APPENDIX 20
Letter to Committee Chairman from Mr Paul
Tyler, MP, Chairman, All Party Organophosphate Group (B 22)
Thank you for the opportunity to submit a very
brief note to your Committee for its current inquiry. As you know,
our Group comprises some 75+ MPs and Peers, with officers from
all sides, and we have worked together for nearly eight years.
I have not been able to consult all my colleagues on the content
of this note, in the short time available, but I am confident
that they would broadly agree with its recommendations.
We understand that your present concern is with
the temporary withdrawal of OPs, pending improvements to the design
of containers, to minimise danger from concentrates. Our remit
is much wider, of course, but we acknowledge the value of your
inquiry since it raises very important issues.
In particular, the line of questioning of Austin
Mitchell and Michael Jack (as one would expect from a former Agriculture
Minister!) of Baroness Hayman on 11 April exposed the basic truth
of this sad saga; for very many years the inherent dangers of
exposure to OPs (especially but not exclusively in concentrate
form) have been known; for almost as many years the necessary
protective and preventative advice and action has not been forthcoming;
and each time new constraints, restrictions or warnings have been
introduced this has involved a tacit admission that these were
not previously adequate.
Therefore, the action taken by the present Minister
before Christmas 1999 could scarcely be considered
Therefore, the action taken by the present Minister
before Christmas 1999 could scarcely be considered precipitate.
Not only had a series of negotiations over container design taken
place in 1994-95, but also a Ministerial meeting in July 1999
specifically highlighted this issue. If the manufacturers were
not aware of the urgent need to improve safety after all this,
and the Institute of Occupational Medicine Report too, they must
have been deliberately courting the current impasse.
This is the real issue. Many sheep farmers now
suspect that the huge chemical companies who produce and sell
OP products have little interest in their long-term future. The
sheep dip market is relatively small. What they are clearly interested
in is avoiding any legal or moral liability for past negligence.
If they can claim that they have had to withdraw these
products from use because of unreasonable Ministerial requirements
for rapid changes to the containers, and their action is for economic
and practical reasons, they might escape the consequences
of their past failures.
Indeed, they could even blame the Government
for any cost or animal health penalties that fall on the sheep
sector.
In short, they may be trying to browbeat both
Ministers and the industry either into accepting the continuation
of OP use, with a continuation of easy profit margins on a long-established
product, or moving smartly on to new, safer products when these
industrial giants are ready to do so, at greatly increased unit
cost, without admitting to any liability for past OP damage to
users' health.
That is why your Committee's inquiry is so crucial.
Any failure to appreciate its wider significance could postpone
or undermine the whole investigation of the OP problem, the animal
health, human safety and basic economics of the sheep sector and
the legal liability of the various players in this sorry saga.
17 April 2000
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