Use of Toxic Chemicals in Thai Food Still Widespread by Phairath Khampha 6 December 2002 Eating water chestnuts or salted fish in Thailand puts one's health at risk due to the heavy use of toxic chemicals, organic farming in Thailand activists warned on December 1, 2002. In Suphan Buri, the largest plantation area for water chestnuts, farmers use as much as 500 kilograms of toxic farming chemicals per rai (1 rai = 1,600 m2), 10 times more than normally used in rice fields, activist Jantana Hongsa said. "Moreover, after they peel the fruit they put it in a bleaching chemical, the one used for clothes [sodium hypochlorite]," she said at a national workshop of organic farmers. To make thousands of kilograms of salted fish per day, fishermen in Songkhla use formalin in the processing, said Kamrarb Phanthong of the Organic Farming Pilot Project, based in the South. In both cases, there is no proper monitoring to check the seriousness of the situation, Jantana added. Furthermore, she said, even when inspectors check, they are paid bribes in order to prepare favourable reports. Juthamas Jaikham of the Sustainable Agriculture Foundation said that despite growing environmental awareness, there was still heavy use of toxic chemicals in farming around the country. The usage had doubled between 1993 and 2003, from 25,482 tonnes in 1991 to 52,739 in 2000. "In the North, the contamination of vegetables and oranges with toxic chemicals is among our major concerns. In the Northeast, the problem is concentrated in areas where farmers are under contract to big multinational companies," Juthamas said. "The growing number of green [organic food] consumers is not strong enough to change the farmers' use of chemicals," Thassanee Weerakan, an organiser of Alternative Agriculture Network, told the Penguin Star. The green awareness was growing only among the middle class--especially highly-paid workers, teachers, hospital officials and activists--and even these people still tolerated an "unacceptable level" of contamination rather than insist on truly chemical-free or organic products, Thassanee said. Of all regions, farmers in the central region and the North were the heaviest users of chemicals in food production. Because they cannot afford it, farmers in the Northeast use lower levels of chemicals. Thassanee said the number of small-scale organic farmers was growing rapidly but not enough to change consumer behaviour. There are currently about 10,000 families nationwide practising organic farming, up from a few thousand families in 2000.