On 6 February 2024, in the face of strong opposition from farmers in the EU and their trade bodies such as COPA COGECA, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the abandonment of the proposed Sustainable Use of Plant Protection Products Regulation, which contained the Commission’s aim to halve pesticide use. This had been an important part of the Commission’s ‘Farm to Fork’ strategy and its Green Deal.
A commitment to reduce the overall risk of pesticides by half by 2030 was also agreed by parties to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022, with strong support from the European Union. It is unclear how that will be delivered.
This article considers some aspects of the evidence of pesticide impacts on human health and biodiversity, which are less well represented in the current polarised political climate around farming in Europe.
The European Environment Agency, in a report “How pesticides impact human health and ecosystems in Europe” published in April 2023, noted that “European agricultural production relies on high volumes of chemical pesticides to maintain crop yields” – about 350,000 tonnes per year. The Report noted that -
“In 2020, one or more pesticides were detected above thresholds of concern at 22% of all monitoring sites in rivers and lakes across Europe. 83% of agricultural soils tested in a 2019 study contained pesticide residues.
Pesticide pollution drives biodiversity loss in Europe. It causes significant declines in insect populations, threatening the critical role they play in food production.
A large-scale human biomonitoring study conducted between 2014 and 2021 across five European countries found that at least two pesticides were present in the bodies of 84% of survey participants. Pesticide levels were consistently higher in children than in adults.”
Health implications of pesticides in foods
The ‘cocktail effect’ of pesticides in combination is not reflected in the way that maximum residue levels are set by regulatory agencies, which tend to research the potential impacts of one substance at a time.
It is for that reason that Pesticide Act Network UK, ‘PAN UK’ , publishes an annual list of the ‘Dirty Dozen’ fruits and vegetables containing such multiple residues. According to that list, for the tests undertaken, this applies to 85% of peaches/nectarines, 84% of grapes, 83% of strawberries, 81% of cherries, 73% of spinach, 72% of apples, and so on. It also applies now to more than 50% of bread, and more than 50% of wine.
For the UK, the situation will have been aggravated by there being 36 pesticides licensed for use in the UK but which are banned in the EU, and again according to PAN UK these include 12 carcinogens, 9 endocrine disruptors, 8 ‘developmental or reproductive toxins’, 2 cholinesterase inhibitors and 1 acutely toxic substance. The UK government and devolved governments within the UK have yet to sign off on the revised draft National Action Plan on Pesticides, which was supposed to address both health and biodiversity, and which should now be updated to include the UK’s new commitments under the Global Biodiversity Framework. The consultation on this Plan closed three years ago in February 2021.
Some studies suggest that the people most directly affected by the health impacts of pesticides are pesticide users, and those living near the sites of their application: which must therefore include many farmers, farm workers and farmers’ families.
Pesticide impacts on biodiversity
As recently as 19 December 2022, 188 countries agreed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, setting out ambitious and demanding goals and targets for reversing the worldwide decline in biodiversity that is putting a millions species at risk of extinction.
Target 7 of that Framework states that the Parties will –
“Reduce pollution risks and the negative impact of pollution from all sources, by 2030, to levels that are not harmful to biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, considering cumulative effects, including: reducing excess nutrients lost to the environment by at least half including through more efficient nutrient recycling and use; reducing the overall risk of pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals by at least a half including through integrated pest management, based on science, taking into account food security and livelihoods; and also preventing, reducing and working towards eliminating plastics pollution.”
Therefore, the majority of the world’s governments concluded in 2022 that one necessary step towards addressing really critical biodiversity loss and species extinctions was to reduce by half the overall risk of pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals, and to do that by 2030, but as we have seen, just over a year later, EU legislation to give legal effect to that aim was abandoned by the European Commission.
Conclusions
If the European Environment Agency is correct about more than one pesticide being found in 84% of those sampled across five countries, particularly affecting children, then it suggests that pesticide regulation cannot simply take account of the interests of farmers and producers, because it affects nearly all of us (including farmers). That is underlined by the prevalence of pesticide ‘cocktails’ in more than half of the foods that we commonly eat. Failure by governments to address these health implications through balanced regulation may result in consumer action, for example to demand from supermarkets produce which is free from pesticide residues.
Similarly, if pesticides are having a critical effect on biodiversity and insect populations, that will also affect farmland, pollinators, rivers and bird populations, and is a legitimate concern to everyone, and not just farmers and producers.
What seems to be needed is more transparency and better information about pesticide prevalence and impacts, more dialogue and less polarising protest, and a policy that gives effect to progressive reduction of impacts on both health and the environment.
Farmers and producers have legitimate interests and concerns which need to be fully taken into account . These include the prevalence of pesticides in imported produce under the terms of new trade agreements. But at the moment farmers’ leaders are driving the debate in Europe as if health and environmental impacts did not also matter. As Rachel Carson pointed out in Silent Spring in 1962, “The ultimate answer is to use less toxic chemicals so that the public hazard from their misuse is greatly reduced.”