The UK is falling even further behind Europe in its efforts to remove chemicals harmful to both human health and the environment from the market.
According to a study by Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK), there are presently 36 pesticides authorised for use in the UK that are prohibited in EU nations.
Among the 36 approved pesticides, 13 are categorised as highly hazardous. This group includes four pesticides that pose a high toxicity risk to bees, one that contaminates water, and another that is highly toxic to aquatic organisms. The UK will continue to employ these 13 hazardous pesticides for an additional two to five years compared to EU nations.
Nick Mole, PAN UK’s policy officer, said:
“The UK is becoming the toxic poster child of Europe. The government has repeatedly promised that our environmental standards won’t slip post-Brexit. And yet here we are, less than four years later, and already we’re seeing our standards fall far behind those of the EU.
“With UK bees and other pollinators in decline, and our waters never more polluted, now is the time to be taking steps to protect nature. Instead, the government is choosing to expose British wildlife to an ever-more toxic soup of chemicals.”
Additionally, PAN UK’s study unveiled an increasing concern for human health, displayed by the following list of 36 pesticides permitted in the UK, but prohibited in the EU:
12 are classified as carcinogens, capable of causing different types of cancer, including leukaemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma;
Nine are endocrine disruptors (EDCs), which interfere with hormone systems and can cause birth defects, developmental disorders and reproductive problems, such as infertility;
Eight are ‘developmental or reproductive toxins’, which have adverse effects on sexual function and fertility in both adults and children, and can reduce the number of functionality of sperm and cause miscarriages;
Two are cholinesterase inhibitors, reducing the ability of nerve cells to pass information to each other and can impair the respiratory system, causing confusion, headaches and weakness;
One is classified as acutely toxic, meaning that adverse health effects can result either from a single exposure or from multiple ones in a short period of time (usually 24 hours).
The majority of the chemicals in question (30) were allowed for use in the EU when the UK left on 31 January 2020, but have since been removed from the EU market. The remaining six chemicals have been approved by the UK government, but not in the EU, since Brexit.
One of the primary reasons for the disparity in standards originates from a decision made by the UK government. They have granted an automatic three-year extension to all pesticides with licenses set to expire before December 2023, indicating limited governmental capacity for re-approving pesticides.
Previously, the UK had a policy of granting a maximum 15-year license to pesticides before requiring re-approval, acknowledging the substantial risks these chemicals pose to both human health and the environment.
“The UK government promised to drive a reduction in pesticide use back in 2018 and yet we’re still waiting for them to take action”, added Mole.
These measures will also affect trade deals between the UK and EU, explained Mole:
“The Emerging gap between the UK and EU pesticide standards is incredibly concerning for our human health and environmental protections, but also for the future of UK agriculture as our standards fall further and further behind those of our largest trading partner.
“UK food exports containing pesticides that EU growers aren’t allowed to use, are likely to be rejected. Given that the EU still accounts for around 60% of UK agricultural exports, the impact on farmers could be devastating.”
PAN UK urges the UK government to, at the very least, maintain alignment with EU pesticide norms and prevent any further deterioration of existing UK standards.
Additionally, PAN UK advocates for the immediate implementation of long-overdue measures, including pesticide reduction targets, the halt of pesticide use in urban areas, and the enhancement of state support for farmers to reduce their reliance on agrochemicals.
The UK pesticide policies will have far-reaching effects, impacting not just the health of individuals and the environment, but also our farmers and our trade agreements with the EU, our largest trading partner.
Our global food systems are highly complex and serve many constituent parts. It’s responsible for making available fresh produce throughout the year in countries and regions that historically have been very limited in their food produce. Viewed in a positive light, the systems serve the needs of many.
However, as the global food systems have evolved over time, it has increasingly been focused on monetary gain for corporate stakeholders and less about serving the needs of the global populous.
The increasing focus on economic gain from the global food systems can be evidenced as a cause of wide scale sickness, hunger, poverty, sickness, homelessness, poisoning of our land, water, air, plants, animals, our bodies and minds.
The food industry is considered as a major drive of climate change, responsible for one third of world GHG emissions (IPCC 2019), land-use change and biodiversity loss (40% of earth’s surface), major user of freshwater resources (70% of global freshwater) and a major polluter of terrestrial aquatic systems through the use of chemicals.
During the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023 in London, Philip Lymbery, global CEO of Compassion in World Farming, highlighted the fact that we rely more and more on a small number of countries for the production of major crops on which we depend on. When certain world events occur, such as conflicts and the Covid-19 pandemic, and global supply chains are disrupted, the entire food system is impacted.
Philip Lymbery at the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023, London
The countries we rely on, mainly in the global south, are forced to invest in “cash crops” for exports, not producing enough to feed their own population. They produce raw materials that we then process and sell it back to them in the form of finished food products, mainly as a result of their huge debt, explained Lymbery.
Food security is another issue, as we have witnessed in recent years a record high in food prices, global hunger and social inequities that result from the industrial farming systems, not just from conflicts and climate change. We are producing enough food to feed the entire world, but what we’ve seen is a mismatch between supply and demand, a financialisation of agriculture systems and markets, as well as an increase in power concentration.
Lymbery said, “These companies are taking our food systems hostage for their thirst for profits.”
“Food systems are often shaped by politics, rather than policies”, he added.
Our food systems are also impacting our health and making us sick. According to Marco Springmann, senior researcher in environment and health at the Environmental Change Institute at University of Oxford, the cost of treating diet-related diseases is projected to exceed USD 1 trillion by 2030, also putting a strain on health systems around the world.
“Food that brings you sickness and disease is not food, it’s poison”, said Dr. Vandana Shiva, Indian environmentalist, physicist and author, during one of her speeches at the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023 in London.
Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023, London – Photo Credit: Robbie Blake, IPES-Food
Power Concentration
We are experiencing growing concentration in our food systems, as the number of corporations controlling everything, from inputs up through retail are getting smaller.
According to Jennifer Clapp, Canada research chair & professor, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at University of Waterloo, and IPES Food “Who’s Tipping the Scales” report, only top six agrochemical companies control 78% of the global market, the top six animal pharmaceuticals control 72%, the top six farm machinery control 50%, the top six seeds companies control 58% and the top five global grain traders control between 70-90%.
Jennifer Clapp at the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023, London – Photo Credit: Robbie Blake, IPES-Food
Four major grain traders control approximately 80% of the trade in cereals worldwide, the ABCD firms, ADM (Archer-Daniels-Midland), Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus; and four major food processing and packaging companies dominate the global market, Nestle, PepsiCo, Anheuser-Bush InBev and JBS.
Since 2015, we’ve seen mega mergers in the seeds and agrochemicals industry, making these corporations even more dominant and powerful. Some of the mergers include Bayer and Monsanto, ChemChina and Syngenta, Dow and Dupont merged to form Corteva, Agrium and Potash Corp merged to form Nutrien.
Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and co-chair of IPES-Food, mentioned that giant dominant food corporations acquired the position in decision making to veto any transformative change.
According to him, “it’s not because of corruption of politicians or the finance lobbyists working on their behalf, it’s because they are the champions of economic gain of large scale production that global commodities markets demand.”
“This allows these corporations to say to politicians, “trust us”, we know how to produce food for mass consumption, … if you impose too strong regulations on us, you’ll be faced with higher prices that your voters will have to face. This is what allows them to have a privileged access to politicians”, he added.
He explained that these companies manage to get protection from legislators for intellectual property rights for the new “breeds” that they develop, as well as the new technologies that they promote. Additionally, they can very easily challenge environmental regulations. The State ends up in the hands of these economic actors and ends up working for them.
Olivier De Schutter at the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023, London – Photo Credit: Robbie Blake, IPES-Food
These corporations also control the labour conditions of the food system worker, the products that end up in the supermarkets shelves, and have the power to shape government policies. Small-scale producers don’t stand a chance when faced with such powerful competition.
In order to democratise our food systems, we need to increase transparency and accountability.
It’s necessary to set up a worldwide robust anti-trust and competition legislation and food policy, as well as creating a lobby register, which is already in place in some countries, in order to limit the concentration of power of the big agrifood corporations
We should be listening to farmers and working with them to identify solutions that will not only be beneficial to them, but also to our health and the environment, instead of filling the pockets of greedy corporations.
“We also need more public support for alternative food systems, in particular, research and development money going towards agroecology and organic agriculture”, mentioned Clapp.
She added that it’s now necessary for the State to step back in like they did in the past, when they played a prominent role during the last transition to industrial agriculture with R&D and hybridisation in fertilisers and other sectors.
There’s a need control those actors that have the power to shape our policy spaces, including measures that prevent conflicts of interests, where corporate officials end up as regulators and go back to work in the corporate sector.
Lastly, there’s the need to create an autonomous space for civil society to determine and control the rules and governance they’d like to see happen.
According to Planet Tracker, a non-profit think tank, nearly USD 9 trillion of private finance is currently supporting the global food system.
“Financial regulations have become weakened to the extent that they’ve allowed big financial institutions like banks and investment houses to create new financial products for investors to speculate on food commodities”, explained Jennifer Clapp during the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023.
The price of commodities can swing much higher or lower than supply and demand would normally indicate and this creates price volatility, consequently generating profit for these institutions.
“There’s another aspect of financial concentration, where asset management firms own huge portions of the global food systems. The ABCD firms, ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus, make huge windfall profits when food commodity prices swing. We saw this happening in 2008, and once again, in 2022, when Russian invaded Ukraine”, added Clapp.
Asset management firms, Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street and Capital Group, manage people’s pensions, trillions of assets worth over USD 20 trillion in the global economy. They are buying shares in almost all the companies across the entire agrifood supply chain, which means they have a shared interest in those companies being profitable, therefore creating an incentive for collusion.
Clapp mentioned that economists are concerned about this issue, which is called common ownership, leading to a reduction in competition, as well as leading to higher prices and encouragement of mergers and acquisitions, creating even bigger companies.
The danger of this situation is the fact that it allows them to hold more power to shift food systems in a certain direction, enabling them to shape markets in a way that it can affect prices that consumers pay. Prices are kept low for the agriculture and livestock producers and high for consumers. They also have the power to determine what technologies are going to dominate the market.
Clapp proposed a few solutions to some of these problems, including stronger rules in the financial markets, rules to curb speculation, better reporting, better limits on financial actors in these markets, as well as rules limiting asset managers owning the entire scope of the food systems.
Health Hazards, New Pandemics & Antimicrobial Resistance
Industrial animal production may be a driver of future pandemics. The confinement of high number of animal in small spaces, leave them much more susceptible to viruses and infections, with the potential to evolve into more infectious types, explained Melissa Leach, social anthropologist and geographer, director of the Institute of Development Studies, IDS, during the Extinction or Rebellion Conference 2023.
All recent infectious diseases outbreaks and pandemics are zoonotic, as they originate in animals. Wildlife domestic and farmed animals and humans all interact in intense interfaces where spillover can occur.
The World Health Organisation, WHO, describes antimicrobial resistance, AMR, as the overlooked pandemic. It contributes to treatment failures, increasing human vulnerability to a wide range of infections.
Some of the latest figures suggest that AMR will cause 10 million deaths by the year 2050, more than from cancer, diabetes and pneumococcal diseases combined.
“Key causes of AMR are the overuse of antibiotics in livestock to promote growth and routinely prevent diseases, especially in intensified livestock farming”, mentioned Leach.
Melissa Leach at the Extinction or Regeneration Conference 2023, London – Photo Credit: Robbie Blake, IPES-Food
A study published by The Lancet, Global Burden of Bacterial Antimicrobial Resistance in 2019, estimates that there were 1.27 million deaths globally due to AMR in 2019, and 4.96 million deaths associated with AMR, compared with 6.9 million deaths globally from Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
According to Cóilín Nunan, scientific adviser to the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, certain types of antibiotics used in animal farming have led to the rise and spread of livestock associated strains of MRSA and clostidrium difficile.
There’s also the resistance to colistin, used as a last resort antibiotic in human medicine for treating life-threatening infections on patients who don’t respond well to other antibiotics, added Nunan.
Scientists from Oxford University released a study showing Escherichia coli bacteria that acquired resistance to colistin in animal farming. According to Nunan, this is an issue of concern and may be more dangerous than AMR, as it may be more able to cause infections in humans.
In Europe, over 60% of antibiotics are used in farmed animals, rather than in medicine. Globally, the figure rises to nearly 70%.
The health impact caused by our food systems is putting a real strain on health systems around the world. There’s been a rise in conditions, including type 2 diabetes, obesity, depression, cardiovascular diseases and certain types of gastro-intestinal cancer, amongst others, all related to our diets.
We can no longer deny the urgent need to embrace more sustainable food systems solutions, support and listen to our farmers, respect and protect Indigenous peoples, our land and the environment, which we are highly dependent on.
The concentration of power within our food systems should be limited and a new model replaced instead, to ensure there’s fairness and equality, access to healthy and nutritious food for everyone, everywhere, and that our health and the health of our planet is protected and respected.
Similar to our current political & economic systems, the food system is no longer serving us; mainly driven by power, profit and greed, resulting in global food insecurity and impacting directly on our health and the environment.
We’ve seen a sharp increase in food insecurity worldwide, driven not only by climate change and multiple conflicts, but also by an unbalanced food system fuelled by corporate power.
As the world population is projected to reach 9.8 billion in the next 27 years, there’s an urgent need to address issues related to our food system, or we may be facing a worldwide famine sooner than expected. We’ve already seen signs of this in many parts of the world.
“The right to food is the right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access—either directly or by means of financial purchases— to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensure a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free of fear”, according to the United Nations.
Giant agribusiness corporations hold the power and control over our food systems, with the ability to influence governments and decision-makers, through lobbying, with the direct intention of shaping policies in many ways.
Their objectives and tactics are questionable, with the tendency to favour their own interests, focusing on profits and maximising shareholder value, rather than addressing hunger and malnutrition.
According to ‘Who’s Tipping the Scales’, a report published by IPES Food, the international panel of experts on sustainable food systems:
“A bold, structural vision to counter the corporate takeover of food-related global governance – one that support central roles for people, governments, and democratic, public-interest-based decision-making, is urgently needed.”
It’s clear that the voices of the most vulnerable communities across the world, and mostly affected by hunger and environmental impact caused by this industry, must be heard.
These giant and dominant agribusiness corporations influence the global organisations we most trust, which should be there to defend our interests. To the surprise of many, agribusiness associations were sitting directly at the UN governance table at the 2021 UNFSS, UN Food Systems Summit.
One must also question the kind of relationship between the private sector and international governance bodies and institutions about potential conflicts of interest.
According to the IPES Food report, in 2020, a private philanthropic foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was the second largest donor to the CGIAR, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.
Another partnership that raises some eyebrows is the FAO’s, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, partnership with CropLife International, CLI, an agrochemical lobby organisation, whose members include Syngenta, BASF, FMC and Bayer (acquired Monsanto in 2018).
PAN North America, Pesticide Action Network, mentioned that instead of putting the profit of CropLife International members before farmers and consumers worldwide, the FAO must invest in solutions, including agroecology and take stronger action on ending the usage of highly hazardous pesticides, HHPs.
We’ve also seen increase in consolidation, a large number of mergers and acquisitions, allowing these corporations to dominate the agribusiness sector. This allows these giants to have a profound influence on governance and the structure of our food system, resulting in anti-competitive market practices.
These corporations have significant funding at their disposal to influence policies and regulations, such as pesticides, biosafety, patents, intellectual property, as well as trade and investment agreements.
Bayer AG spent over USD 9 million lobbying the US government in 2019, after it acquired Monsanto. At the time, they were reviewing the re-registration of one of the company’s main products, glyphosate (Roundup), which is considered a toxic herbicide. In the US, Bayer has been contesting billion of dollars in settlement claims to end lawsuits over accusations that glyphosate causes cancer.
They are also responsible for shaping science by sponsoring academic research favouring their corporate interests, influencing governance and policies. This was seen in the agrochemical and processed food sectors.
As proof of this, below is an internal email between Monsanto executives obtained by lawyers representing plaintiffs in the Roundup® litigation, where they suggest ‘beating the s**t out of’ a mother’s group expressing concern over the effects of GMOs and Roundup® on their children.
Photograph: Main Street Law Firm PLLC
Monsanto also tried to influence science by sponsoring various ghostwriting academic articles questioning scientific studies that raised concern over its product’s safety, glyphosate.
Another very concerning issue related to the health of our children is the fact that this industry continuously lobbies against mandatory public health measures, including taxes on ultra-processed foods, UPF, sugary drinks and front of package labeling, as well as restrictions on marketing of unhealthy foods to our children. This has a gigantic impact on their health and also creates pressure on our health systems.
A reported example of this was when a children’s cereal manufacturer attempted to sue Mexico after the country tried to amend a food packaging regulation called NOM-5, in order to protect their children from the marketing of unhealthy foods. The regulation established that certain unhealthy products would be prohibited from putting children’s animations and characters on their packages.
The invention of novel foods also raises some red flags. On March, The Defender, a publication defending children’s health, published a piece on Bill Gates’ latest invention, an edible food coating called Apeel, which is an odourless, colourless and tasteless coating for vegetables and fruit, which potentially extends the life span of these products, keeping it fresher for up to two times longer.
Apeel has already received the green light from US regulators, but some questions still remain unanswered surrounding the safety of the product, as the company is relying mainly on existing scientific studies, as no new science has been required to evaluate and test the product.
We seem to be completely exposed and reliant on these corporations to carry out their own safety studies, without the scrutiny of independent regulators and scientific studies.
According to the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, companies are expected to develop their own internal procedures to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for how they address their impacts on human and environmental rights in global supply chains.
It’s clear that the way we grow our food has a massive impact not only on our physical and mental health, but also on our environment, affecting fauna and flora, the health of our soil, water and air.
Recently, we have seen a sharp increase of fungal disease in crops, affecting 168 crops listed as important in human nutrition, according to FAO of the United Nations. Despite spraying fungicides, farmers are losing between 10-23% of their crops to fungal disease every year, including rice, corn, soybeans and potatoes.
According to a study published at Nature journal, this issue is mainly because of the adaptability of fungi to meet modern agricultural practices. Monocultures entail vast areas of genetically uniform crops, an ideal ground for fast-evolving organisms, such as fungi. Another problem is the increasingly widespread use of antifungal treatments, leading to fungicide resistance.
The use of pesticides and toxic chemicals are increasing exponentially across the world, causing havoc to our health, the soil, polluting water sources, the air, animals and plants.
Industrial agriculture, including cattle farming, soybean, palm oil, sugar cane, corn, wheat, GMOs, monoculture production, is responsible for the deforestation of rainforests, the Cerrado, and many other parts of the world, causing destruction and degradation.
In Brazil, 2.8% of landowners own over 56% of all arable land, and 50% of smallholder farms have access to only 2.5% of the land. Overall, the land is in the hands of a small number of industrial farms.
We must rethink the way we grow our food and we all have the right to access nutritious and healthy food and decide what we eat.
The agribusiness sector spends vast amounts on research and development, making it extremely hard for smaller companies to compete with them, capitalising on patent protection and intellectual property rights.
Why? Because they can!
Patent protection and intellectual property is another issue that should be catching everyone’s attention.
Giant tech companies, such as Amazon and Microsoft, among others, entered the food sector focusing on power, control and profit. Small farmers and local food systems are struggling, as they can’t afford to use this high tech data gathering technology. They are also located in remote areas where these types of services can’t reach.
We can see an increasing movement of powerful integration and control between the companies that are supplying products to farmers, such as tractors, drones, pesticides, etc., and the tech giants. They feed and control farmers with information, and at the same time have direct access to consumers.
The aim is to integrate millions of farmers into a wide centrally controlled network by encouraging and forcing them to buy their products. This digital infrastructure is run by platforms developed by tech companies that run cloud services.
Fujitsu farm workers, located just outside Hanoi, carry smartphones supplied by the company, which monitors their every single movements, productivity, the amount of hours they work, etc., all stored on the company’s cloud. This is extremely worrying, as this practice could easily lead to labour exploitation.
Similar to Fujitsu, other companies investing heavily on this type of digital farming platforms include Microsoft’s Azure FarmBeats, Bayer’s Fieldview, BASF’s Xarvio, Syngenta’s CropWise, Yara’s Yaralrix and Olam’s OFIS, Olam Farmer Information System.
It’s essential to point out the extent of data gathering these platforms are capable of, including real time data and analysis on the farmers soil condition and water, crops growth, pests and diseases monitoring, weather, humidity, climate change, tractor monitoring, etc.
Some of these corporations are also trying to eliminate the “middlemen” by selling directly to consumers, which may be attractive proposition to many, if the idea is mainly to help farmers and small vendors directly, but somehow they may use digital platforms to increase their pricing power over farmers.
An important question we must ask these companies, regulators and our governments: who controls all this data, what do they do with it and who gives the advice?
The influence a few powerful corporations have in food governance must be scrutinised. Governments should be leading in the field of food security and not leaving it in the hands of those that put profit over longevity of life. It may seem a drastic change to the world as we know it, but it may be the only way to bring back a balance in the global food system and secure our quality of life and ultimately our survival.
“We are choosing to play Russian roulette with people’s health”
Monica Piccinini
2 Nov 2022
Official figures reveal that the proportion of bread in the UK containing two or more pesticides has doubled to more than 50% in the past year.
The UK government tests are carried out by an expert committee on pesticide residues in food (Prif) and a total of 11 different pesticides, including five with links to cancer (glyphosate,fosetyl, cypermethrin, deltamethrin and flonicamid), were found in a range of bread products – from standard white, brown, to crumpets, scones and muffins.
Bread products containing traces of one or multiple pesticides were found in supermarket own-brands including Aldi, Asda, Co-op, Iceland, Lidl, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose. They were also found in some top brands: Hovis, Kingsmill, Jacksons, La Boulangerie, New York Bakery, Warburtons, and many more.
Nick Mole, Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK) policy officer, said:
“With the cost of living crisis forcing people to spend less on food, it’s vital that consumers can trust that relatively cheap products like bread won’t expose them to dangerous mixtures of chemicals.
The government claims that it’s committed to tackling pesticides, so why have pesticide cocktails been allowed to double in a staple food that most of us eat at least once every day?”
Pesticides used in agriculture can leave traces of chemicals in our food known as residues. Pesticide residues detected on a specific food item will depend on which pesticides are used and how persistent they are. Some food may contain one single residue or multiple ones (‘cocktail effect’).
“There is a growing body of evidence showing that pesticides can become more harmful when they’re combined with each other. And yet we continue to set safety limits for just one chemical at a time.
We actually have no idea of the long-term impacts of consuming tiny amounts of hundreds of different chemicals. We are choosing to play Russian roulette with people’s health”, mentioned Mole.
We should be aware of the implications caused by ingesting food containing not only one but also multiple pesticides, especially if consumed over a long period of time, during our childhood, adult life and especially during pregnancy.
Some pesticides, known as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), have the potential to disrupt our hormone systems, and can play a role in the development of cancers, including colorectal and breast cancers. Pregnant and breastfeeding women, as well as young children, are particularly vulnerable.
The most recent data published by the UK government, which relates to testing conducted in 2021, reveals that pesticide cocktails are also a significant problem for fruit and vegetables, with 30% of vegetables and more than 60% of fruit found to contain residues of more than one chemical.
Based on government data, PAN UK launched its annual “Dirty Dozen”, a list of fruit and vegetables most likely to be contaminated with multiple pesticides:
PAN UK analysis of the most recent results from the government’s testing programme found a total of 137 different pesticide residues across all produce, including many linked to serious chronic health effects. Specifically, the produce tested contained:
• 46 carcinogens, which are capable of causing different types of cancer.
• 27 endocrine disruptors (EDCs), which can interfere with hormone systems and cause birth defects, developmental and reproductive disorders (infertility).
• 11 ‘developmental or reproductive toxins’, which can have adverse effects on sexual function and fertility, causing miscarriages.
• 14 cholinesterase inhibitors that reduce the ability of nerve cells to pass information to each other and can impair the respiratory system and cause confusion, headaches and weakness.
Over a third of the total pesticides found are not approved in the UK, meaning that the British farmers aren’t permitted to use them.
“These pesticides residues should not be making onto the plate of UK consumers.
They are either slipping past our shoddy border checks unnoticed, or foreign producers are being handed a competitive advantage by being allowed to use pesticides banned in the UK.
At a time when we are asking our own farmers to produce more sustainably, we should not be making it harder for them to earn a living”, said Mole.
The most effective way to tackle pesticide cocktail in our food is to ensure that the new trade agreements don’t lead to an influx of pesticide-laden imports and to reduce dramatically the chemical use in domestic farming.
Weakening of pesticide standards via trade deals with countries where pesticide regulation is less rigorous, means the population in the UK may be consuming products with higher level of pesticides that are already banned in the country.
“To protect the health of their customers, some UK supermarkets are beginning to sit up and take notice of pesticide cocktails. Meanwhile, the government’s key strategy on pesticide reduction is already five years late.
Our new environment secretary, Dr. Thérèse Coffey, must take urgent action to reduce pesticide-related harms. How much longer should consumers and farmers have to wait?” added Mole.
This is a significant ongoing issue that requires immediate attention and action from the government, regulators, corporations, supermarkets and also the British population, who may be paying a hefty price for these senseless actions, with their own health!
Sixty years ago, Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, alerted the world to the dangers of chemical pesticides to the environment and our health. The environmental degradation predicted by Carson, who warned of a future “silent spring” unless pesticides were tackled, continues to unfold.
Since records began in 1990, the UK has covered over 700 million hectares in pesticides – enough to dose every inch of the country 14 times over. Meanwhile, local councils, up and down the country, still routinely use pesticides linked to cancer in parks and playgrounds.
The UK Government’s “dither and delay” approach to pesticide policy is failing to adequately protect human health and the environment from pesticides.
Despite its promises to publish a national action plan on pesticides, the Government is now talking about deregulation, with UK’s prime minister, Liz Truss, promising a “red tape bonfire”, which is likely to put human health and wildlife at further risk.
Synthetic pesticides are some of the most toxic substances in use today, persisting in the environment for weeks, months or even years.
Polar Bears have been found to have pesticides residues in their system, despite those chemicals never having been used in the Arctic. Ice sheets and glaciers melting as a result of climate change, are thought to be releasing pesticide residues that have been accumulating since the 1940s.
“How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind? Yet, this is precisely what we have done.”- Rachel Carson, Silent Spring.
“Rachel Carson would turn in her grave if she could see how pesticide use has proliferated since she wrote Silent Spring. Most crops are now treated with a blizzard of insecticides, molluscicides, fungicides and herbicides, which damage soils, pollute streams, and chronically expose wildlife and people to complicated mixture of toxins. We urgently need to transition to more sustainable farming methods.” – said Dave Goulson, Professor of Biology, University of Sussex and author of Silent Earth.
According to the United Nations, the world’s population is set to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050, with huge concern on the need to ensure universal access to healthy food, but at the same time making sure food is produced in a sustainable way.
Pesticides are putting long-term food security at risk by damaging our soils and the creatures that help plants to grow. Despite industry claims, pesticides are not necessary for food security, and there are other ways to farm with nature.
Approximately 75% of global crop types rely on animal pollination. The UK government decided to authorise, for “emergency use”, the poisonous bee-killing pesticide neonicotinoid on beet crops. A single teaspoon of neonicotinoid is enough to deliver a lethal dose to 1.25 billion bees.
Josie Cohen, Head of Policy & Campaigns, Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK), mentioned:
“The agrochemical industry continues to tout the long discredited myth that we cannot feed the world without pesticides. But three quarters of the world’s food crops depend, at least in part, on pollinators. We now know that the recent crashes in populations of bees and other pollinators that are being driven by pesticide, pose a much greater and more existential threat to global food security.”
In the meantime, the UK farmland biodiversity continues to decline, with bird populations more than halving since 1970 and arable wildflowers becoming one of the most threatened groups of plants in the UK. The use of pesticides is the leading cause of this decline.
Martin Lines, an arable farmer and UK chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, explains:
“Government policy has taken farmers down a path that doesn’t view or reward nature as integral to sustainable food production. The government has not acted with the necessary urgency to address the biodiversity crisis, and it continues to drag its feet in delivering a new pesticide National Action Plan. We are concerned that this new government will turn a blind eye to importing products that use pesticides, which are illegal in this country and will contribute to the decline of nature.”
“We are very concerned about the effects of certain pesticides still in current use. Some may act as carcinogens by inducing gene mutations. Others can act as endocrine (hormone) disrupting chemicals that may affect hormones – including oestrogen – which may also increase breast cancer risk”, mentioned Thalie Martini, CEO of Breast Cancer UK.
Pesticides used in agriculture can leave traces of chemicals in our food known as residues. Residues detected on a specific food item will depend which pesticides are used and how persistent they are. Some food may contain one single residue or multiple ones (‘cocktail effect’).
We should all be aware of the implications caused by exposure to pesticides by spraying throughout towns, parks and playgrounds, and ingesting food containing not only one but also multiple pesticides, especially if consumed over a long period of time, during our childhood, adult life and especially during pregnancy.
Carey Gillam, investigative journalist and author of Whitewash – The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer and the Corruption of Science and The Monsanto Papers – Deadly Secrets, Corporate Corruption, and One Man’s Search for Justice, mentioned during our last communication:
“There is abundant scientific evidence dating back decades that clearly establishes the serious health risks pesticide exposures create for people, especially children. It is simply irresponsible to ignore those risks, which include cancers, neurodevelopmental harms, reproductive problems, Parkinson’s disease and other adverse health effects.”
It’s worth highlighting some facts about the effects caused by pesticide exposure to our health:
• Long term pesticide exposure has been linked to the development of Parkinson’s disease; asthma; depression and anxiety; attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); and cancer, including leukaemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
• Some pesticides, known as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), have the potential to disrupt our hormone systems, and can play a role in the development of cancers, including colorectal and breast cancers. Pregnant and breastfeeding women, as well as young children, are particularly vulnerable.
• Neurologists are warning of an impending Parkinson’s pandemic, linked to widespread exposure to herbicides, solvents, and other toxic chemicals used in agriculture and manufacturing. There is currently a class actionlawsuit in the US over the link between lethal weed-killer paraquat and Parkinson’s disease.
• UCLA-led research published in the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, found that children prenatally exposed to the chemicals acephate and bromacil had an increased risk of developing retinoblastoma, or cancer in one eye, and exposure to pymetrozine and kresoxim-methyl increased the risk of all types of retinoblastoma.
Helen Browning, CEO, Soil Association, mentioned:
“Switching to foods that support healthy and sustainable diets, produced on agroecological farms, is crucial to stabilising our climate, reversing the catastrophic decline in wildlife and preventing public health emergencies. The countryside is still silent. Future generations deserve and need to live in a fertile, productive and naturally noisy world.”
“It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged.” – Rachel Carson, Silent Spring.
Rachel Carson was met with fierce resistance from agrochemical companies, dismissing and undermining her scientific studies as nonsense – a tactic that the industry still uses today.
According to Allied Market Research, the global agrochemicals market is projected to reach $315.3 billion by 2030, compared to $231.0 billion in 2020.
Syngenta, one of the top four pesticide manufacturers, reported a 26% increase in profits for the first three months of 2022, a staggering $8.9 billion.
According to US scholars Howard and Hendrickson, up to 66% of the world sales of agrochemicals are in the hand of just four multinationals (Syngenta-ChemChina, Bayer-Monsanto, Basf and Corteva), whereas three of the same companies control half of global trade in seeds.
The UK continues to allow Syngenta manufacturing facility in Huddersfield to produce and export deadly pesticide paraquat to developing countries. Paraquat has been banned for use in the UK and the EU since 2007.
There’s clear evidence that the agrochemical industry is making substantial profits at the expense of people’s health and lives, as well as contributing to damage to environmental degradation and biodiversity loss.
Corporate lobby groups continue to deploy “science” to manipulate the public and pour money into the political system to get policy and regulation that tips in their favour and increases their profits.
Pesticide companies have been known to adopt tactics similar to the tobacco industry, including reportedly ghostwriting safety studies, going after scientists who publish unfavourable research, and putting out misinformation designed to undermine evidence that their products cause harm and that effective non-chemical alternatives exist.
In the UK, pesticide regulation is another issue of concern. If weakened, as a result of Brexit, there is a real danger of massive increase in pesticide harms.
Weakening of pesticide standards via trade deals with countries where pesticide regulation is less rigorous, like Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico and the United States, means the population in the UK may be consuming products with high level of pesticides, which are already banned in the country. The UK should be banning the imports of food produced with banned pesticides.
UK agriculture and farmers will also be directly affected by allowing crops grown more cheaply on a larger scale to be imported. This could lead to UK farmers having no option but to resort to the use of more pesticides domestically.
Hundreds of environmental laws that protect nature and our health in the UK, including chemical contamination, are set to expire in December 2023 and removed from UK law under a new government bill. This decision could have serious implications to our health and the environment; at a moment we should be doing everything we can to stop the damage we have caused to our planet.
According to a report released in January 2022 by the United Nations Human Rights Council, the toxification of planet Earth is intensifying. While a few toxic substances have been banned or are being phased out, the overall production, use and disposal of hazardous chemicals continues to increase rapidly.
“The chemical war is never won, and all life is caught in its violent crossfire.” – Rachel Carson, Silent Spring.
Climate change, the energy and food crises are real issues and currently affecting most of our lives in one way or another. It’s our duty to get involved and push world leaders, politicians, corporations, regulators, the ones in power and able to make concrete changes, to address these issues immediately, including the chemical war on our health and the environment.
According to the United Nations projections, the world population will increase to 8.5 billion by 2030, as humanity faces one of their biggest challenges, food insecurity. Almost 193 million people in 53 countries suffered acute food insecurity in 2021.
Major producers around the world need to turn away from the damaging industrial agrochemicals and pesticides that are magnifying the current issues and explore new innovative techniques to ensure the world’s food security for the future.
Approximately USD 44tn of economic output – more than half of global annual GDP – is moderately or highly reliant on natural capital. Yet, humans have already transformed more than 70% of the Earth’s land area from its natural state, causing unparalleled environmental degradation and contributing significantly to global warming, according to UNCCD Global Land Outlook latest report.
“Our health, our economy, our well-being depends on land. Our food, our water, the air we breathe are all coming from the land, at least partially,” said Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UNCCD, in a call with reporters. “Humanity has already altered 70 percent of the land. This is a major, major figure.”
If degradation of the land keeps increasing at this rate, scientists predict that there will be large-scale food supply disruption, increase in biodiversity loss, extinction, more zoonotic diseases and decline human health, giving rise to poverty, hunger and pollution.
“Time is short, and the situation is dire,” said Qu Dongyu, the Direct-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). He added there needed to be a “transformation of agrifood systems to be more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable”.
Agroecology & Biocontrols VS Industrial Agriculture & Pesticides
The world’s industrial food systems haven’t found a solution to the food and biodiversity crises yet, mainly due to the fact that the solution may not appeal to the agribusiness giants, including the agrochemical industry, governments and world development banks, who usually seem to set the agenda and policies for the sector.
A report by the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), ‘Who Will Feed Us?’, mentions that small-scale producers provide food to 70% of the world, while using only 25% of the resources.
After all, there’s a solution to these crises available, a solution that serves people’s interest and the environment, instead of agribusiness corporations, public development banks and governments. We should be supporting agroecology as the solution to the food and biodiversity crises.
According to UNFSS, we don’t need “sustainable intensification”, “climate-smart agriculture” or ‘nature-positive solutions,” which often greenwash corporate agendas. Millions of smallholder farmers, fishermen, pastoralists, agricultural and rural workers, and entire indigenous communities practice agroecology, a way of life and a form of resistance to an unfair economic system that puts profit before life.
Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN-UK) are the only UK charity focused solely on tackling the problems caused by pesticides and promoting safe and sustainable alternatives in agriculture, urban areas, homes and gardens. PAN-UK promotes agroecological practices, guiding and supporting farmers across the world.
Agroecology practices include putting farmers first, promoting soil health, biodiversity and natural ecosystem function, integrating science with knowledge and practice, promoting complexity over simplicity, minimising waste and optimising energy.
According to PAN-UK, less than 0.1% of pesticides applied for pest control reach their target pests (Pimental, 1995). Replacing chemicals that cause harm to our health and biodiversity, including soil degradation, is essential. Agroecology improves farmers’ profitability, yield, health, food security, and better opportunities for women farmers.
Pesticides can damage our health, biodiversity, wildlife, pollute the air we breathe, the water we drink, soil, plants and everything else it touches. It’s also the cause of suicide and accidental deaths mainly in the global south. These toxic chemicals must be replaced with biological control or biopesticides.
Biocontrol
Biological control, or natural control, is a component of an integrated pest management strategy. It’s the reduction of pest populations by natural enemies, biological control of insects, weeds and plant diseases. Biocontrol is safer for the end-user and the environment.
The approval process and authorisation of innovative biocontrol is still slow, complex and differs from country to country. There is an urgent need to rethink data requirements on risk assessments and also create a worldwide integrated and simplified regulatory system, so every country is on the same page. This would also facilitate trade between countries and at the same time help to reverse biodiversity loss globally.
“We need a strong voice lobbying for biocontrols at the highest levels of government”, mentioned Nick Mole, PAN-UK policy officer at the World BioProtection Awards 2022.
Since Brexit, the UK’s deregulation plans on pesticides and GMO food have caused some concern, including possible free trade agreements with countries with lower food standards. The UK population may be consuming products with high level of pesticides, including unlabelled genetically engineered foods that may be available as early as 2023. Are we prepared to accept this?
“The indirect consequence is that people are starving in Africa because we are eating more and more organic products”, said, Erik Fyrwald, the CEO of Chinese-owned agrochemical giant Syngenta, to NZZ. This statement showed his opposition to organic farming.
Syngenta produces pesticides and GM seeds. The company’s Huddersfield factory exported a staggering 12,000 tonnes of the herbicide Paraquat and others in 2020. Paraquat was banned for use in the UK since 2007, as it’s been linked to be lethal to humans causing kidney failure, liver damage, DNA damage, Parkinson’s disease and death.
A very interesting move from Syngenta Crop Protection AG is their recent acquisition of two products, NemaTrident® and UniSpore®, from UK-based biocontrol technology developer Bionema. Is this a sign that change may be under way?
With the right support from governments, farmers are keen to accept more sustainable solutions to protect their crops, retailers and the public are open and interested in healthier products and protecting the environment, therefore legislators should be on their side facilitating this process, turning this into a win-win situation.
This is time for corporations, scientists, environmentalists, activists, farmers, growers, the public, governments, legislators, regulators, and the entire world to come together and accept that change is essential to our survival and it must happen now!
Demand from British food consumers are unknowingly fuelling the poisoning of people and wildlife in the Amazon in a “hidden scandal”, according to the Soil Association.
Chicken sold in a number of UK supermarkets is reared on soya feed grown in toxic pesticide heavy lands within Brazil’s Amazon region, highlights the Soil Association‘s new ‘Stop Poison Poultry’ campaign.
Launching a petition calling for action, Soil Association Campaigns Advisor, Cathy Cliff, said: “British shoppers should be able to walk into a supermarket and buy food that isn’t harming children, killing bees, or threatening rare and treasured wildlife thousands of miles away”.
According to a Soil Association survey carried out in January 2022, none of the 10 leading UK supermarkets are monitoring or restricting the use of highly hazardous pesticides in their soya supply chains. Soya linked to pesticide poisonings in Brazil is exported to the UK to feed livestock, primarily chickens.
“Our research has found that the 10 leading UK supermarkets are all ensnared in a broken system that is damaging communities, animals and ecosystems. British retailers are already taking good steps to address deforestation in their soya supply chains, and now we need them to address these hazardous pesticides”, said Cathy.
“The scale of highly hazardous pesticide use in Brazil is terrifying, as is our chicken’s industry reliance on these soya crops. It is a hidden scandal that both British shoppers and farmers are largely blind to, and it must no continue – we must stop the poisoning associated with UK poultry farming”, added Cathy.
Brazil is the world’s third largest user of pesticides, only behind China and the US.
President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration has recently incorporated a presidential decree amending the 1989 pesticides law, by making the approval process of pesticides even more flexible, including the approval of chemicals that have already been banned in other countries.
Most of the pesticides used on Brazilian soya are banned for use in the UK, but some are being produced and sold abroad by companies operating out of Britain and Europe.
One example is highly hazardous pesticide paraquat, which is manufactured by Chinese ChemChina owned Syngenta in Huddersfield, banned for use in the UK and associated with poisonings abroad.
Recently, the Landworkers’ Alliance (LWA), representing smaller and ecological farmers, has demanded the UK government stops the export of paraquat and other pesticides that are banned for use in the UK, but still made here.
Brazil, Soya and Pesticides
The Amazon region has been suffering from deforestation due to many official policies, with large natural areas replaced by monoculture with an indiscriminate spread of pesticides. Soy cultivation is a major driver of deforestation in the Amazon basin, with 80% destined for animal feed.
Soya beans are Brazil’s largest export to the UK, worth approximately 220 million USD in 2020 and these crops account for 60% of the country’s pesticide use. Brazil’s pesticide use has risen to a staggering 900% since 1990.
These chemicals are contaminating surface and groundwater, the soil, killing bees, bugs, and the animals that eat those insects, are being found with a cocktail of chemicals in their bodies. Between 2013 and 2017, more than 1 billion bees were lost due to pesticide poisoning in Brazil, including honeybees and wild bees.
According to ABRASCO, the Brazilian Association of Public Health, 70,000 people, including children, who are usually the most severely affected, suffer from acute and chronic pesticide poisonings in Brazil every year.
There are 150 pesticide products approved by the Brazilian government for use on soya. Of the 22 most commonly used in Brazilian soya production, 80% are classified as ‘highly hazardous’, and of these 66% are not approved for use in the EU or UK, including:
Paraquat, a herbicide which is ‘fatal if inhaled’, associated with farmer suicides, and exported by Syngenta, a company operating out of Britain;
Acefate, an organophosphate (OP) insecticide used on food crops, as well as a seed treatment. It’s known to be ‘highly toxic to bees’;
Chlorpyrifos(CPF), a broad-spectrum chlorinated organophosphate (OP), known to be ‘highly toxic to bees’ and ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’;
Diuron, a herbicide ‘likely to be carcinogenic to humans at high doses’;
Imadacloprid, an insecticide known to be ‘highly toxic to bees’.
The Brazilian Association of Collective Health estimates that pesticides contaminate approximately 70% of food consumed by Brazilians, and they drink nearly 7.5 L of pesticides per year – the highest per capita consumption rate in the world.
According to a recent study published by MDPI, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, there are numerous toxic effects of pesticides, particularly inflicting rural workers, inducing from hematological abnormalities, DNA damage, cell death, skin and eye irritations, pain, infertility, altered hormone levels, fatigue, tremours, hearing loss, neurological symptoms, miscarriage, fetal malformation, effects on cardiac, muscular and development of related metabolic diseases, overweight, underweight, insulin resistance, diabetes and various types of cancer.
Source: MDPI – Impacts of Pesticides on Human Health in the Last Six Years in Brazil (March 2022)
The Soil Association is calling for UK supermarkets to ‘clean’ UK supply chains, has lined up some proposals/solutions to be taken by the government in order to address this issue. They are also asking for the British public to get involved and sign the petition.
We are living challenging times and it’s often easy to forget how much we are all connected and how much we influence each other’s lives and the world.
Our actions as consumers have a strong direct impact not only on our health, but also on the health of people living some 5,529 miles away in Brazil, as well as on wildlife and the environment. It’s up to us to get involved and make powerful positive changes to all living creatures and our planet!
‘Seeing is believing’; a widely used phrase and highlights a human characteristic that is perhaps at the heart of some significant health threats humanity is facing.
The current Covid-19 pandemic has brought many to the realisation that ‘invisible’ threats can be killers and safety can only be achieved through a belief in the invisible, followed by a series of steps to protect oneself against the danger, i.e. mask wearing, social distancing and vaccinations. When there is nothing to see, should we deny existence? Another such obscure killer is the wide spread use of toxic pesticides.
Pesticides have been used for centuries in various settings; in agriculture, sprayed on our lawns, parks and playing fields, streets, pavements, public spaces, etc.
Thanks to science and extensive research, we now have a much deeper and wider knowledge of the damage pesticides can cause not only to our health, but also to biodiversity, the air we breath, the water we drink, soil, plants, wildlife and everything else it touches.
How are we exposed to pesticides and what are their effects?
Exposure to pesticides can occur in various ways: by inhalation (breathing), dermal (absorbed by our skins), or ingestion (water and food).
These chemicals can cause acute toxicity, meaning that after one single episode of inhalation, ingestion or skin contact, it can cause harmful or lethal effects. The results can be presented as an allergic reaction; eye and skin irritation, headaches, and in extreme reactions confusion and loss of consciousness, respiratory complications, seizures and death.
They can also cause chronic toxicity (long term), after being exposed over a long period of time. Long-term exposure has been linked to many health issues, including depression, anxiety, ADHD, Parkinson’s disease, asthma, attention deficit and cancer, including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and leukaemia.
Pesticides used in agriculture can leave traces of chemicals in our food known as residues. Residues detected on a specific food item will depend which pesticides are used and how persistent they are. Some food may contain one single residue or multiple ones (‘cocktail effect’).
An alternative to consuming food containing different types of pesticide residues is to opt for organic products. Obviously, not everyone is able to afford them.
Are pesticides eliminated after peeling and washing fruit and vegetables?
Washing and peeling may reduce exposure, but some residues are present not just on the surface, but within the entire piece. So, by simply washing, it will not eliminate residues within the food item.
According to Pesticide Action Network UK, 123 different pesticide residues were found in our food in the UK, some of which are linked to serious health problems, such as cancer and disruption of the hormone system (endocrine disruption), including reduction of semen quality and fertility, genital malformations, prostate cancer, diabetes, obesity, early puberty, cysts in the ovaries, uterus anomalies, breast cancer, hyper and hypo thyroidism and thyroid tumours.
We should all be aware of the implications caused by ingesting food containing not only one but also multiple pesticides (‘cocktail effect’), especially if consumed over a long period of time, during our childhood, adult life and especially during pregnancy.
The ‘Dirty Dozen’
Pesticide Action Network UK have produced a list of the ‘dirtiest’ fruit and vegetables based on UK government data, revealing the percentage of samples that contain residues of more than one pesticide. The list is called the ‘Dirty Dozen’. The results reveal a staggering amount of pesticides found on the ‘Dirty Dozen’ products, more than one hundred different types.
Based on data from PAN UK analysis in September 2021 of the UK Government’s Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food (PRiF) annual reports between 2018 and 2020, the following products are considered to contain the highest levels of pesticides residues:
Grapefruit (99%); soft citrus, such as mandarins and satsumas (96%); strawberries (89%); oranges (87%); dried grapes (82%); herbs (81%); pre-packed salad (81%); grapes (80%); lemons (75%); pears (69%); peaches and nectarines (67%), spinach (57%).
According to PAN UK, inadequacy in the UK government’s pesticide testing has been reported. The number of annual samples was reduced in over a quarter from 3,450 in 2016 to 2,460 in 2020.
There is also inconsistency in the way that some products are tested. For example, tomatoes might be tested one year and not the next, and only a small amount of tomatoes consumed in the UK are tested.
In 2020, the UK government chose to test just three types of fruit and vegetables included on the 2019 ‘Dirty Dozen’, leaving aside three-quarters of the previous year’s produce of concern.
UK trade deals
“How the UK chooses to govern pesticides will have profound implications for the health of citizens, the natural environment, and the future of UK farming”, said Sarah Haynes, collaboration coordinator at Pesticide Action Network UK.
UK trade deals with Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Mexico and the United States, may open doors to more products containing high level of pesticides.
Brazil is the world’s third largest user of pesticides, only behind China and the US, allowing almost double the amount of highly hazardous pesticides to be used (131), compared to the UK (73). For instance, lemons grown in Brazil have 200 times the amount of insecticide dimethoate than in the UK. Dimethoate has been linked to cancer and is banned in the UK.
A total of 33 organophosphates (synthetic compounds that are neurotoxic in humans) are permitted in Australia, 26 in the US and 4 in the UK and EU. Australian grapes can contain 6,000 times the amount of the fungicide iprodione than UK grapes. Iprodione is linked to cancer and is a suspected endocrine disrupter.
Canadian wheat is allowed to contain 100 times the amount of the herbicide diuron than UK wheat. Diuron is a suspected endocrine disruptor with links to cancer. It can also negatively impact sexual function and fertility.
“This flies in the face of Government promises not to sign a trade deal which compromises UK environmental protection and food standards. After all the warm words, it looks like the UK-Australia trade deal will finally reveal which standards the Government is willing to fight for. Any weakening of pesticide standards in an Australia deal makes it all but inevitable we will do the same with the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership), allowing sub-standard imports from 11 countries”, said Josie Cohen, Head of Policy and Campaigns at PAN UK.
These trade deals have greater ramifications. It means UK farmers will have to compete with cheaper products containing higher level of pesticides, forcing them to follow the same route or forced to get out of business altogether. This will be catastrophic for everyone.
According to a report released in January 2022 by the United Nations Human Rights Council, the toxification of planet Earth is intensifying. While a few toxic substances have been banned or are being phased out, the overall production, use and disposal of hazardous chemicals continues to increase rapidly.
Production of chemicals doubled between 2000 and 2017, and is expected to double again by 2030 and triple by 2050. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the result of this growth will be increased exposure and worsening health and environmental impacts unless ambitious, urgent and worldwide collaborative action is taken by all stakeholders and in all countries.
Why is it that pesticides, which are a class of chemicals, do not have to go through a testing regime similar to the clinical trials that pharmaceutical drugs are put through? Someone must urgently answer this question!
A recently released report from Pesticide Action Network (PAN-UK), reveals that a potential trade deal between the UK and Brazil is being considered. If a trade deal between both countries goes ahead, the UK population could be consuming products containing higher level of pesticides, which could have a direct impact not only on public health, but also on the environment.
“The UK Trade Secretary is promoting trade with Brazil as providing ‘real opportunities to go further on green trade’. Meanwhile, Brazil’s overuse of highly toxic pesticides is contributing to the destruction of the Amazon and other crucially important ecosystems, contaminating water and poisoning farmworkers and communities. And yet the government has provided no detail on how it will ensure that Brazilian food sold on UK shelves is not contributing to the global climate and nature crises”, said Josie Cohen, Head of Policy and Campaigns at Pesticide Action Network, PAN UK.
Brazil is the world’s third largest user of pesticides, only behind China and the US, allowing almost double the amount of highly hazardous pesticides, HHP’s, to be used (131), compared to the UK (73). For instance, lemons grown in Brazil have 200 times the amount of insecticide dimethoate than in the UK. Dimethoate has been linked to cancer and is banned in the UK.
The UK already imports large amounts of food (meat, fruit and vegetables) and soya for animal feed from Brazil. Food imports are subject to UK safety limits for the amount of pesticides residues allowed to a particular item, but no limits are placed on feed.
Soya beans are Brazil’s largest export to the UK, worth approximately 220 million USD in 2020. The majority of it is genetically modified (GM), and at least 90 per cent of it is fed to animals.
A large amount of the meat British people buy, including beef, dairy and chicken reared in the UK, have been fed on soya grown on deforested land using toxic pesticides.
“Most UK consumers have no idea that some of the meat they are eating has been fed on soya grown using highly toxic chemicals. Right now, the UK government is talking a good game on reducing pesticide harms in the UK, but appears to have no problem with exporting our environmental and human health footprints to Brazil”, mentioned Vicky Hird, Sustainable Farming Campaign Coordinator at Sustain.
In February 2021, Defra signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the Brazilian government with the intention to facilitate trade in agribusiness between Brazil and the UK. The Brazilian agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina Corrêa da Costa Dias, nicknamed by Brazilians as “poison muse”, said that the UK would eventually become more aligned with international rules on food safety.
“The UK government continues to pursue increased agricultural trade with Brazil, but the intensification of agricultural production there has been linked with deforestation and highly hazardous pesticides which harm wildlife and ecosystems. The UK should ensure that it is not contributing to the problem”, said Dr. Emily Lydgate, specialist in environmental law at the University of Sussex.
Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has continuously developed a close and special relationship with pesticides. He recently incorporated a presidential decree (10.833/2021), amending the 1989 pesticides law, by making the approval process of pesticides even more flexible, including the approval of chemicals that have already been banned in the US and Europe.
With the new amendment, chemicals that cause cancer, genetic mutations and fetal malformation, will be given approval to be used as well as manufactured, if a “safe exposure limit” is determined.
Additionally, the current Brazilian legislation does not provide for a minimum period for the renewal of pesticides licensing. Pesticides that have been in the Brazilian market for more than 4 decades are still being used today, without ever undergoing an assessment of environmental and health issues.
The approval process of pesticides in Brazil has never been made easier, as more power has been given to the Ministry of Agriculture on the decision making process, leaving ANVISA (National Health Surveillance Agency) and IBAMA (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) excluded from the final decision.
An increase in agriculture exports from Brazil to the UK may also pose a threat to British agriculture, increasing the pressure on farmers to escalate the use of pesticides to compete with cheaper products grown on a larger scale.
Beef and soya production in Brazil plays a major role in the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, as well as devastation of the Cerrado region, the home of 5% of the world’s plant and animal species.
Pesticides have also contaminated Brazilian water. According to a 2021 study, freshwater bodies in 80% of Brazilian states are now contaminated with herbicides such as glyphosate, posing a direct threat to aquatic species and ecosystems.
Drinking water in Brazil can contain glyphosate levels of up to 500 micrograms per litre. In the UK, the current for drinking water is 0.1 microgram per litre, 5000 times lower than the level in Brazil.
Another catastrophe reported on a regular basis is the countless poisoning incidents in Brazil caused by pesticides aerial spraying. A report published by Publica estimated that between 2007 and 2017, pesticides poisoned approximately 6,500 children, all under the age of 14.
In September 2020, Science Direct reported adverse effects of pesticides on the function of our immune system, which could affect how we fight Covid-19. Additionally, a new study performed in human lung airway cells is one of the first to show a potential link between exposure to organophosphate pesticides and increased susceptibility to COVID-19 infection.
“We have identified a basic mechanism linked with inflammation that could increase susceptibility to COVID-19 infection among people exposed to organophosphates,” said Saurabh Chatterjee, PhD, from the University of South Carolina and a research health specialist at the Columbia VA Medical Center and leader of the research team.
Pesticide Action Network UK has made some key recommendations to the UK government, including putting additional measures in place to ensure that Brazilian agricultural imports are not driven pesticide-related harms to either human health or the environment in Brazil.
Another proposal would be not allowing any weakening of UK pesticide standards as a result of an increase in trade with Brazil and preventing UK farmers from being disadvantaged by cheap food imports produced to weaker pesticide standards in Brazil.
The impact pesticides cause to our health and the environment is undeniable. It doesn’t only affect human life, but also the Amazon rainforest, the Cerrado, the soil, the air, wildlife and the water, speeding up the destruction of the world’s most precious ecosystems.
We only have one life and one planet. It is our duty to protect them both in order to guarantee our survival!
Monica Piccinini 