The POPs pesticides are no longer legally used in North America, but they are used in other countries. Since POPs do not easily degrade and can travel thousands of miles, they can still be found in soil, lakes, rivers, fish, animals, and people long after they are used. Polluted Food Indigenous Peoples have special cultural and spiritual relationships to traditional foods that create increased consumption patterns compared to non-Indigenous populations. Unfortunately, the main way POPs enter our bodies is through food. POPs have been found in eagles, cormorants, ducks, geese, caribou, reindeer, raccoons, rabbits, quail, deer, moose, bison, turtles, crocodiles, sheep, cows, polar bears, seals, whales, and fish.
POPs accumulate in fat and their concentration increases at each step of the food chain.
For example, PCBs have been found to accumulate in the livers of sheep. In addition, dieldrin, a pesticide, accumulates in the wool of sheep that eat from contaminated land. Advisories prohibiting or discouraging the consumption of traditional foods affect Indigenous Peoples' right to practice our cultural and spiritual ways. Store-bought food does not solve the contamination problem, since it may also be contaminated. In many areas of our Indigenous territories, our communities are being told not to eat the contaminated fish and animals.