MPs thrash out details of pesticides Regulation
The House of Commons’ All Party Science and Technology Group will meet tomorrow evening (October 28) to discuss the impact of proposed changes to EU pesticides legislation on the UK food industry.
MPs at the meeting will hear from representatives of Cranfield University and the Crop Protection Association (CPA), which is calling for politicians to freeze imminent changes to EU pesticides legislation until an impact assessment is conducted.
If the proposals are adopted as they stand, a large percentage of the crop protection materials used in agriculture today could be banned, with potentially devastating impacts on crop yields and food prices, claimed the CPA. However, there was some light at the end of the tunnel, said CPA chief executive Dominic Dyer.
MEPs have initially voted to ban the use of pesticides that triggered any of the three criteria (persistence, bio-accumulation and long-distance environmental transfer) for an active ingredient to be termed a “persistent organic pollutant” (POP). That was at the European Parliament’s first reading of the controversial Regulation.
However, German MEP Hiltrud Breyer - lead rapporteur for the legislation on the Parliament’s environment committee - has proposed that substances should only be blacklisted if they triggered all three criteria described above.
This could save as many as 35 active ingredients named by the UK’s Pesticides Safety Directorate as potential substances that would be removed under the Parliament’s original proposal.
Breyer has also indicated a willingness to take a more practical approach to keeping on some substances where safer alternatives did not exist for a limited period - rather than immediately banning them.
Another option the CPA might consider if it cannot prevent the proposal from moving forward is pushing for the inclusion of a ‘safeguard clause’, said Dyer. This would mean that politicians would approve the legislation on the understanding that it would not be implemented for 18 months. If during that period an impact assessment was completed, and this showed that the propsal would indeed have a devastating impact on crop yields and food prices, it could be stopped in its tracks, said Dyer. “We have seen these kind of things work before. The important thing is that a proper impact assessment is done and that is open to public scrutiny, and then a decision is made - when we have the full facts.”
John Peck, technical director, northern Europe, at crop protection giant BASF, added: “In the next 40 years we will need to at least double output from our agricultural land and reduce our environmental impact. That’s one hell of a challenge.”
In such a climate, dramatically reducing the number of crop protection materials available to farmers could lead the food industry into a ’perfect storm’, he predicted. “The EC doesn’t know what these proposals will mean ultimately, in terms of our ability to produce food. What a risk to take.”
A lot of behind the scenes lobbying was going on in Brussels to persuade some politicians to appreciate the potential scale of the problem for crop yields if the legislation were approved, he said. But discussions were now at a critical stage, he said. “We really are now at the eleventh hour now. Once these things go through, it takes a very long time to take them back again.”
