Tomorrow is a chance for sweethearts to profess their love through the exchange of gifts, especially chocolates and roses. Valentine's Day has also become an opportunity for single people to complain at length about how they have no one to give a bouquet of flowers to.
As someone who is single, it is easy to say such complaints are a waste of time and just plain stupid. Instead, the holiday makes individuals aware of a larger cause for complaint, which both sweethearts and singles should protest and criticize: the health and safety problems of roses.
Studies by both the New York Times and Mother Jones magazine showed that many of the roses sold in America are causing serious health problems among the Ecuadorians growing them. American florists sell over 120 million roses for Valentine's Day and nearly two-thirds of those roses are imported from Latin American countries, such as Ecuador.
It may be best to think twice about giving a loved one an imported rose. The rose is supposed to be a symbol of love, but it has been a curse of death and illness for many workers.
The Environmental Working Group concluded that commercially grown roses contained 1,000 times the amount of cancer causing pesticides compared to food products. Additionally, roses contain over 50 times the amount of pesticides legally allowed on food products. Opponents argue that such pesticide levels are not harming anyone since consumers are not in contact with them for extended periods. To the contrary, pesticide levels are physically harming many individuals, not to mention the environment.
Many of the pesticides and fungicides used by Latin American growers are from the groups of Organophosphates, Carbamates and Organochlorines. These families of pesticides are the same groups which DDT and WWII nerve gas are examples. Common to the growth of Ecuadorian imported roses are pesticides such as captan, aldicarb and fenamiphos, yet the United States and countries around the world ban them because the World Health Organization labels them as highly toxic.
Even more disheartening than using the non-environmentally friendly chemicals are the consequence these chemicals are having on the health of post-harvest workers. Ecuador alone employs 50,000 workers, mostly women, to fuel the rose industry.
Research proves that women working in the industry have miscarriages with excessive frequency and over 60 percent of all workers suffer from fatigue, nausea, blurred vision, headache, rashes and other symptoms of pesticide poisoning.
Farm owners and supervisors have workers fumigate without protective equipment. Pesticides are stored in open containers. Fumes of the pesticides are evident in worker's eating areas. Industry supervisors easily break fumigation rules and standards. Most shocking is even while laborers are working, the chemicals are sprayed toward the roses with no regard to the presence of humans.
Most large rose distribution areas have company doctors to ensure the health of the workers, but they are simply tools of the industry. Doctors continually reassure workers they are healthy and the chemicals are not causing their sickness. In addition to more legal enforcement, workers need a better health care system.
The practices by which employers treat these $120-a-month flower workers are extremely disheartening. Just like the labor and environmental abuses of multi-national corporations in any developing country, it is easy to look away from the problems facing the developing world as a result of the cheaper prices created by minimal standards. America has protested child labor, shoe factories and other abusive corporation practices in the developing world. Now is the time for the same awareness and responsibility to exist among American rose consumers. Society cannot ignore the workers who suffer because of wealth driven employers.
Unfortunately, boycotting the purchase of roses from Ecuador would come at a great cost to the people of the impoverished country. The rose industry has brought higher wages to an extremely poor country and some producers do maintain safe work places.
Because of a boycott, Ecuadorian employers of flower workers will cut jobs and wages would plummet in a nation where people need this dangerous work just to survive. While boycotting roses may not be an option, Americans should urge their florists to investigate how and where their roses were grown. Florists must also pass the concerns of consumers back to distributors, importers and producers.
In the mean time, other alternatives to imported roses exist. Because of the number of concerns about illegal pesticides used on imported roses, organic roses are becoming more and more common. While organic roses may be harder to find, they provide an authentic and healthy alternative to imported roses. Organic foods have become a large part of the American economy and organic roses must become a prominent alternative for roses.
Who is to say roses are a requirement for Valentine's Day anyway? Other gifts, which mean just as much, if not more, are available for purchase.
Knowing how the majority of American roses sold on Valentine's Day are grown, makes it hard to give genuinely a rose in the name of love, when the process of cultivating that rose was not caring or friendly in any respect. Moreover, maybe if people tell the story of why they did not buy roses this year, their sweetheart will realize the kindness and global concern for others that is truly Valentine's Day. At the least, please be aware of the story of the Ecuadorian flower worker when purchasing roses this year.
Perhaps the words of Thomas Moore have even more meaning with knowledge of Ecuadorian growth practices:
"What would the rose with all her pride be worth,
Were there no sun to call her brightness forth?"
Knowing roses were harvested under good, fair and healthy conditions make the beauty of the rose that much more spectacular. We can only hope developing countries exporting roses will use the wealth coming in from the sale of roses to improve working conditions and stop the abuse of toxic pesticides.
Happy Valentine's Day!
Sources: The New York Times (February 2003) Mother Jones (February 2003)
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