More Unemployment

The close of the North American market related to the melon industry in the country represents a heavy blow to the productive sector, financial sector and manual labourers, who try to quickly find a solution to minimize the damage which cannot be avoided, as it is already done.

Since the first moment the decision by the FDA (U.S. Food And Drug Administration) was made known, a hectic activity started in order to try and contain everything that was coming, for the effect would spread like a ripple across water. Unemployment, which will hopefully be temporary, is the immediate consequence of the FDA's decision. Hundreds or thousands of people employed in the cultivation, processing and packaging of the fruit have joined the already abundant ranks of the unemployed.

To them we must also add the transporters, activities in the harbor, the manufacturers of cardboard boxes and other services that make the journey possible until the fruit reaches the last consumer.

The subject has grave repercussions, for the investments already made in the sowing of the new crop will be lost if a favorable solution for the Honduran fruit is not found within a short space of time. In a country like Honduras, so lacking in employment opportunities, these setbacks contribute to a rise in poverty, and to drown ourselves further in underdevelopment, more evident in the rural sector, where people survive from farming work.

The blow brings further pain, for the agricultural production remains the dogsbody of governmental initiatives focused on the last administrations towards the industrial bonded assembly plant production with an eye on exportation. The investment in the farm land, scarce due to the risk it brings and for the fragile judicial security, is of the private sector, who still resent the grave consequences of Hurricane Mitch.

The journey to Washington the ministers of Agriculture, Commerce and Health will make, will add the measure of governmental worry to move closer towards the government organizations of the American Union and manage to rectify the decision adopted after, according to the FDA, some 50 North Americans have become ill in 16 states and 9 in Canada after eating Honduran melons. However, after random testing on the fruits, no traces of salmonella contamination have been found.

There are many questions that demand answers and explanations. The presentation through the international media, of officials eating melons does not impress the international market, for the consumers as well as the supermarkets are highly delicate and particular when it comes to questions of health. An alert is enough, let us not speak of it as a ban, to frighten off buyers.

The Free Market Treaty in the United States provides instruments and instances which find themselves dormant, and cannot be used because their integration has not been formalized. We know full well that the conditions involving sanitation within the document are a highly delicate weapon, and unfortunately, are always unfavorable to the most frail, as is our situation.

The solution to try to contain the alluded to “commercial war” as many agricultural industrial sectors have referred to it as, requires technical methods such as opening nurseries to demonstrate the process of protection and manipulation of the fruit and also demand political nearing to the governmental organization of the northern country. Via both paths, and not feeding the fire, the problem must be solved so the U.S. Authorities can lift the investment ban on the melon of said market, and hopefully make it soon.