17
Jul
France, UK Elections Indicate Turning Point for Pesticide Regulation on the Global Stage
(Beyond Pesticides, July 17, 2024) National election results in the United Kingdom (UK) and France in recent weeks have shocked the world amidst concerns of a rising tide of right-wing authoritarianism on the eve of European Parliament election results—trending toward what was initially perceived as a conservative majority earlier in June. With new leadership in some of the biggest economies and policy leaders across the Atlantic, environmental and health advocates are hopeful that this will signal a new momentum to advance the mission of transitioning to a fully organic land management and food system that replaces the status quo reliant on toxic petrochemical-based pesticides and fertilizers that exacerbate the climate crisis, biodiversity collapse, and public health fragility.
Citizens of the United Kingdom overwhelmingly voted for the center-left Labour Party, which won an unprecedented margin of 291 seats, winning 412 seats out of the 650 total seats up for grabs. The Conservative Party won just 121 seats, a clear rejection of their nearly fifteen-year leadership position in UK politics. UK-based advocates welcome the news given the Labour Party platform to “ban neonicotinoid pesticides imidacloprid, clothianidin, and thiamethoxam due to their impact on bees,†according to reporting by Politico.
Neonicotinoids have long had adverse effects on wildlife and communities across the nation, including a 2018 study published in PLOS ONE that found despite a partial ban on neonicotinoid insecticides instituted in 2014 — 25% of British honey is still contaminated with residue of this class of insecticides as of the date of publication. Neonic-treated seeds are also of concern to researchers, as documented in a 2020 study published in Science of The Total Environment in which clothianidin was found in roughly half of individual blood plasma samples from 10 out of 11 species of farmland birds.
The issue extends to herbicide-based pesticides as well, with UK-based Sheffield University study published in Nature determining that rotational substitution of various herbicides is ineffective to combat weed resistance. The Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, a non-governmental commission within the Royal Society for Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, released a landmark report in 2019 calling for the transformation of UK food systems by 2030, including steps to transition to local food production rooted in agroecological practices consistent with organic principles for land management and agriculture. See the Daily News article on reflections from advocates in the United Kingdom ahead of Brexit for a broader history of the United Kingdom’s inconsistent record on protecting the public from pesticides under the previous government.
France, meanwhile, faces an interesting future given the roller coaster of events that amounted to a win for advocates of transformational pesticide reform. While no party earned a clear majority to form a new government based on reporting from Reuters, there are opportunities advocates see to build on existing momentum with a broad coalition of elected officials. Before the snap election, the French government announced in May a new plan – Ecophyto 2030 – to cut pesticide use in half by 2030 rather than the original plan that was paused as a result of widespread farmer protests across the European Union. Analysts in AgencyIQ – a vertical of Politico – identified the biggest change in this new plan is the metric used to measure its progress toward the 2030 target. “It replaces the longstanding Number of Unit Doses (NODU) indicator with the EU’s Harmonized Risk Indicator 1 (HRI-1). The NODU indicator has been used exclusively in France; it uses pesticide sales data to generate information about the intensity of pesticide use based on the number of hectares treated with a given active substance,†the authors go on to share why various organizations preferred the NODU indicator. “While green NGOs have long lauded NODU for reflecting efficiencies inherent to organic farming, it has also drawn the ire of agricultural actors [aka farmers reliant on toxic pesticides].â€
France has demonstrated leadership in protecting the public from exposure, being the first country to enforce a strict ban on use in public landscapes and private lawns routinely used by the public in 2022. These public and privately-owned public areas include, but are not limited to, hotels, community gardens, cemeteries, nursing homes and health centers, and sports facilities. There are only some exemptions to this law, including against invasive species and serious public health threats. France’s policy initiative set the tone for the European Union-wide target to cut in half the use of overall toxic pesticide use by 2030. Environmental and health advocates recognize the importance of EU member states in developing comprehensive policies given the U.S. deferment to corporate interests and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack’s rejection of coordinating with EU Farm to Fork (F2F) initiative. Meanwhile, France was one of several nations to vote in favor of the EU ban on use of three neonicotinoid pesticides (clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam) on all field crops in 2017. Separate from the EU-wide policy, France set the tone by maintaining one of the strongest neonic bans in the EU back in 2018 amidst potential threats to relax the ban.
The European Union plays an integral leadership role in the production and distribution of toxic pesticides to nations around the world, including Global Majority nations that face the brunt of the climate crisis. As reported in a 2020 investigation led by Greenpeace, EU- and UK-based pesticide manufacturers are exporting exorbitant quantities of chemical products (approximately +89,000 pounds as of 2018) to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). As a result of continuous imports of glyphosate-based herbicides and other products, farmworkers in South Africa organizing with the Women on Farms Project took to the streets last September to protest Bayer. The increasing frequency of public demonstrations against pesticide manufacturers should not be surprising given the decades of scientific literature that cite direct and acute exposure to pesticides with elevated risk of deadly diseases, including breast cancer. United States export policy allows the shipping of toxic pesticides and genetically engineered food products to Central and South American nations (and worldwide) that do not have the infrastructure to enforce the label restrictions required in the U.S.
To maintain what was perceived as threats to this status quo, earlier this year the U.S. Trade Representative filed a complaint against Mexico for its ban on the importation of genetically engineered corn. This is happening ahead of the 2026 review of the trilateral trade agreement known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)—the agreement that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
In a legal battle that began with the current administration under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), Mexico-based subsidiaries of Monsanto pulled their lawsuit against the 2020 Presidential decree proposing both a glyphosate ban and GE corn ban, according to reporting by Mexico News Daily. Environmental and health advocates are urging President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum to follow through on efforts to ban glyphosate and GE crops after her inauguration on October 1, 2024. A similar trend is occurring in South America, where the Peruvian Congress rejected President Ãngel Manero’s proposal to permit the domestic production and importation of genetically engineered cotton and corn into the nation until 2036, citing preservation of biodiversity as one of the leading factors, according to reports by La República. Ecuador banned GE seeds and crops in its 2008 constitution and Venezuela maintains its ban on GE seeds through its 2015 law but does not ban GE food imports into the country.
Advocates and concerned members of the public are increasingly demanding robust leadership on protections from toxic chemicals and pesticides. Dozens of towns and cities across the European Union are banning pesticides in their jurisdictions, which provides opportunities for national governments to build on their leadership. For more information on the state of organic agriculture in the European Union, please see the Daily News article, Planting the Seeds of Change: Why the European Union Struggles to Meet 2030 Organic Farming Target. See Pesticide-Induced Disease Database to learn more about the adverse impacts of toxic pesticides on human and wildlife health. To learn more about the health, environmental justice, and economic benefits of organic agriculture, see Why Organic?
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
