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Last Updated: Mar 27th, 2005 - 22:26:12 |
IMMOKALEE - The president of one of Florida's largest produce companies has offered to help migrant workers whose children were recently born with severe birth defects stay in the area while health officials investigate the cause of the defects, officials said.
Don Long, president of Plant City-based Ag-Mart Produce Inc., met with the parents Friday at a church in Immokalee.
''The company offered to help the fathers find work here in town after the current tomato work ends, so they won't have to follow the harvest the way they usually do,'' said Sanaida Martinez, of the Redlands Christian Migrant Association, a social services organization that helps farmworkers.
One baby was born without arms or legs, and another with a partially formed jaw. A girl without a nose and no visible sexual organs died days after birth.
Collier County health officials are trying to determine whether pesticides caused the defects, or if they are the result of genetics or other reasons.
The mothers gave birth within the last four months. They said they lived within 200 feet of one another at the same labor camp when they became pregnant. A sign at the field said more than two dozen pesticides and herbicides were used there. The women worked into their pregnancies at other fields that used the same chemicals.
Long also spoke about helping the families straighten out their immigration status, Martinez said.
The two surviving children are U.S. citizens, but their parents are undocumented Mexican nationals.
Between 1999 and 2003, Ag-Mart was cited three times by state inspectors for violations of pesticide regulations at other fields.
The violations involved failure to keep workers out of fields for a sufficient time after chemicals have been used, failure to provide proper protective equipment and failure to keep proper records of pesticide and herbicide use.
Long has said those infractions were resolved.
Ag-Mart produces the Santa Sweets brand.
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