PRESENCE OF INTERNATIONALLY BANNED PESTICIDES IN DOMESTIC PERUVIAN QUINOA DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The global showcase for the promotion of the Andean grain quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) resulted in a rapid increase in international demand, which has had a direct impact on Peruvian food safety. The excessive use of pesticides results in high levels of pesticide residues in food, causing both environmental and health problems in the population. The objective of this article was to analyze if residues of internationally banned pesticides were present in the quinoa consumed by Peruvians during the COVID-19 pandemic. Twenty-seven different brands of packed white quinoa (10 sold as organically certified and 17 sold as conventional) were purchased in various supermarkets and bio-shops across metropolitan Lima on January 26, 2021. The pesticide residues in the samples were determined in a laboratory. The study found that Peruvian quinoa not only contained residues of internationally banned pesticides, but also had levels that exceed the maximum residue limits (MRLs) established by the European Union. For consumer safety, it is important that the government make the proposed regulations regarding hazardous pesticides clear to the public. © This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International license.

Vacunagate: Was it possible to morally justify the Peruvian case?

This article studies the Vacunagate: a scandal during the early-2021 in Peru due to irregular in-oculation of the Sinopharm candidate vaccine against COVID-19 during its experimental stage. We analyze the morality of this case in order to elucidate the public discussion on the conduct and supervision of clinical trials within the context of a Pandemic. We evaluate whether two actions were morally justifiable: (1) the use of a vaccine outside of a clinical trial, and (2) prioritizing some groups in that unusual allocation. These groups are (i) research staff of the clinical trial, (ii) public health officials leading the fight against the Pandemic, (iii) human acquaintances of the first two groups, and (iv) others. As this article is on applied ethics, it follows its methodology: we define the moral, or philosophical, framework and its later applied to the case. The ethical framework for our analysis will be constituted by two kinds of moral princi-ples: democratic and utilitarians. First, we address two principles common to contemporary democ-racies: equal value for all human beings and the necessary public deliberation on issues of common interest. Second, without contradicting these democratic principles, we assess the actions under the application of utilitarian reasoning. Final-ly, based on the WHO MEURI Guide and the men-tioned ethical framework, we describe the missing conditions under which both actions could have been morally justified. © 2022, National University of San Marcos. Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences. All rights reserved.