Greens hit out at Union pesticide rules

By Karen Carstens

Date: 26/02/04

ENVIRONMENTALISTS claim that new European Union rules intended to harmonize the allowable levels of pesticides used on crops will force some member states to accept thresholds that are higher than those they currently have in place.

"In terms of food safety and food quality, the situation can only get worse," warned Katrin Sedy, a biologist focusing on pesticides for Vienna-based Global 2000, the Austria-based arm of worldwide green group, Friends of the Earth.

A proposed regulation on pesticides is now under discussion in the European Parliament, with the environment committee due to vote on it by mid-March and a full plenary vote planned before the European elections on 10-13 June.

UK Conservative MEP Robert Sturdy is rapporteur for a proposed regulation that would set so-called maximum residual levels (MRLs) for plants and animal products. Sedy and other activists claim Sturdy is towing the "good agricultural practice" line, commonly used by herbicide companies to promote conventional over organic farming methods, too much.

Under the new EU-wide rules, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) would be tasked with evaluating every pesticide allowed in the EU. An interim period of around one to two years would see maximum levels set at a certain mark for each permitted pesticide.

"We're afraid they will stay at these levels," Sedy said, despite the fact that the regulation foresees a re-evaluation of all pesticides by EFSA in 2008.

Producers of modern 'crop protection' substances claim they are far more sophisticated - and less dangerous - than the pesticides of yesteryear (for example, the potentially deadly DDT, which is still used in parts of the developing world but is banned across North America and Europe).

Bernard Graciet, head of public affairs for Swiss agrochemicals' and biotech giant Syngenta, has argued that it "has been so easy to assume that it is impossible to bridge the divide between efficient and safe food production and food quality".

"Many companies, at many stages of the food chain, have been striving to meet that goal for many years, over the past 50 years, a very positive relationship has been created between food safety, food quality and food efficiency."

Graciet wants to set the record straight on the sector's "single most important role", which is to provide "an adequate, affordable, food supply".

"Food quality must also incorporate the concept of safety," he says.

"The [European] Commission has repeatedly, rightly acknowledged that the food we eat today has never been safer."

But Sedy argues that the potentially harmful health effects of today's pesticides remain largely unstudied: "There is so much we don't know about the long-term effects, there is so much that has not really been tested."

More urgent, however, was that the current hotchpotch of rules on pesticides in the member states - while not an ideal situation - could be replaced by harmonized allowable thresholds that raise the bar for how much farmers can spray and "will only serve to disappoint the consumer in the end", she added.

The European Parliament's Environment Committee is due to vote in mid-March 2004 on a proposed regulation on pesticides that would set maximum residual levels (MRLs) for plants and animal products. Environmentalists claim the proposals will force some Member States to accept thresholds for allowable use of pesticides that are higher than those they currently have.