Our Government stands alone in Europe in defending hazardous pesticides, says Joanna Blythman
Britain is isolated in Europe once more. This time, we are fighting to retain hazardous pesticides when everyone else with a brain wants to get rid of them. The rest of Europe is supporting measures to phase out pesticides linked with cancer, reproductive toxicity, hormone disruption and genetic mutations - then there's backwoods Britain fighting to keep them, defending our right to die from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and other forms of cancer.
Fortunately for its citizens, the UK might as well save its breath. These measures will be ratified by European ministers shortly, so the British Government's lonely opposition amounts to futile posturing.
What is environment secretary Hilary Benn doing having his ear bent by the Crop Protection Association and the least progressive elements of the NFU? Being a vegetarian, perhaps he feels the need to come over all butch and reactionary to get taken seriously by Farmer Giles and his helpful adviser Pesticide Pete.
The agrichemical lobby went into overdrive before the EU pesticides vote, floating alarmist, barely credible scare stories about UK vegetable production being driven out of existence if the reforms went through. What is any responsible government doing caving in to these vested interests when it should be protecting its citizens from harm?
Just as the public health pioneers of the 19th century made the connection between poor standards of sanitation and diseases such as cholera, our Government must start making the link between pesticides and cancer. The evidence implicating agrichemicals in human illness grows all the time.
A European Parliament study suggests that at least one in every hundred cancers may be directly related to pesticide exposure. That's about 55 cancer diagnoses a week in the UK. For certain types, such as breast cancer, the figure could be much higher. Even the UK Pesticides Safety Directorate has estimated that by removing just seven target pesticides, the healthcare costs of treating exposed farm workers could be reduced by between £354m and £709m over a period of 30 years.
The international Health and Environment Alliance, an NGO based in Brussels, is calling on Governments to set up a national action plan for pesticide reduction. That can't happen soon enough. Britain must stop dragging its feet and get on with it.
Joanna Blythman is a food journalist and author of Bad Food Britain.
Britain is isolated in Europe once more. This time, we are fighting to retain hazardous pesticides when everyone else with a brain wants to get rid of them. The rest of Europe is supporting measures to phase out pesticides linked with cancer, reproductive toxicity, hormone disruption and genetic mutations - then there's backwoods Britain fighting to keep them, defending our right to die from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and other forms of cancer.
Fortunately for its citizens, the UK might as well save its breath. These measures will be ratified by European ministers shortly, so the British Government's lonely opposition amounts to futile posturing.
What is environment secretary Hilary Benn doing having his ear bent by the Crop Protection Association and the least progressive elements of the NFU? Being a vegetarian, perhaps he feels the need to come over all butch and reactionary to get taken seriously by Farmer Giles and his helpful adviser Pesticide Pete.
The agrichemical lobby went into overdrive before the EU pesticides vote, floating alarmist, barely credible scare stories about UK vegetable production being driven out of existence if the reforms went through. What is any responsible government doing caving in to these vested interests when it should be protecting its citizens from harm?
Just as the public health pioneers of the 19th century made the connection between poor standards of sanitation and diseases such as cholera, our Government must start making the link between pesticides and cancer. The evidence implicating agrichemicals in human illness grows all the time.
A European Parliament study suggests that at least one in every hundred cancers may be directly related to pesticide exposure. That's about 55 cancer diagnoses a week in the UK. For certain types, such as breast cancer, the figure could be much higher. Even the UK Pesticides Safety Directorate has estimated that by removing just seven target pesticides, the healthcare costs of treating exposed farm workers could be reduced by between £354m and £709m over a period of 30 years.
The international Health and Environment Alliance, an NGO based in Brussels, is calling on Governments to set up a national action plan for pesticide reduction. That can't happen soon enough. Britain must stop dragging its feet and get on with it.
Joanna Blythman is a food journalist and author of Bad Food Britain.
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