Lindane ban across European Union

Campaigners are celebrating the European Commission’s decision to ban lindane in farming. John Harvey looks at the mixed reaction – from farmers and growers who fear they are running out of alternatives to protect some crops, to those who have fought for years to rid the world of lindane.

The European Member States have voted to ban the controversial insecticide lindane from farming across the European Union. After years of campaigning, pressure groups hailed the decision as a significant victory in their efforts to remove older and dangerous chemicals from the environment – the world-wide Pesticide Action Network first called for a ban on lindane back in 1985.
    But the National Farmers Union warned that the loss of lindane was part of a much larger reduction in chemical products which could leave farmers and growers unable to protect their crops.
    While in the past a ban could have meant the EU’s old lindane stocks ended up in Africa and elsewhere, the Rotterdam Convention, which already covers lindane, and requires importing countries to give their informed consent to such imports, should ensure that this will not happen. Nevertheless some developing country export crops, such as cocoa, still rely heavily on lindane.
    On 13 July, the EU’s Standing Committee on Plant Health voted for the ban with support from the UK and other Member States. The European Commission is expected to ratify the decision, which should come into effect within 12 to 18 months. The ban will cover all agricultural and gardening applications of lindane, that come under the EU’s Plant Protection Products Directive. The ban does not prevent its application in domestic products such as ant killer, because this use falls under the separate legislation known as the Biocides Directive.
    The UK Lindane Campaign Group – which includes Friends of the Earth, the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) UK, UNISON (the public service union), the Women’s Environmental Network, the Soil Association, Green Network and Breast UK – will now press the government to introduce a complete ban on lindane. 
    ‘We have been warning for many years that lindane should be banned,’ said David Buffin of PAN UK. ‘This insecticide was developed in the 1940s when cheap and relatively hazardous chemicals were considered acceptable. It should have no place in the 21st century.’ 
    Lindane has been described by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a possible human carcinogen and has been linked with breast cancer and birth defects. The Standing Committee’s vote followed a report written for the EU by the Austrian government in 1998 which concluded that there was no safe limit of exposure for lindane and recommended a Europe-wide ban. 
    ‘Lindane is a dangerous chemical that threatens human health and the environment,’ said Jill Day of UNISON. ‘We are delighted that the UK government has backed a Europe-wide ban. It now needs to move quickly to implement the ban and prevent its use in domestic products as well.’
    In June last year, the government announced measures to restrict the use of lindane. This followed a comprehensive review by the Advisory Committee on Pesticides (ACP) of all lindane products, including the Austrian report for the EU. Although the government measures prevented treating seed with lindane, other uses of the chemical – including handling treated seed on farms – were allowed to continue.

Alternatives to lindane – chemical v. non-chemical
In practice, it is unclear how the ban on lindane will affect agriculture and horticulture. The last pesticide usage survey run by the Central Science Laboratory (CSL) was in 1998, when lindane was still in use as a seed treatment for oilseed rape. CSL scientists say the biggest factor driving lindane use is the area sown to oilseed rape. In recent years, this area has gone up and down.
    The CSL will be looking at the arable crop for this season, and will then be able to measure the effect of last year’s Government ban on lindane as a seed treatment. Scientists on the ACP have been looking at an alternative to lindane for controlling flea beetle in rape seed, but more data is required to approve the most promising alternative product.
    Another use for lindane was to control wire-worms and leather-jackets when farmers ploughed up grassland to prepare for another crop. Older products which pre-dated lindane – such as aldrin and DDT – were persistent, so farmers did not have to use them as often. When these were banned, lindane was introduced as a less persistent replacement, consequently requiring more frequent applications.
    Before the EU ban comes into effect, approval for one of the most widely used lindane products will expire in the UK, and is unlikely to be renewed in the current climate. Zeneca’s Gammacol approval expires on 30 September, and Lindane Flowable follows on 31 March 2002. Another popular product which could be removed by the ban is Atlas Steward, which is sprayed on to the land and then incorporated into the soil.
    These are the big uses, but there are a lot of smaller ones. Farmers and growers have several ways of finding alternatives to lindane. One of the most obvious is to thumb through the British Crop Protection Council’s UK Pesticide Guide. The other is to subscribe to the CSL’s on-line LIAISON service which gives a thorough guide to all the pesticides and their alternatives in use. As the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, is trying to move most farmers on-line for all their payments under the common agricultural policy, the CSL says it is not far-fetched for them to link up to LIAISON as well. 
    However, Christopher Wise, the NFU’s pesticides adviser, says that in the UK most pesticide use results from recommendations made by a BASIS-qualified agronomist. Alastair Leake, project manager for research on organic farming and integrated farm management (IFM) at CWS Agriculture (the UK’s largest farming enteprise), turned to agronomists when its retail arm, the Co-Op, decided lindane should no longer be used. ‘That was because of consumer concerns,’ said Mr Leake. 
    IFM has been used by CWS Agriculture since 1992 in what Mr Leake calls Europe’s biggest farming experiment: about 80,000 acres are farmed at the moment. ‘I tried to look back over five years to identify when we had had to use lindane. It was a rather interesting conclusion: with the use of integrated farming techniques, in nearly every instance there was a cultural alternative to using lindane.’ 
    Most of CWS Agriculture’s lindane use was in crops following grassland. ‘So we suggested changing rotations and planting a crop after grass that was not susceptible to wire worm. Instead of sugar beet, for example, we would have grown a cereal, the pest population would have declined, and we could have used sugar beet later on in the rotation.’ On all the main crops – such as cereals and potatoes – the alternatives to pesticides such as lindane were non-chemical and involved rotations. For potatoes, for example, the Assured Produce protocols say rotations should involve growing the crop one year in six to prevent a build-up of nematode worms. 

The future for pesticides
The revocation of lindane highlights a problem for some farmers and growers – the lack of alternative chemicals for what are termed ‘minor uses’ for pests on certain fruit and vegetables. Often this is because chemical manufacturers increasingly develop chemicals for the most widely grown crops such as cereals and sugar beet where the market is larger and more profitable. Fewer chemicals are available for use on the smaller more specialist crops such as ornamentals and some fruit and vegetables: increasingly chemical manufacturers are finding it not worth their while to invest in chemicals for such small markets. 
    In addition, regulators are reviewing existing chemicals as part of the EU review programme, which aims to review these pesticides in use to make sure the data for each is up to date and sufficient to warrant its current safety and continued use. The review’s third phase listed 434 pesticides, giving companies until the end of May 2000 to notify the Commission that they wished to provide up to date data to support these pesticides – many of which are long established but highly toxic OPs. By the expiry of the deadline, companies were only supporting 191 (44%)(1) In theory, therefore, the remaining 243 pesticides will not be permitted for use in the EU after July 25 2003, allowing for the use of old stocks. 
    Two messages follow. One is that farmers will find it increasingly difficult to get appropriate chemicals to control pests in minor crops, and in many other crops if those chemicals now in use are withdrawn. The second message is that chemical pest control will be increasingly unsustainable as regulators, acting on behalf of society at large, decide that more and more chemicals are unsafe for continued use.

The future for farmers
How can farmers and growers earn sustainable livelihoods at the same time as reducing the external costs of agriculture? ‘The aim for agriculture is that it should not harm, and indeed should enhance, the environment. The majority of farmers are concerned to operate in an environmentally friendly way. The government wants to extend their opportunities to do so through its policies for agriculture.’(2)
    The withdrawal of lindane highlights the issues. Progressive farmers, as above, have anticipated the problem and have harnessed research to assist them. But the majority will need help to farm with reduced chemical usage and impact: two ways in which this can be done are currently being discussed.
    The first is ‘environmental cross-compliance’ – attaching environmental conditions to the receipt of agricultural support payments offered to farmers. The Agenda 2000 reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) agreed in March 1999 provide European Union Member States with new powers to attach appropriate environmental conditions to a range of CAP payments to farmers. The UK Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) commissioned the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) to undertake a study of how cross compliance under CAP might be achieved(3) under Article 3 of the new CAP Regulation 1259/1999.
    In the UK context, the report examines a range of measures that could relate to environmental benefits. The main recommendations are reinforcing particular regulations (especially groundwater), introducing a duty to observe Codes of Good Agricultural Practice, introducing a requirement to draw up specified farm plans within a specified time period, and establishing a wildlife margin around those fields subject to arable area payments. 
    Hand in hand with this study DETR is also consulting on a package of measures - initially proposed by the agrochemical industry in an attempt to avoid a pesticide tax - designed to reduce the environmental impacts of pesticides(4). As the consultation progresses, the common ground is increasing. Many measures are now seen by all to be necessary – more research on alternatives to pesticides, better information and advice for farmers are the most obvious. Such is the scale of change needed these are unlikely to be achieved without a measure of taxation and regulatory sanction. 
    But as more pesticides are withdrawn, the need for alternatives increases. This is now accepted by DETR, and farmers and all of us will reap the benefits when MAFF follows. 

Restricting hazardous trade
Traditionally, an EU ban on an old chemical such as lindane has provoked a mixed response from campaigners against pesticides because of fears that stocks will be dumped in Africa and other developing countries. In 1998, international concern about chemical dumping resulted in the signing of the Rotterdam Convention, which incorporates the principle of prior informed consent.
    ‘Not every country has ratified this agreement,’ said Barbara Dinham, PAN UK’s Programme Director. ‘It ensures that if a government bans a chemical, it has to notify developing countries the first time the banned product is shipped each year.’ In the EU, the process is being centralised so that if a member state bans a chemical, the Commission will do the notifying.
    There is a second part to the convention which allows a list of pesticides of international concern to be circulated. ‘If the pesticide is banned in two countries for health and environmental reasons, it should go on the list,’ said Ms Dinham. ‘This allows each country to say whether it will import the pesticide. Luckily, lindane is on that list.’

References
1. Only 44% of ais supported in third round of EU review, Agrow 365, June 30 2000.
2. A new direction for Agriculture, Agenda 2000 Consultation, MAFF, London 1999
3. Dwyer, D Baldock and S Einschütz, Cross-compliance under the Common Agricultural Policy: A report for the DETR, IEEP, London, February 2000.
4. The potential cost and effectiveness of voluntary measures in reducing the environmental impact of pesticides used in agriculture, Eftec Consultants, London, August 2000.

John Harvey is a writer and broadcaster on farming issues.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No.49, September 2000, p6]