Pesticide industry rejects spray ‘blacklist’
The crop protection industry has dismissed claims that the EU Commission already has a “blacklist” of active substances which will be banned, starting in 2009.
British Crop Production Council chairman, Colin Ruscoe, insisted that the new pesticide approvals regulation contained no such list, but merely the requirement for products to be evaluated using new assessment criteria.
“Whether these substances will be withdrawn depends entirely on this further evaluation, which will only just be starting in 2009,” he said.
The European Crop Protection Association agreed, insisting that “it is not possible at this stage to pre-empt future evaluations because several of the criteria mentioned in the new legislation are not yet clearly defined”.
The claims about a blacklist have been made by German Green MEP Hiltrud Breyer, who guided the legislation through the European parliament. Its vote last November sanctioned a new approvals process, based on an active ingredient’s potential hazard rather than its actual risk.
But the crop protection industry says talk of an alleged blacklist of 22 active substances will only lead to confusion.
“The problem we face is that this list will be widely publicised and people will be misled,” said Dr Ruscoe. “Agrochemical stockists will be reluctant to supply the products, believing that there are safety issues. Food retailers may put them on their list of products not to be used by their suppliers. And farmers and growers will not want to use them if it could affect the supply of their produce.”
The new legislation is due to be rubber stamped by EU farm ministers in the spring and it is expected that the UK, Ireland, Spain and Hungary will oppose it on the basis that it will seriously affect agricultural production and so increase food prices.
But they will not have enough votes to overthrow it and the legislation, which will take effect in 2010, is expected to go through without debate.
- The pesticide approvals regulation was the subject of a big Farmers Weekly campaign in 2008 – our SOS campaign.
