Many of Mark Redman’s comments are
well considered, but he has been hasty on some of his judgements
and possibly in his enthusiasm he wants Rome built in a day! None of the
supermarkets participating in the Partnership (CWS Ltd, Somerfield, J
Sainsbury, Safeway, Marks and Spencer and Waitrose) are seeking to score
points off each other but they generally aim to lift confidence in the
UK’s production methods for fresh produce. There is no intention by
the Partnership at present to 'kite mark' produce as ICM.
Regretfully the Partnership does not have total support because Tesco is
following a path of its own with Nature’s Choice.
Mark Redman believes the ICM protocols are poorly
defined and do not include a set of universal production standards. I
believed the level of uniformity and certainly the universality of
approach was reasonably well defined. He also says there is no set of
universal production standards, I would challenge him to produce such a
set that holds up to scrutiny and that can be implemented in the field
for 26 crops. He states practices vary between glasshouse and field
crops. Why shouldn’t they?
He also states that the protocols contain no detailed
information for reducing pesticide use. The introduction to the
protocols points out that we are not able at his moment to justify
prescription of a specific pesticide, but in an attempt to minimise
pesticides use the protocols seek to encourage the use of thresholds,
with high levels of crop monitoring, the use of modern diagnostic
equipment, rotations and other techniques.
In a further point, he feels a large number of
environmentally disruptive and potentially toxic pesticides are
permitted. As the protocol preface states, the Partnership defers to the
Advisory Committee on Pesticides, which advises government ministers on
such matters‑ for we are not toxicologists or privy to all the
data. Although it remains on our agenda to provide more guidance on
which products are more compatible with ICM, we have decided to complete
our programme on verification of compliance first.
The Partnership would also like to see far more
development work and technology transfer. Techniques being researched at
centres like the Horticultural Research Institute will lead to
reductions in pesticide use, but with government cutbacks, this work has
gone into a serious decline. This was one of the major thrusts of the
NFU in the recent Pesticide Minimisation Policy Conference (see PN30
p.14).
Mark Redman also says that the protocols represent no
improvement in pesticide use other than reinforcing the compliance with
current statutory legislation. He does not applaud the fact that we have
started to get the ICM ball rolling and now that we have standards we
can lift them. As soon as we have verification of compliance systems in
place, we should be able confidently to show that fresh produce,
produced to ICM standards, can be purveyed to the supermarket shelves.
This is our end objective.
Christoper Wise is Crop Science
Adviser at the NFU, 164 Shaftesbury Avenue, London WC2H 8HL.
[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 31,March 1996, page 16]