers. In 1997, they exported $131 million worth, $22 million of which came from roses, according to a document distributed by the Floriculture Seminar of Trinidad and Tobago. Colombia topped that by exporting $301 million in cut flowers in 1997, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Ecuador and Colombia have prospered in this industry not because of constant sunshine, which is a factor, but because of negligent pesticide regulations.
According to the world Intellectual Property Organization, this accounts for 20 percent of all pesticide use.
The pesticide residue on the petals of imported roses is 50 times that allowed on food imports, according to a statement by the Environmental Working Group at the IPO website. It goes on to say workers should be wearing protection at those levels.
Every day, in poorly ventilated greenhouses, the toxic vapors from an encyclopedia of poisons accumulate, and these workers suck it all in. Inevitably, birth defects and sterility are common.
The IPO also cites the World Resource Institute’s study where 80 such women often continued working even as the pesticides rained down on them.
The kicker to all of this is most of these pesticides are produced in the United States where they can’t legally be used.
It’s all part of Valentine’s Day, a day in which some estimates predict Americans will spend over $13 billion dollars on teddy bears, chocolates and roses.
So this year, whether you say aborto espontáneos or miscarriage, say it with flowers.
