Requirement for Pesticide Warnings in Fields Killed

SACRAMENTO — A Legislative committee Tuesday scuttled a bill intended to protect farm workers from accidental exposure to dangerous pesticides, voting instead to punish growers who knowingly send workers into contaminated fields.

After the vote, Sen. Nicholas Petris (D-Oakland), the bill’s author, charged that the action still will leave farm workers unprotected since they will have no way of knowing whether a field is contaminated before entering it.

The original bill, previously approved by the Senate over opposition by farming interests and the state Department of Food and Agriculture, would have required growers to post warning signs on their fields whenever pesticide use makes it dangerous to work there for 24 hours or longer. Existing law requires the warnings only if chemical use leaves fields contaminated for at least seven days.

Rural Democrats on the Assembly Agriculture Committee, arguing that there is no evidence that warning signs prevent pesticide poisoning, rammed through the amendment on an 8-4 vote that, in effect, stripped the bill of its contents and substituted new criminal penalties against negligent farmers.

In essence, the changes would make it a felony for growers to force farm workers to enter fields that they know to have dangerous levels of pesticide contamination.

“This will be a very heavy hammer,” said Assemblyman Bruce Bronzan (D-Fresno), who drafted the amendment.