An American's victory and a worrying problem in Vietnam
(Baonghean.vn) - Last August, an American citizen named Dewayne Johnson won a lawsuit against Monsanto, one of the largest chemical manufacturers in the United States and the manufacturer of Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War.
The fact that an American citizen named Dewayne Johnson won a lawsuit against Monsanto, one of the largest chemical manufacturers in the US and the manufacturer of Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War, has attracted special attention from the international media. Dewayne, when he was a janitor at a school in California, used herbicides 30 times a year for cleaning work and was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2014. He filed a lawsuit against Monsanto for "failing to warn customers about the cancer risks when using herbicides containing glyphosate". What he did seemed like hitting a rock with an egg, however, after collecting evidence, on August 10, 2018, the San Francisco Superior Court ruled that Monsanto must compensate the plaintiff 289 million USD. Dewayne Johnson's victory must have startled many people living in Vietnam, knowing that every year Vietnam imports 244 thousand tons of herbicides and according to authorities, 60% of them contain glyphosate.
In the 80s of the last century, when I was a child, living with my grandparents who did farming, I participated in most of the farming work. I remember when the newly planted rice plants were still young, the grass was just growing sparsely, I followed my grandmother to weed the first time: using my hands to rake the grass and at the same time massage the rice roots to make them airy; the rice plants "breathe easily"; the second time when the rice plants were strong, I used a wooden rake with serrated teeth to sweep around the rice rows to remove the grass, weeding and stirring the mud at the same time. At that time, I only wished that when our country developed more, farmers would have weeding machines running smoothly in the rice fields with synthetic hands to rake the grass between the rice roots so that rice growers would have less trouble and spend less time weeding. I could not have imagined that, twenty years later, manual weeding would have almost disappeared from the Vietnamese fields, but instead, it was not the weeding machines I dreamed of but the habit of weeding with toxic chemicals in all the fields from the highlands to the lowlands. In my small village, the land of rice cultivation, now if asked about weeding, the farmers would enthusiastically say, "Nowadays, just spray a few packets of chemicals and it's done, very convenient, no need to weed like in the old days!". The "magical" herbicide is so easy to buy and easy to use that farmers who only see the immediate benefits do not hesitate to use it for their fields. How many farmers who are using herbicides in the Vietnamese fields are aware that while using chemicals to kill weeds on their fields, they are also releasing chemicals into the air, seeping into the soil, into the water source, into the bodies of living organisms in the environment such as crabs, fish and insects, and into themselves? If they do know, they just click their tongues and continue using it because everyone around them does it. It is easy to see that now in the fields and ditches in the countryside, it is rare to see shrimp, crabs, fish, frogs and other insects living together. It is clear that the ecosystem associated with agriculture has been and is being broken, and herbicides are considered one of the main causes of this situation.
Every year, our country has 124,000 new cases of cancer and 94,000 people die from cancer. There is no scientific evidence to show the relationship between the rate of cancer and the 244 tons of herbicides imported and used in Vietnam, but it cannot be ruled out that the polluted living environment and exposure to toxic chemicals contribute to this alarmingly high rate of cancer. There is a great need for a broad, scientifically based investigation into the current widespread use of herbicides in agriculture in our country so that serious, reliable warnings and recommendations can be given to farmers to help change the habit of abusing toxic chemicals, especially herbicides for agricultural production. The question here is how has the role of the agency managing the import of chemicals for agriculture been promoted in the context of the indiscriminate use of pesticides and herbicides in our country? Responding to Tuoi Tre newspaper on August 14, Mr. Hoang Trung, Plant Protection Department (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development) said that it is not possible to completely ban pesticides containing glyphosate because "full information is needed". In my opinion, the victory of cancer patient Dewayne Johnson against herbicide manufacturer Monsanto, and the 2017 report of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization (WHO) classifying glyphosate as a "probably carcinogenic" active ingredient are very valuable evidence for our authorities to more strictly control the import of herbicides in particular and pesticides in general. While the abuse of herbicides has become an alarming problem, Vietnam is in dire need of inventors who, with their research closely following reality, can create modern, convenient weeding machines that free up human labor and easily become the choice of farmers instead of herbicides that have many potential harmful effects on the living environment in general. If the indifference and subjectivity of the majority of our people have contributed to making the use of herbicides a part of farming practices in our country's agricultural sector, then changing it requires the attention of not only the relevant authorities.