DEFRA'sbid to overturn a landmark legal caseon the use of pesticides hangs in the balance after appeal
court judges failed to reach a decision at the end of a four-day
hearing.
The judges will decide in the coming weeks whether to uphold a
High Court ruling made last autumn that said government policy
did not protect rural residents from exposure to pesticides.
The case was then brought in November 2008 by environmental
campaigner Georgina Downs who claimed she had suffered ill health
because of pesticide exposure.
High Court judge, Mr Justice Collins, ruled that DEFRA was not
doing enough to assess the potential for harmful effects on human
health before authorising new pesticides for use on UK farms.
But this week DEFRA fought to have the decision reversed.
During the hearing DEFRA QC Robert Jay underlined the case's
importance to the arable farming industry.
Mr Jay said that if Miss Downs ultimately won her case
government pesticide policy would be fundamentally undermined and
might even grind to a halt.
He told the court that there was no solid evidence of a link
between crop spraying and damage to human health and fears that
there may be, were simply anecdotal.
And he described Miss Downs' challenge as generic for not
picking out any individual pesticide for criticism.
DEFRA's all-but insurmountable practical difficulties were
increased by Mr Justice Collins' failure to give any steer on what
needed to be done to comply with the law, Mr Jay added.
The methods DEFRA used for assessing the safety of pesticides
were the most protective available in line with current scientific
knowledge and, by his ruling, the judge had effectively
second-guessed the experts, he concluded.
However, Michael Fordham QC, for Miss Downs, said one of the
most fundamental flaws in DEFRA's risk assessment policy is that it
is targeted at the health impact on farmers and other pesticide
users, rather than rural residents or bystanders.
He said that EU law demanded that approval should not be given
to any pesticide that might harm human health.
EU law, he said, was designed to give individuals absolute
protection against potentially damaging pesticides, but that had
been unlawfully watered down by DEFRA.