A hazardous link – OPs and intensive poultry production

In 1998, eight sheep died in a poisoning incident in Kent, after an organophosphate (OP) insecticide was used to treat chicken sheds nearby. Alison Craig warns of OP use behind closed doors.

At an estimated 25,000 sites around the UK broiler chickens and eggs are being intensively produced indoors. The health of people living nearby is at risk from organophosphate insecticide spray-drift from these buildings, and the rest of us could be eating OP-contaminated meat from animals which have grazed near them.
    On the weekend of 29 November 1998, neighbours saw operatives at Grampian Country Food’s Beeches Chicken Farm at Knockholt in Kent, disinfecting the sheds, or so it appeared. The familiar smell was strong and pervasive, and people along adjacent Burlings Lane could taste a chemical. Neighbours saw a cloud of vapour from the sheds drifting across the adjacent field where 12 sheep were grazing.
    Next morning, farmer Tony Taylor, found four of his 12 sheep dead.
    Villagers called in the Environmental Health Department whose officers arrived promptly. Tony Taylor showed them the dead sheep, and they looked around the chicken farm, where operatives said that only disinfectant had been used. Several days later, Tony Taylor found out that Antec EC Kill, an organophosphate insecticide containing fenitro-thion, had also been used.
    Fenitrothion is a broad spectrum, contact OP insecticide, licensed by the HSE for use in grain storage areas and in livestock houses. According to the safety data sheet issued by the marketing company Antec, 18 precautions must be taken when handling the chemical. It is harmful when swallowed or in contact with the skin. It is an eye irritant. It is harmful to livestock. Unprotected people and animals must not enter treated areas for 48 hours.
    Over the next three weeks, eight of Tony Taylor’s sheep died and two dogs became ill, suffering apparent kidney failure, after walking on the public footpath next to the field.
    Tony Taylor’s vet made a preliminary diagnosis of OP poisoning of the sheep. Taylor rang the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) Reigate office, to be told by the Chief Divisional Veterinary Officer that MAFF would only investigate diseased sheep, not poisoned ones. Rosemary Tubb, Mr Taylor’s partner, says “MAFF didn’t want to know until I rang the local paper. Then they couldn’t get there fast enough.”
    It was not until the arrival of Nick Giles of the Veterinary Investigation Centre, an executive agency of MAFF, that a restriction order was placed on Mr Taylor, preventing him selling any of the affected sheep. Nick Giles found that, even after ten days, plasma cholinesterase depression (an indication of OP poisoning) in six sheep was 26% below the control group. “These findings support the provisional diagnosis of poisoning due to OP compounds, and the incident will be reported to MAFF for investigation of the use/abuse of agrochemicals,” he said. But MAFF subsequently claimed that the tests were ‘inconclusive’.
    After much prompting from Edward Leslie, then Councillor on Sevenoaks District Council, Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspector Ian Taylor from the regional office in Ashford visited the site on 15 December. He noted that the building had not been sealed, as the label instructions advised, during or after the spraying, but was satisfied that the operation had been carried out in accordance with the conditions of the pesticide approval. After ascertaining from Tony Taylor and others that they had not become ill, he concluded his investigation.
    HSE’s Ian Taylor concurs with the company’s view that the sheep must have entered the farm compound and eaten chicken feed “which has high levels of copper in it”. However, according to Nick Giles, whom the HSE has never contacted, ingestion of copper produces distinctive symptoms which are easily diagnosed.
    Grampian Country Foods has declined to admit liability or to compensate the farmer, and Marketing Manager Alasdair Cox reassured local people that EC Kill is ‘widely used in agriculture’. Grampian did, however, pay for the sheep post mortem; they also sacked the spray contractors at Beeches Farm and changed the product for a subsequent spraying.

Regulators get arithmetic wrong
Manufacturers Antec carried out their own tests on samples of soil, foliage and fleece from the site. Their conclusion—that the spraying could not have been a hazard to sheep nearby—has been accepted by the HSE, MAFF, Pesticides Safety Directorate (PSD), and Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR).
Antec and the HSE claim that a 30 kg sheep would have to ingest 45 litres of EC Kill to receive a lethal dose, and that the contractors only used 10 litres. This calculation is incorrect by a factor of a thousand, as confirmed in correspondence by Chris Livesey, Head of Toxicology at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency. There was more than enough EC kill to kill Mr Taylor’s sheep.

How widespread is the problem?
How widely fenitrothion or other OP products, are being used in the intensive poultry industry is not known: neither the British Egg Industry Council (BEIC) nor the British Poultry Meat Federation keep figures, and the flagship marketing initiative Lion Brand makes no reference at all to their use in its production standards.
BEIC spokesman and director of Daylay, Andrew Joret, says: “Insecticides are necessary when the birds are in situ for 12 or 13 months, as in the case of battery hens. It is a big problem for producers that fewer and fewer of these products can legally be used.”
Even expert consultants to this secretive industry are unaware of the extent of the practice. ADAS poultry specialist Barbara Bell deals regularly with all the big poultry producers. She maintains that insecticidal sprays are not used in rearing sheds (such as Beeches Farm) or broiler sheds. “It is very unusual to use them before the laying stage,” she says.

Ramifications of the case
This case has been referred in vain to numerous government ministers, including Nick Brown, Jeff Rooker and Elliot Morley at MAFF and John Prescott at DETR.
Tony Taylor and Sevenoaks District Council experienced enormous difficulties in locating the correct regulatory agency to deal with the incident. The government should appoint one agency, where ‘the buck stops’, to investigate all aspects of this sort of poisoning incident. This agency should:

monitor and assess health ill-effects among those exposed and local residents
monitor the extent of other cattle, sheep and other livestock grazing in fields adjacent to sites where OPs are being used, and measure their blood cholinesterase levels.

Farmers Tony Taylor and Rosemary Tubb have lost sheep to the value of £1,500 through no fault of their own. The scientific and circumstantial evidence of the cause of their death is strong, but even so, legal action would be risky and costly. How should companies be held accountable in these cases?
The new Food Standards Agency will not be responsible for pesticides safety, which will remain with PSD. PSD referred this case to the HSE. Although DETR has said the HSE will monitor the site, the local HSE office does not have the resources to do so. People and farm animals have not been protected from lethal spray-drift? And who protects us if regulators are not correctly calculating the safe dose?

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No.45, September 2000, page 7]