Dr Nada Ni’meh, vice president of “Lebanon Consumer”, an organisation that defends consumers rights, says, “Food and environmental pollution is a major reason for the increase in cancer cases in the country.”

The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Cancer Research stated that in 2020, Lebanon ranked third in the number of cancer cases relative to the size of its population in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. .

In 2003, “Lebanon Consumers” organization started a campaign to reduce the use of pesticides in cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Ministry of Agriculture. Ni’meh regretfully says that after eighteen years “there is no progress because the Lebanese leadership has not done anything so far. All the recommendations we listed in our meetings with the Ministry of Agriculture or with the Parliamentary Agricultural Committee failed.” The entities that obstructed solutions are the “drug mafias'' as Ni’meh describes them, or “the merchants and people from the legislative and executive authorities who help them.”

Towards the end of 2017, the former Minister of Agriculture Ghazi Zuaiter issued a decision to allow the re-import of eighteen out of thirty-six pesticides that the former Minister of Agriculture Akram Chehayeb and Minister of Health Wael Abu-Faour had banned under decision No. (1048/1), issued on June 13, 2016. The first item of the resolution explained that the pesticides “are linked to cancer and pose a danger to pregnant women.”

Zuaiter justifies his decision by explaining that these pesticides “are still registered and used in several (so-called) reference countries. There are no alternatives to some of them in fighting some diseases and insects, which caused a problem for farmers, increased the cost of production and may be a reason why they resorted to smuggling.”

Ni’meh does not find this explanation convincing as she believes that what happened raises questions about the justification for bringing these substances back into Lebanon after they were banned for more than a year during which farmers were able to manage without them. She adds, “If they are banned even in only one country, it is enough for us not to use them at all.”

Questions also arise about the validity of decision taken by the two government ministers Chehayeb and Abu-Faour, which gave a one-year grace period to use the carcinogenic pesticides covered in Resolution (1048). Fourteen days later they issued joint decision No. (1202/1) to exclude shipment of pesticides that had already arrived at the port of Beirut from the ban, as they were in transit when the decision has taken effect.

The story does not end here, in 2016, the Association of Importers and Traders of Agricultural Production Supplies in Lebanon appealed to invalidate these two decisions before the Highest State Council (or Shura). The Association claimed that “the harm and danger of the pesticides subject to the two decisions have not been proven.” The association’s presidency said in a statement that it “objected to the fact that the Phyto-Medicines Committee was not considered as it is the entity concerned for making decisions on the trade of plant medicines.”

To verify the association’s claim, we cross checked them with those of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) list of carcinogens. 32 of the 35 compounds covered by the decision (with one compound not on the list), were classified as likely to or may cause cancer. According to The US Department of Health’s open Database on Chemicals, eleven compounds cause fertility problems and harm to foetuses. Despite this, on March 8, 2018, the Lebanese Shura Council repealed the decisions of the ministers of agriculture and public health on the pretext of “overstepping the association’s authority and violating the core principles stipulated in laws and regulations.”

The flip-flopping in decisions did not end here, as at the beginning of 2018, the enforcement of Zuaiter’s decision was suspended until an independent scientific committee of experts could complete the study and evaluation of the active ingredients. To date such committee has not been formed.

Akkar and the Baalbek-Hermel governorates had the highest percentages of samples that contain banned compounds with 29% and 25%, respectively. They are also the two governorates that share a long border with Syria, with 5 official crossing points, and 124 illegal crossings used mainly for smuggling fuel, merchandise, contraband and pesticides.

Pesticide containers fill up the shelves like any other products and within access to everyone in the agricultural tools department of one of the well-known shopping malls in the southern suburbs of Beirut. A customer holds a package in his hands and seems confused. He asks another customer whether the pesticide he is holding is effective against cockroaches in the house. That customer suggests another type, which the client purchases and proceeds reassured by the other customer’s advice.

Little does he know that the pesticide he bought contains three of the four banned active ingredients as listed on the package, like Cypermethrin which was banned in 2018, Diazinon was banned in 2016, and DDVP was banned in 2011. The last one is classified as “high-risk” by the World Health Organization.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, and the US Environmental Protection Agency classify all these compounds as “likely to, or may cause cancer.” The classification of Diazinon was based on strong evidence that it causes damage to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or chromosomes.

The label on the container purchased by the same customer says that it was “Made in Germany”, but there was no reference to the manufacturer or importer. The same is true for other products containing compounds no less dangerous than those mentioned above, such as Chlorpyrifos or Methomyl, even though decision (92/1) of May 20, 1998 obligates companies to include the name and address of the manufacturer and the name and address of the importer on the label, subject to legal prosecution.

One container names only the importing company as (NM) and is registered as No. (3374). After cross checking the official list of companies, we found no entry in that name. To confirm this, we addressed our queries to Lama Haydar, the head of department of phytopharmacology at the Ministry of Agriculture, who confirmed that the ministry registers companies by their names and addresses and does not give them a registration number. She stressed that this product must have been smuggled in and that the institution that sells these medicines is not licensed. Therefore, it has no right to trade in phytopharmacology without a license.

Haydar sent the ministry teams with security support to inspect the store, and the goods were seized, a violation report was filed and referred to the Public Prosecution. The store owner pledged not to dispose of the pesticides himself, and to keep them stored in his warehouses or transfer them to the warehouses of the Ministry of Agriculture at his own expense, so they can be destroyed.

Lebanon is not equipped to dispose banned and hazardous substances and relies on joint projects implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to destroy them outside Lebanon periodically.

A source in the Ministry of Agriculture says that he had confiscated banned pesticides ten years ago, storing them in the warehouses of the Ministry’s laboratory in Kfarshima, south of the capital Beirut, where they remain today. Haydar confirms that a new project is being readied with FAO, to collect banned pesticides to be destroyed outside Lebanon.

Two months later, we visited the same store selling banned pesticides to ensure that it complied with its previous commitments, only to discover that it was still displaying pesticides that contains prohibited substances.

In November 2021, Qatar banned some Lebanese agricultural exports from entering its territories due to “the high percentage of pesticide residues, such as E. coli bacteria and lead,” according to a statement by the Qatari Ministry of Health. The United Arab Emirates had banned all kinds of Lebanese apples imports in a decision issued in 2017, and remained in effect until June 2021. In 2019, Egypt announced the suspension of a shipment of 700 tonnes of apples for the same reason despite the fact that half of Lebanon’s exports of apples go to Egypt.

Data from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) reveal that a quarter of the cases of rejection of Lebanese agricultural exports of vegetables to the United States and the European Union between 2010 and 2018 were due to pesticides. The organization’s website does not provide information about other countries, especially Arab countries, to which Lebanon exports to.

We requested similar data from the Investment Development Authority of Lebanon (IDAL), which supports and promotes Lebanese produce abroad, but we did not get a response when we visited their offices, nor after we forwarded our questions via e-mail as directed.

Lebanese agricultural exports

After a period of decline, agricultural exports improved in 2020, with a change rate of 47%; however, it is expected to decline again due to the decisions of the Gulf Arab countries to boycott Lebanese produce.