Chlordecone: we were “not sufficiently informed about the dangerousness of the product” according to some Martinican planters

By la1ere.francetvinfo

As part of the judicial file relating to the devastation caused by chlordecone, ecologists, civil parties and local elected officials of the West Indies still denounce the dismissal pronounced Monday, January 2, 2023 by the two investigating judges of the health center of Paris, Brigitte Jolivet and Fanny Bussac.

Banana growers also deplore the health and environmental impact of this toxic, ecotoxic and persistent organochlorine insecticide. They question the responsibility of the State, which should have informed more about the dangerousness of the pesticide according to them. The product was classified as a “probable carcinogen” in 1979 by the World Health Organization.

The use of the latter, banned in continental France from 1990, was however extended until 1993 in the West Indies, by ministerial derogation granted to producers, in order to control the weevil, the most important pest of the banana tree.

Like Louis-Daniel Bertome, his predecessor in the consular chamber from 1989 to 2007, Guy Ovide-Etienne, speaks of “lack of information” and “prejudice”.

The president of the cooperative, Juvénal Rémir, who does not have his tongue in his pocket, is pleased to have warned very early on the dangers of chlordecone, alongside the environmental activist of Assaupamar, Pierre Davidas. “There are many people in high places who knew about it,” says the planter from northern Martinique.

To combat the banana weevil, INRAE Antilles-Guyane has been working since 1987 on “less polluting methods”. But the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment ran into a “regulatory problem”. Whose fault?