PAN UK - Pesticides in UK Agriculture

Pesticides are highly regulated in the UK – there is a government agency dedicated to pesticide safety (Pesticide Safety Directorate). There is a wealth of information on their website about government policy on pesticides and about how pesticides are regulated.

Why does PAN UK challenge both regulation and policy?
We believe that market forces drive farmers and growers to use pesticides to maximise their profits. This is entirely understandable and we fully support the need for an economically sustainable agriculture industry in the UK. Market forces, unfortunately, do not encourage environmentally and socially sustainable practices and therefore we believe that regulations and policies have to be developed to tip the balance towards fully sustainable agriculture, where social and environmental impacts are given equal weight with economics.

Some of the changes that we believe would help deliver sustainable food production are:

A national pesticide use reduction strategy
Free advisory service for farmers on alternative pest control techniques and pesticide use reduction;
Elimination of the most hazardous pesticides;
Financial incentives for reducing pesticide use and for using alternative pest management techniques plus financial penalties for using the most risky pesticides

Two new draft EU directives contain some very positive proposals for reducing the risks of pesticides and reducing our dependence on chemical pest control. These will be heavily contested by the powerful agrochemical industry, dominated by six huge multinationals (UK sales in 2005 were over £400 million). The industry employs multiple lobbyists, and as a small organization PAN UK has to work hard and intelligently, and with public support, to counter their influence.

The government currently favours voluntary measures to tackle the adverse impacts of pesticides. This inevitably means that responsible farmers, who put resources into protecting their neighbours and the environment, are at a disadvantage compared with those who choose not to. We believe legislation is necessary to ensure that all farmers implement measures for reducing adverse pesticide impacts.

Quantity of regulation does not necessarily mean quality. We recognise that there is a strict process that does not allow pesticides onto the UK market which don’t meet defined criteria, but we believe that those criteria are not sufficient to ensure people’s health and the environment aren’t damaged.

Estimates of exposure don’t take account of worst case scenarios, and are sometimes underestimated
Some chronic health effects of pesticides are not likely to be identified in the standard toxicity tests undertaken by manufacturers
The effect of multiple pesticides on health and the environment is unknown
Surveillance of the health impacts of pesticides is so poor that we would not expect to be able to identify any unforeseen problem