House of Commons - Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Eighth Report

2 Background

4. Pesticides are defined under the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985 as:

Any substance, preparation or organism prepared or used, among other uses, to protect plants or wood or other plant products from harmful organisms; to regulate the growth of plants; to give protection against harmful creatures; or to render such creatures harmless.[2]

The term pesticides, therefore, has a very broad definition which embraces herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, rodenticides, soil-sterilants and wood preservatives. Pesticide treatments can take many different forms, such as sprays, dips, coatings, powders and gels.

Existing pesticides regimes

5. The controls on pesticides were put on a statutory basis by the introduction of the Control of Pesticide Regulations 1986. The regulations, made under Part III of the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985, apply to Great Britain; separate legislation applies similar controls in Northern Ireland. The legislation gives ministers broad powers to protect the health of people, creatures and plants, to safeguard the environment, to secure safe, efficient and humane methods of controlling pests and to make information about pesticides publicly available. In particular, the advertisement, sale, supply, storage or use of pesticides is prohibited unless ministers have approved them.

6. Pesticides are amongst the most strictly regulated of all chemicals. The regulatory system is designed to ensure that pesticides constitute no danger to the health of people (operators, consumers or bystanders) when used correctly. Data requirements for evaluations of pesticides exceed those required for any other class of substances including pharmaceuticals, food additives and commodity chemicals. A typical dossier (as required for an authorisation) is about 50,000 pages long and takes a company an average of four and a half years to prepare.[3]

7. With respect to pesticides, the Government's central policy objectives are to avoid risks to people and to limit risks to the environment from the use of pesticides. The statutory framework which regulates pesticides places controls on the marketing of pesticides and their use, in order for there to be no "unacceptable risks" to people's health or to the environment. What constitutes an "unacceptable risk" differs as between the risk to health, on the one hand, and the risk to the environment, on the other. If there is scientific evidence that use of a pesticide may harm human health, that is considered an unacceptable level of risk. In the case of environmental effects, some risk is accepted as inevitable because pesticides are biologically active compounds released into the environment.

8. Pesticide pollution can be driven by rainfall, with contamination of rivers and groundwater occurring from water draining off land or infiltrating to the water table. The regulatory system is designed to avoid contamination of groundwater above an arbitrary limit of 0.1 parts per billion of each pesticide active substance. Otherwise, the controls are not aimed at preventing environmental contamination completely, but at keeping it below levels that could risk sustained damage to populations of organisms. The regulatory system also assesses the efficacy of pesticides; pesticides are not approved for use if they do not work. However, the system is not intended to trade off the benefits and risks of pesticide use. If the risks are unacceptable, approval for use is refused, whatever the benefits.[4]

European legislation

9. The UK approvals system is gradually being replaced by broadly similar EU requirements under a 1991 Council Directive concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market (the 1991 Directive).[5] The Directive aims to harmonise the authorisation procedures for plant protection products across member states by setting common health and environmental standards. It is based on the precautionary principle, placing protection of human health and the environment above the needs of agricultural production. The 1991 Directive was implemented in Great Britain by the Plant Protection Products Regulations 1995. Again, similar legislation applies in Northern Ireland.

10. The 1991 Directive also has a 'retrospective' effect, in that it provides for the review of plant protection products already on the Community market, to ensure that they meet modern standards of safety and efficacy. To date, approximately 70 active substances out of the 350 (20%) that have UK approvals have been taken off the market. Within the EU, as a whole, approximately 450 out of 970 (46%) active substances have been withdrawn.

Residues

11. Legislation to control residues also has a direct impact on pesticide use. Residues in fruit, vegetables, cereals, foodstuffs of animal origin and processed baby foods are controlled through statutory maximum residue levels (MRLs). MRLs are the maximum concentration of plant protection product residue legally permitted in food and animal feeds. The conditions of use specified in a registration document are based on Good Agricultural Practice (GAP); if the farmer follows GAP the level of plant protection product in the crop should not exceed the MRL.[6] However, MRLs are not safety limits in themselves. Residues in excess of a MRL do occur but are not necessarily a risk to health.[7]

Best practice

12. Guidance on best practice for pesticide use is contained in the statutory Code of Practice for the Safe Use of Pesticides on Farms and Holdings (the Green Code).[8] Although failure to follow the code's guidance is not in itself an offence, it may be used in evidence against the user if he or she is prosecuted for breach of the approval. The Government is currently revising the Green Code.[9]

13. The code of practice on the safe use of pesticides can be seen to fit between regulation on approvals, on one side, and regulation on residues, on the other. The VI aims to complement existing legislation, concerning itself with best practice with regard to the use of pesticides, in an effort to reduce the adverse impacts of pesticides on the environment. This is where the primarily focus of our inquiry lies.

The Voluntary Initiative

History

14. In 1997, the Government came into office having made a commitment to consider "using the tax system to deliver environmental objectives".[10] After commissioning research to examine the scope for introducing such taxes, the Government announced, in the 1999 Pre-Budget Report, that it believed "a tax or charge on the use of pesticides could be a useful tool in addressing the environmental impacts of pesticides".[11] However, the Government also said it would "explore with the agrochemical industry whether its objectives could be better achieved through a partnership approach between the Government and industry".[12] As a contribution to those discussions, the Crop Protection Association (CPA) (formerly the British Agrochemicals Association) submitted proposals on a set of voluntary measures, designed to achieve the same ends as a tax. Following a report on the potential cost and effectiveness of the proposed measures and a further consultation, the CPA refined its proposals.[13]

15. The result of this process was the Voluntary Initiative (VI) on pesticides, which was welcomed by Stephen Timms, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, in February 2000. He said, "subject to further detailed discussions, the Chancellor will not proceed with the introduction of a pesticides tax in the Budget".[14] The Government's announcement that it would not proceed with a pesticides tax coincided with income levels in UK farming reaching "an historically low level […] as low or lower than at the time of the depression in the late 1930s".[15]

16. In the 2001 Budget, the Government invited the CPA and the other industry sponsors to implement their proposals on a UK-wide basis.[16] It made clear that it would monitor progress "to assess whether a voluntary approach is delivering significant environmental benefits, over and above those that would result from a pesticides tax".[17]

17. A steering group was established to monitor costs and progress of the various projects against agreed time schedules. The steering group is chaired by Professor Barry Dent (former Principal of the Royal Agricultural College) and includes the signatory organisations, along with a variety of groups either representing an environmental perspective or bringing expertise in key areas such as training. Representatives from government departments also attend meetings of the steering group as observers.[18]

Objectives and duration

18. The objective of the VI is to minimise the impact of pesticides on the environment. The VI aims to achieve this by defining and promoting best practice through a programme of research, training, communication and stewardship.[19]

19. The VI is scheduled to run for five years, from April 2001 to March 2006. In their joint submission, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and HM Treasury suggested that delivery and evaluation of the initiative could be considered to have three phases:

turning the set of proposals into workable measures
putting the measures in place and encouraging farmers to adopt them
establishing that the package of measures is having the desired environmental benefits.[20]

Costs

20. When the VI was agreed in 2001, the CPA expected that it would cost the crop protection industry a total of £11.9 million over five years. Costs to the farming sector were expected to average £11 million per annum, once the VI was fully established.[21] Published figures on the first three years of the VI estimated that costs to date have amounted to almost £18.5 million, with around 56% (£10.3 million) of this being paid for by the farming sector and around 41% (£7.6 million) by the crop protection industry.[22] The CPA forecast that, by the end of March 2005, total costs could have risen above £26 million.[23]

Projects

21. The initiative includes over 40 different projects or activities to develop and promote best practice in the use of pesticides.[24] The key projects include:

a national register of sprayer operators (NRoSO), a central register which provides continuous professional development for all those applying pesticides
a national sprayer testing scheme (NSTS) to check that spray equipment used is in effective working order
crop protection management plans (CPMPs), carried out by farmers to provide a structure for the assessment of pest, disease and weed pressures and crop protection practices, assessment of the environmentally sensitive features of the farm and measures to protect water and biodiversity
the biodiversity and environmental training for advisers (BETA) qualification, designed to strengthen the environmental expertise of advisers who make or contribute to pesticide use decisions, affecting most arable land, and
pilot water catchments in which local farmers are helped to find practices (including other measures within the initiative) that will reduce the risk of water contamination by pesticides.[25]

Water catchment pilots

22. The VI's main focus for water has been to attempt to reduce pesticide pollution of surface waters by placing emphasis on changing farmer behaviour and practice. National targets have been set for 2006, with the aim of achieving a 30% reduction in the frequency of detection of individual and total pesticides above EU maximum concentrations in drinking water.[26] At least 95% of these surface water quality 'exceedances' (that is, measurements of pesticides in excess of the arbitrary contamination limit) are caused by just nine pesticides. These nine pesticides (listed in order of decreasing frequency) are:

mecoprop
isoproturon
MCPA
diuron
2,4-D
chlorotoluron
dichlorprop
simazine
atrazine.[27]

All nine are herbicides that are widely used, mobile in soil, relatively persistent and used at high application rates.[28]

23. To help reduce pesticide pollution, the VI is running pilot projects in six water catchments, with all farmers in the catchment being provided with advice on best practice measures.[29] A catchment management team has been established in each of the six study catchments, made up of representatives from local stakeholder groups. These teams are charged with raising awareness of the issues affecting water quality in their catchments and piloting ideas to ameliorate them. The projects are designed so that practical methods of managing pesticide use in each of the pilot areas can be added to a 'toolkit' of measures. This 'toolkit' is continually updated so that it can be applied in other catchments across the UK. It includes measures such as communicating advice to farmers on the timing of applications through text messaging services.[30]

Indicator farms

24. Another VI project involves a series of indicator farms, chosen on the basis that they have not previously been managed according to best practice.[31] The indicator farms will be monitored to determine the effects on water quality and biodiversity of moving to good practice, as promoted by the VI.

Government's position on the VI

25. The Government's current view on the VI, as stated in the 2005 Budget Report, is that the initiative is "the most effective way of reducing the environmental pollution associated with pesticides"—provided that it is "fully implemented".[32] The Budget Report noted that "there has already been good progress made against the current targets", however, "to cover the possibility that the VI might fail to deliver the required environmental benefits within a reasonable time", the Government stated that it "continues to keep options for a tax or economic instrument under review".[33]

Previous parliamentary scrutiny

26. In November 2002, the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) published a report on Pesticides: The Voluntary Initiative.[34] The report was critical of the initiative, citing a lack of progress and expressing doubts over its potential effectiveness. The Committee did, however, conclude that, at the time of its inquiry, it was too early to judge whether the VI had been a success and considered that more time would be necessary before "a thorough and realistic appraisal" could be carried out.[35]

2 Food and Environment Protection Act 1985, part III Back

3 Pesticides Safety Directorate, A Draft National Strategy for the Sustainable Use of Plant Protection Products, February 2005, p 6 Back

4 Ev 113 [Defra and HM Treasury] Back

5 Council Directive 91/414/EEC Back

6 Above n 3, p 7 Back

7 Residues exceeding the MRL were found in 0.7% of the total food samples taken by the Pesticides Residues Committee in 2003 (Pesticides Residues Committee, 2003 Annual Report, September 2004, p 9). Back

8 Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Green code: Code of Practice for the safe use of pesticides on farms and holdings, (London, 1998) Back

9 "Consultation on revised code of practice for safe use of plant protection products", Defra news release 177/04, 7 May 2004 Back

10 HM Treasury, Statement of Intent on environmental taxation, 2 July 1997 Back

11 HM Treasury, Stability and Steady Growth for Britain: Pre-Budget report, Cm 4479, November 1999, para 6.108 Back

12 Ibid. Back

13 Crop Protection Association, Minimising the Environmental Impacts of Crop Protection Chemicals: Revised and extended proposals from Crop Protection Association, National Farmers' Union, National Farmers' Union of Scotland, Country Land and Business Association, National Association of Agricultural Contractors, Agricultural Engineers' Association, and UK Agricultural Supply Trade Association, February 2001 Back