Retailer bans suspect pesticides

The UK retailer and farming enterprise, the Co-op, has banned the use of 24 pesticides worldwide in crops it purchases because of rising consumer concerns about health and environmental impacts. As Britain's biggest farmer, the Co-op believes governments must start applying the 'precautionary principle' to existing and new pesticides and increase support for safer alternatives. David Buffin reports.

Serious consumer concerns about the safety of food grown using pesticides is fuelled by secrecy in the food and agrochemical industries. The Co-op predicts that unless action is taken these factors will conspire to derail consumer confidence and once again undermine the livelihoods of UK farmers. A new report from the Co-op addresses the problems of agrochemical use in intensive agriculture, and provides some sustainable solutions(1). 
    Retailers, like other stakeholders, are concerned about the high profile pesticide scares, crises like BSE and the foot and mouth epidemic. 
    Now the Co-op has announced that it will focus particularly on the organophosphate (OPs) nerve poisons and the environmentally persistent organochlorines that worry consumers. 
    There is concern that exposure to some of these chemicals may be implicated in serious long term health effects including declining sperm counts and increasing rates of testicular cancer and breast cancer.
OPs are the most widely used group of insecticides in the world. They are among the most acutely toxic of all pesticides to insects, vertebrate animals and humans. OPs are hazardous both to professional and amateur users, and are regularly detected in food items such as fruit and vegetables. The latest results from the UK government’s pesticide residue analysis show the safety limit (known as the acute reference dose) can be exceeded.

    Lindane has been singled out as a problematic organochlorine. It is known to act as a hormone disrupter (a chemical linked to effects such as birth defects, sexual abnormalities and reproductive failure). 
The Co-op’s new code of practice developed with suppliers bans 24 pesticides in fresh and frozen produce (see box). It includes organochlorines (such as lindane), and some OPs (including chlorfenvinphos and demeton-S-methyl). The Co-op intends to review its list on a regular basis. ‘We continue to have discussions with the various groups including farmers, suppliers and environmentalists. Where other pesticides are identified with concerns, we will consider either putting them onto a banned list, or put them on a “requiring approval list” until we have further evidence to support either use, or ban them,’ maintains Kevin Barker of the Co-op.
    Six of the pesticides that the Co-op has banned are still approved for use in the UK. So what was the response from the regulators to this unofficial ban? According to Kevin Barker: ‘The regulators have been very quiet and we have had very little or no feedback. We have raised a number of questions with the Advisory Committee on Pesticides (ACP) for which we are still awaiting a response. We will be seeking meetings with the UK regulator, the Pesticides Safety Directorate, and other officials to discuss our concerns and hopefully we will drive these issues forward.’ 
    The pesticide industry has on the other hand made its concerns known, adopting such headlines as: ‘Co-op ban is plain wrong’. Dr Anne Buckenham, Director of the Crop Protection Association (CPA), said: ‘The Co-op has done a disservice to the whole UK food chain which in recent years has done so much to ensure responsible pesticide use.’(2)
    The fact is that the CPA may have to get used to retailers imposing decisions on the pesticides suppliers. On 16 August another UK retailer, Marks and Spencer (M&S), said it was significantly expanding its list of prohibited pesticides to cover 79 chemicals. M&S will work with its suppliers to phase these out by January 2002. More details will be announced over the coming months.

Alternative options for farmers
How are farmers going to replace these banned pesticides? It is easy to talk about alternatives in theory, but difficult to deliver replacements in practice. The UK government is considering policies which could replace higher risk products with lower risk products where ever possible(3). Kevin Barker explained how the Co-op is looking for safer alternatives: ‘We will work with experts worldwide to develop crop/pest data sheets that try to pull together as much information as possible regarding preventative measures, particularly focusing on biological and cultural control as a first step.’ The Co-op will provide further details on chemical pesticides so that the user can make more informed decisions. Kevin Barker admits that there is nevertheless an information gap: ‘There needs to be a concerted effort by the whole of the industry to make readily available information for those that need to know. Nobody is supplying this data in an understandable format to the growers, the people that count.’ 

Conclusion
Environmental groups like Friends of the Earth have been quick to congratulate the Co-op on its stance. Retailers must support more research into safer alternatives, because of chronic under-funding in the past. The UK government will decide over the next few months whether to incorporate comparative assessment whereby less risky pest management is adopted. Pesticide regulators should move towards these measures by taking a more precautionary approach to pesticide safety and approval, as recommended by consumer and environmental public interest groups, and now increasingly by other stakeholders such as retailers.

1. Green and Pleasant Land, Co-op, UK, 2 July 2001.
2. Grape Vine, Crop Protection Association, UK, August 2001.
3. Consultation on Comparative Assessment, Pesticide Safety Directive, UK, 30 July 2001.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 53, September 2001, page 3]