All,

I'm Jason Glaser the president and co-founder of La Isla Foundation. If you look at the recommended links from the BBC, CPI, and PRI's the world you'll see we're the only recommended english language link as we are highly respected by each of those news organizations.

Strangely enough there is no recommended link to the PR offices of Grupo Pellas or their subsidiary Nicaraguan Sugar Estates Limited (NSEL). The Pellas Group has repeatedly misrepresented findings and outright lied through their PR department and has now taken this inane tact of posting on sites or emailing people as if they are the thoughts of a private citizen like our supposed friend here, Augustín Marenco. Unlike the fictional Mr. Marenco I'm a real person and you can easily contact me at  laislafoundation@gmail.com if you wish.

It befuddles me completely that Pellas and NSEL PR's dept could be so unsophisticated as to think this strategy works. When I went on a speaking tour they sent emails disparaging my work and name from another supposed concerned citizen. It only had the effect of me having a good laugh with the professors who asked me to speak at their institutions and gave us a blue print of what to investigate in the coming months regarding their claims.

What I'm going to do is answer each of their PR department's claims below in line. It's lengthy I know but people are entitled to hear the truth.






The opposite is true. The Pellas Group has a small area where they test bio controls, it's certainly not the majority of their cane production that is biologically controlled. About 6,000 hectare of their well over 40,000 of hectares are used as a lab for bio controls and I will commend them for even this effort. This company still uses 24D to dry and then burn cane while it is still in the fields. According to a hygiene report by Boston University the company also takes the labels off their pesticides in the company warehouse so workers do not know exactly what they're using. The company has often misquoted and changed the wording from this report and ignored the academic journal published studies that my organization has had a part in.

Further, most researchers do not believe the disease to be caused by pest controls in the first place. We're looking at work practices that create such excessive dehydration that kidneys are so repeatedly damaged that they eventually fail. The company has suspected the disease was linked to dehydration since 2001 but instead blamed it on everything from genetics to alcohol consumption and has taken inadequate steps to mitigate the risk. In fact some of their work practice changes may well be exacerbating and not helping the problem.



It's great that NSEL and Pellas are selling controls but as stated the issue here is likely not pesticides and the vast majority of their fields are still sprayed with chemicals. We know this as we are out in the communities affected nearly every day and speak regularly with workers. I suppose the PR department's next step will be to put some poor paid off worker online saying everything is fine.



Two weeks ago in other flak they were claiming they used no pesticides. They're simply liars. I don't really know how to put it any more directly or clearly. They wiggle and squirm when pressed and continually contradict themselves. This claim of 2-3% of their total area being spayed is simply absurd and seems to be up from the 0% claimed recently. Organic sugar cane production is only practiced by a few small holders and Grupo Pellas is not one of them. They run a massive corporate farm that produces sugar for the US, local and Canadian markets as well as biofuel for the EU market. They also make the rum Flor de Caña.



As we all know many chems still approved for use by the EPA are banned or heavily restricted by the EU. More importantly it's HOW you use the chem that is important as well. Many chems that are allowed for use by the EPA require a 24 hour period before workers can enter the field and have a condition that they not be used near populated areas. With communities immediately outside the cane fields and workers being sprayed by planes while at work or entering directly after a fumigation EPA guidelines are not being met. As noted it's impossible to know what the company is actually using as the labels have been removed from the barrels in the company's chemical warehouse. What they say they use and what they use are likely two different things.

Finally, as I stated, this focus on chems is simply a distraction tactic. No one on any of the investigative teams thinks the principal cause of this disease is due to chemicals presently. It is most likely due to workers simply being worked repeatedly to the point of dehydration and exhaustion and therefore damaging their kidneys repeatedly until a chronic and then terminal conditions develops.

The company will respond by saying that they provide proper hydration and gatorade like solutions now for workers. Well, I assure you that a packet of gatorade and the steps they've taken continue to be inadequate as sugar cane workers in the lowlands of central america continue to die at disproportionately high rates of chronic kidney disease.

While the company will point out that gold workers and some port workers also suffer from the disease the numbers of deaths are highest among industries that are too labor intensive for the environmental conditions and there are many times more cane workers than port or gold workers affected. This is why the focus now is on sugar cane work practices. I would think that allowing independently funded researchers onto company property to carry out the necessary tests would be a better use of time and resources than searching the web for news sites to flak. Thank you to Biofuel Watch:  http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/ for alerting me of this most recent waste of everyone's time.



If you read the BU hygiene report which can be found on the CAO website here: http://www.cao-ombudsman.org/cases/document-links/documents/FINALIHReport-AUG302010-ENGLISH.pdf you'll see that the respirators, the most important part of the gear for a worker using pesticides, were not the proper type to protect workers from chemicals. Important to know is that the company will often misquote and actually reword quotes from this report to distance themselves from responsibility.

While this report is not publishable in a journal and made severe mistakes; like talking to workers who were on the job to garner information, it does show that worker protection from pesticides was inadequate. We also have workers consistently complain that their protective gear wears out about halfway through the harvest and is not repaired.

Of note is that all unions at NSEL are considered to be yellow (company infiltrated) by workers. When independent unions have tried to form we've documented that company security and paid off local police have harassed the union leadership into capitulation by threatening them and their families. For those that would not bow down they finally paid them off to silence them.

Currently, La Isla Foundation has begun to secure significant independent funding to look into the actual cause of the disease by testing an exciting new theory and hypothesis that is already being validated in lab work. Our team includes the very best local and international experts from great institutions like Karolinska, Sinai, Colorado University, PAHO, SALTRA and more. It consists of a coalition dedicated to finding the cause of this disease. For more info, write me at  laislafoundation@gmail.com

As far as work practices: This photo by our volunteer and board member Anna Maria Berry-Jester shows a child well under the required age of 18 in Nicaragua for cane work out in the fields working for his sick father. On top of all their other issues this company clearly engages in the subcontracting of child laborers.