Twelfth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

The paper proposes to discuss food sovereignty in Brazil and its relation to the right to adequate food and the indiscriminate use of pesticides. This is an area lacking regulation to contain excesses and protect human health and environmental balance. According to the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture, the Brazilian agrochemicals market grew 190% in ten years, from 2000 to 2010, more than double the world indexes, which reached 93%. In 2013, among the ten best-selling pesticides in Brazil, on an active principle, glyphosate was the first in a total of 411 billion kilograms, a product considered in 2015 as a probable cause of cancer in humans, by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) (2015) of the World Health Organization, and the agency raised the risk of the product to Group 2A. The announcement provoked great apprehension among Brazilian scientists and public organizations. The Brazilian Parliament intends to modify the current Law of Agrochemicals in Brazil (Law 7.802 / 89), called “Poison Package”, to modify and make flexible devices of the current Law that regulates the production, registration, marketing, transportation, packaging and labeling of these products in the country. The proposed changes have been subject to strong opposing pressures from sectors of organized society and even from public agencies, given the seriousness of the planned changes and their impact on the human right to adequate food. The research applies the deductive method and uses bibliographic sources, official documents and Jurisprudence.