Less than a month later, US firm buy-back deal comes a cropper

A buy-back programme of a deadly agricultural pesticide — carbofuran — introduced by a US manufacturer a month ago is a total failure, say a group of wildlife conservationists in Kenya who now want an immediate ban on the sale, distribution and the importation of the chemical.

The pesticide marketed under the trade name furadan by Philadelphia-based Farm Machinery and Chemicals (FMC) is responsible for the deaths of dozens of lions, hundreds of vultures and other animals in Kenya’s wildlife sanctuaries.

A month after the programme kicked off, some agrovet stores are still hiding old stock and selling it under the counter. The pesticide is still reported to be causing wildlife deaths in various locations in Kenya.

Last week, one lion, a number of hyenas and 35 vultures are reported to have died at Olololaimutiak gate in the Maasai Mara Reserve from retaliatory poisoning from a cow carcass that had been laced with poison suspected to be furadan. The cow had been killed inside the reserve where it was grazing illegally, the group, led by Nature Kenya, Youth for Conservation and the East African Wildlife Society said in a statement.

This poisoning was confirmed by the Kenya Wildlife Service, which added that a suspect has been arrested and is assisting with investigations.
According to the KWS senior scientist, Dr Dominic Mijele, the carcass had a pinkish colouration on the bones indicating a heavy dose of the substance was used.

On April 29, after American broadcaster CBS aired a documentary about lion poisoning in Kenya in its 60 Minutes programme, the pesticide manufacturer FMC Corporation immediately announced the withdrawal of furadan in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and instructed the local distributor, Juanco Ltd, to immediately begin a buy-back programme in Kenya to remove all available stock from the shelves.

However, according to an official of the Kenya Pest Control and Products Board who is not authorised to talk to the press, it is business as usual at the board as “the board is not convinced that the chemical poses any danger to humans and wildlife.”

The conservationists are cheating themselves. Unless a proper legislative act is put in place, the status quo remains,” he told The EastAfrican.

The conservationists have successfully petitioned the Kenyan Parliamentary Agricultural Committee to totally ban the product. Recently, Parliamentary Agricultural Committee chairman John Mututho asked the Minister of Forestry and Wildlife to help effect the ban.

The pesticide is used to control insects in a variety of field crops, including potatoes, corn and soyabeans. Despite the withdrawal of the pesticide from the market, several cases of deliberate poisoning of animals using the pesticide continue to be reported, especially in areas where wildlife competes for living space and territory with humans.

Conservationists became particularly alarmed earlier this month when wildlife officials in the world-famous Maasai Mara National Park discovered five dead hippos, which died after grazing on vegetation containing traces of carbofuran.

Former head of the KWS, Richard Leakey, now running a local wildlife charity, Wildlifedirect.org, says nomadic people living near the Maasai Mara may have used the chemical to poison predators, not knowing that killing animals with carbofuran often leads to secondary poisonings that have the potential to wipe out entire wildlife populations.

This, to an extent, is a reflection of the fact that wildlife-human conflict has grown in intensity and the KWS is simply not up to giving the assistance people are looking for by removing animals through trapping.

On March 18, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded that “dietary, worker, and ecological risks are unacceptable for all uses of carbofuran” and hence cancelled all tolerances for carbofuran in food. On May 11, they announced the total ban on these tolerances. Carbofurans remain effectively banned in the European Union.

American scientists concluded, as far back as the late 1990s, that there is no foreseeable way that carbofurans can be used on crops without killing birds.