Editorial: Sore Losers
Environmental affairs are a lot like love affairs. There’s a lot of difficult territory to negotiate. A lot going on under the surface. On a nearly daily basis your emotions can range from bright, brilliant optimism to deepest, darkest despair.
So it has been with campaigner Georgina Downs’ landmark High Court victory against the UK government for its fundamental failure to protect citizens from pesticide exposure. Georgina has fought for seven years to prove that exposure to pesticides via crop spraying causes health problems ranging from rashes and sore throats to cancers, asthma, reproductive damage and neurological conditions (see comment page 84).
When the ruling was announced it, along with the proposed EU ban on hazardous pesticides, made us all feel like we were finally getting somewhere. The opposition will whinge that there are no viable alternatives and its bottom line is threatened but, in the end, tighter regulation of crop spraying is a ‘greater good’ decision. Eventually we all win.
Barely a month went by before Defra lodged its appeal. The stated reason is that tighter regulation would make it impossible to authorise pesticides governed by the European Directive for use in the UK and this, in turn, would have a negative impact on farming and food production. But really, this is not about food, it is about finance. The government regulators, the Pesticides Safety Directorate, comprised of key officials advising Ministers on pesticides, receives around 60 per cent of its funding from the agro-chemical industry in the form of levies and fees for pesticide applications. The very structure of the PSD means it will always veer towards protecting industry instead of human health.
In launching its appeal, what we are witnessing is a government whose best defence is to cynically use people’s fears of a food crisis to maintain a corrupt and harmful status quo.
Even before Defra announced its plans, Britain’s National Farmers’ Union was claiming that the proposed EU ban on hazardous pesticides would mean that 80 per cent of the pesticides currently in use would be banned (and if they are hazardous isn’t that actually a good thing?). The pesticide industry argues that ‘hazard’ doesn’t equate to ‘risk’, and that the European Parliament’s environment committee members were ideologically driven and not paying attention to what the science says.
Nevertheless, the EU’s latest food monitoring report showed a record level of pesticides in European foods, with almost half of all fruit, vegetables and cereals containing residues – five per cent of them at concentrations above maximum legal limits. The EU has likewise spent hundreds of thousands of pounds evaluating pesticides. Much of this data is freely available. So, when campaigners say some pesticides are causing cancer or are linked with reproductive problems, this is based on rigorous scientific analysis.
By the time you read this, assuming the agro-chemical industry does not manage to buy its way out of trouble, the EU proposals will already have been voted in. The ban will not happen overnight. It includes a grace period, which allows farmers and industry to find safer alternatives to the harmful chemicals they have been using for decades. In its insane allegiance to chemical farming, Britain lags behind nearly every other country in the EU. I suggest this time period would be most productively spent getting with the programme, rather than trying to undermine sound judicial and legislative decisions.
The NFU isn’t happy. Big agriculture isn’t happy. Defra isn’t happy. But the time has come to admit it: our love affair with chemical farming is over.
- This editorial first appeared in the February 2009 edition of the Ecologist.
