Grapes, as well as tomatoes

14/02/2008 by paul.

It is not that I am getting cranky…but, I did read an article recently, concerning workers in one of the 3rd. world countries (I think it may have been S. Africa….who would probably claim not to be 3rd. world…but any country that has leaders that think HIV can be cured through eating celery, or something like that….must be 3rd world) who are employed to pick / sort / pack grapes for supermarkets. The workers normally wear gloves to protect themselves from the pesticides that are sprayed on the grapes. However, workers are required to supply their own gloves, so many do not, since they cannot afford the cost of the gloves. As a result, they suffer from a variety of rather nasty skin complaints.
Now I know that on the packaging of the bunches of grapes in the supermarket, it advises you to wash the grapes, but how may of us actually do ?
If I buy grapes in the supermarket, I usually eat a load between the checkout and the car and then they are stored in the fridge, to be used for snacking purposes, and very rarely get washed. So, I have started to wonder ….if the pesticides on the grapes attack the hands of the workers (and the article had some rather graphic pictures to illustrate the point), what on earth is the pesticide doing to my insides…………Bugger !   another food product that I have to stop buying    

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