Second chemicals battle looms over pesticides

To those who followed the process of overhauling the EU chemicals approval procedure, a proposal to reform the authorisation of pesticides looks almost too familiar.

Almost all the arguments brought out to support or discredit REACH, the chemicals regulation agreed last December, can now be heard again as governments and lobby groups discuss proposed pesticides legislation. Environmentalists say that a thorough reform is needed, to keep dangerous chemicals out of the human body, and that politicians must not give in to industry pressure. The chemicals industry, together with many users of the chemical products, says that politicians risk destroying jobs and production by listening to unscientific environmental scaremongering.

But the ‘regulation for the authorisation of plant protection products’ is more than just REACH for farmers. The chemicals used to make pesticides will already have gone through a strict registration procedure under REACH, which is expected to take many products off the market in the next ten years for safety reasons. But conservation groups and the European Commission believe that pesticides need even tougher controls because, in the words of the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), "pesticides are designed to kill".

The plant protection regulation, which was published by the Commission last July, aims to reduce the use of pesticides in Europe. Under this proposal, pesticides would be banned in the EU if they contain chemicals suspected of causing cancer, mutations, or reproductive problems (carcinogens, mutagens and reproductive toxins - CMRs).

First reading is under way, with a vote in the European Parliament’s environment committee on 12 September. MEPs voted to go even further than the Commission, adding chemicals that are thought to interfere with the nervous or immune systems to the Commission’s blacklist. A vote in the Parliament’s plenary session is expected in October.

But farmers and pesticide producers say that the regulation would be counter-productive. "The proposal imagines farmers are using pesticides in a very heavy handed way," said Simon Michel-Berger of Copa-Cogeca, the European farmers’ association, "maybe that was true 20 years ago, but it is not now."

Today, said Michel-Berger, farmers want to keep the use of pesticides low, in response to consumer demand for environmentally-friendly crop production and low trace levels of chemicals in food. Farmers do not spray large amounts of generic pesticides across crops, he said, but blend targeted amounts of different chemicals to deal with specific problems.

Reducing the number of pesticide chemicals available for blending would, according to Copa-Cogeca, dramatically increase the chances of plants developing resistance to treatment and increase the amount of pesticide necessary to wipe out problems.

It would also encourage industry to concentrate on developing pesticides for large crops, such as maize, and neglect smaller vegetable crops. "This would just reduce our chances of growing the plants consumers want - healthy plants," said Michel-Berger. "Fewer plant control products mean fewer plants."

The European Crop Protection Association (ECPA), the pesticides manufacturers association, says that the industry is already dealing with the effects of earlier legislation to reduce the number of EU-authorised pesticides. It is expected to have reduced the number of available pesticides from about 11,000 in 1991, when the rules were agreed, to 300 by the end of next year.

These 300 will all have undergone a thorough risk assessment and the health risks of pesticides were widely exaggerated, said Euros Jones of ECPA.

"Alcohol is a carcinogen, mutagen and a reproductive toxin, but people drink it," he said. "Yet if alcohol was a pesticide we wouldn’t be allowed to use it for fear of traces ending up in food." Instead of introducing new bans, said Jones, the EU should focus on enforcing the existing risk and exposure-based approach to pesticide control.

ECPA and Copa-Cogeca both argue that the pesticides proposal, particularly as amended by the environment committee, would reduce crop production and push up the price of food.

Catherine Ganzleben of the EEB said that fears over crop yields and food prices were unfounded. "Denmark reduced its use of pesticides by 40% with no financial loss to farmers or consumers," she said. "And the EU already produces more food than it needs."

The EEB says that there is plenty of evidence linking pesticides to potential health problems. Ganzleben pointed to research from several member states linking pesticides with Parkinson’s disease.

EU rules on protective clothing for pesticide users are welcome, she added, but impossible to maintain in hot southern countries. If farmers were using pesticides in the low levels that they claim, she said, "we should not find excessive levels in surface-waters, like those seen in Germany".

To those who followed the process of overhauling the EU chemicals approval procedure, a proposal to reform the authorisation of pesticides looks almost too familiar.