The new EU Pesticides Authorisation Regulation will further reduce availability of pesticides, but voluntary measures would be applied first to tackle pesticide issues in water relating to the Water Framework Directive.

Some important active ingredients would be lost or see their use restricted as a result of the Pesticides Authorisation Regulation, which came into force in June, Ingrid den Hoed, senior herbicide specialist for the Chemicals Regulation Directorate, told attendees at the British Crop Production Council’s Annual Review of Weeds.

“The regulation has to be applied as it is written,” she explained. That meant UK regulators did not have any flexibility in how it could be applied. “So it will have the most impact on the future availability of pesticides.”

The new regulation, which changes the emphasis from evaluating pesticide active ingredients on their intrinsic properties rather than the risk they pose when used, will be applied to new actives as they are evaluated for authorisation, and to existing actives when they are evaluated for re-registration.

“That will start to hit from 2016 when most existing approvals under the previous directive start to expire,” said Ms den Hoed.

According to CRD analysis, up to 26 existing active substances could be vulnerable to not being re-approved under the new system. Eight of those were herbicides, including pendimethalin, linuron and ioxynil, she said.

In addition, a further 25 substances could be affected depending on how one potential hazard, endocrine disruption, was defined by the European Commission.

Derogations were possible in some circumstances to allow products to continue to be used, but most of the herbicides affected were unlikely to qualify, she added.

Many of the most serious impacts of potential product withdrawals would be through the lack of weed control in crops, Sarah Wynn of ADAS said.

In wheat, losing pendimethalin would reduce gross margins by 17% and cost the industry £150m a year, from trickier blackgrass control, an ADAS study had found.

But the most serious impacts were in minor crops. For example, the lack of annual meadowgrass control in onions and leeks could reduce margins by over 60%, she said.

It was an issue also picked up at a conference organised by 10 agri-food chain associations in Brussels last week, whose participants called for investment schemes to support minor uses and speciality crops and to improve the availability of pesticides in those crops.

“As encouraged by the commission itself, we call again on DG SANCO and other relevant directorates to come up with an effective EU Minor Use and Speciality Crops Programme,” said Luc Peeters, chairman of the phytosanitary group with COPA-COGECA, speaking on behalf of the organising associations.

That programme required a co-ordinating centre and should address better knowledge management and communication between authorities and the agri-food chain, as well as funding research, the conference agreed.

There also needed to be an EU database on products and uses authorised at member state level because there was currently little exchange of knowledge among member states, and greater use of mutual recognition of pesticides across countries, the delegates said.

Meeting the challenge

Pesticide availability