The decision by the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment to ban the import of certain fruits and vegetables from five countries — namely Egypt, Oman, Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen — due to the high content of pesticides found in them is highly commendable and highlights the UAE’s commitment to its people’s health and well-being. By putting up economic barriers for non-compliant exports, the UAE is not only safeguarding its people, but it is also incentivising the urgency of food producers to revert to healthy practices for global good.
In today’s global agrarian economy, which is predominantly driven by high yield-production cycles for profits, the use of pesticides is a fait accompli. To combat this problem, international monitoring bodies for food produce worthiness have created measures such as the Maximum Residue Level for pesticides, for example, to encourage good agricultural practices and the UAE enforces stringent regulations on the permissible level of pesticides in food produce that are imported into the country.
The effects on a population due to consumption of chemical-laden produce are legion and there is no longer any scope to defend the over-use of pesticides, given the debilitation of the ecosystem.
Apart from harming human health, the damage done by the rampant use of pesticides impacts the air we breathe, the water we drink and threatens the existence of hundreds of species of flora and fauna that are vital for environmental balance. In fact, this overuse is one of the biggest challenges to overcome in today’s scourge of over-farming.
Wanting to feed the world and making some money while at it, is not the issue. The issue is the condemnable lack of ethics and fair sense in food producers who prioritise profits over all else.
