By Nick Mole, Policy Officer, PAN UK On 5th February 2020, the European Auditors Office published a special report titled, “Sustainable use of plant protection products: limited progress in measuring and reducing risks”. The report criticised EU Member States and the Commission for poor implementation of various pieces of pesticide-related [...]
By Rina Guadagnini, Project Officer, PAN UK PAN UK was recently able, for the first time, to bring together our partners currently working on sustainable cotton projects in Benin (OPEPAB) and Ethiopia (PAN Ethiopia) as we travelled to Nagpur in India to attend the Organic Cotton Summit 2019. For some [...]
Sustainable Cotton Ranking 2020 Published by PAN UK, Solidaridad and WWF, the Sustainable Cotton Ranking 2020 reveals significant progress by big brands toward more sustainable cotton. But also that the divide is growing between companies that take their responsibilities seriously and the many companies that do not. Adidas has surged ahead, [...]
by Josie Cohen, Head of Policy & Campaigns, PAN UK I joined PAN UK in June 2017 to help ensure that UK pesticide standards didn’t drop as a result of Brexit. There was a flurry of activity at the time and, over the next 18 months, we were kept [...]
But there's still a long way to go... By Hannah Conway, Assistant Campaigner, PAN UK In November 2019, we launched a campaign calling on UK supermarkets to do more to protect human health and the environment from pesticides used in their global supply chains. Our top recommendation to all supermarkets [...]
A new report from Pesticide Action Network Europe (PAN Europe) has found that EU officials have approved the use of a number of pesticides (typically giving them a 10-year license) without testing their impact on the human hormonal system. The EU has approved over 100 pesticides since June 2011. PAN [...]
Today, PAN UK signed the following letter in support of Dr Bülent Şık, calling for his acquittal and the right to freedom of speech in his endeavour to protect and promote public health: We are deeply concerned about the prosecution of Dr Bülent Şık for releasing his research findings on [...]
On Friday, 20th September, we will be closing our Brighton office to join the global strike for climate and biodiversity. Industrial agriculture is a key driver of climate change for a number of reasons. Land that has been deforested and converted to crop production reduces the availability of diverse, carbon-sequestering ecosystems. [...]
By Paul Lievens, Communications & Policy Officer, Banana Link "Twenty or thirty years ago, people who are growing organic – they are crazy people! To grow organic is to think different. About the workers, about the social aspects also. To work with the communities. Also, to work with the [...]
By Deborah Lewis, SumOfUs Paul François and SumofUs activists at the Bayer-Monsanto AGM Every spring, in Germany’s former capital city Bonn, Bayer-Monsanto’s top executives, shareholders and CEO meet for the chemical giant's annual general meeting (AGM). Ultimately, this is the corporation's most important meeting of the year as [...]
by Stephanie Williamson, Staff Scientist, PAN UK Launched in July 2019, the latest report from the convenors of the RSA’s Food, Farming & Countryside Commission, entitled Our Future in the Land, could have been yet another worthy, dull and hard to digest report of interest mainly to policy nerds and [...]
By Nick Mole, Policy Officer, PAN UK 2019 is proving to be an amazing year for our Pesticide-Free Towns campaign, as an ever growing number of councils adopt policies that will bring an end to the use of potentially harmful pesticides in the parks and playgrounds, streets and schools where [...]
by Josie Cohen, Head of Policy & Campaigns, PAN UK PAN UK has been campaigning to promote Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as an effective way to reduce pesticide use for decades. We were delighted, therefore, when the government’s 25 Year Environment Plan committed to making IPM ‘central’ to the UK’s [...]
We were delighted to be featured on Countryfile this week talking about the support British farmers need to move away from pesticides. PAN UK has been working to reduce pesticide-related harms in the UK for more than three decades and it’s great to see this agenda getting more attention. For [...]
by Koen Hertoge, PAN Europe and Peter Clausing, PAN Germany Agricultural pesticide drift contaminates children's playgrounds - Image: Shutterstock Fruit and wine production is among the agricultural sectors with the highest pesticide applications. Yet, the extent to which such public places are affected by pesticide drift from agricultural [...]
by Michel Pimbert, Professor of Agroecology and Food Politics at Coventry University Pesticide companies are caught up in a fierce competition for survival. In the current context of global mergers and restructurings, transnational corporations need to continuously increase their sales of synthetic pesticides in every possible corner of the [...]
The Conference of the Parties (COP) to the three key international chemical conventions (the Basel Convention, the Rotterdam Convention and Stockholm Convention) is being held this May in Geneva. The theme of the meetings is "Clean Planet, Healthy People: Sound Management of Chemicals and Waste". This is an important event [...]
Brighton & Hove Environment Hustings 2019 Thursday 18th April saw council election candidates from the four main political parties take part in Brighton & Hove’s Environment Hustings, ahead of local elections on 2nd May. Organised jointly by PAN UK and the Brighthelm Centre, the ‘hustings’ - an event during an election [...]
by Sam Watson Jones, co-founder of Small Robot Company and fourth generation Shropshire farmer 'Harry' prototype robot with Sam Watson Jones, co-founder of Small Robot Company, Andrew Hoad, Partner & Head of the Leckford Estate, and Joe Allnutt, Head of Robot Awesomeness (credit Geoff Pugh) We’re living on [...]
Today, we are announcing our formal resignation from the Pesticides Forum and Voluntary Initiative. These bodies were formed by government and industry to reduce environmental harms from pesticides. However, in the two decades since they were created, the area of land in the UK treated with pesticides has risen by [...]
