If we are going to live so intimately with these

chemicals—eating and drinking them, taking them into

the very marrow of our bones—we had better know

something about their nature and their power, wrote

environmentalist Rachel Carson in 1962 in her book

Silent Spring, which hauntingly described the damaging

effects of indiscriminate pesticide use in agriculture

on animals and people in the USA. 55 years later, a new

report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food

and the UN Special Rapporteur on toxics, presented to the

Human Rights Council on March 7, details the health and