TUESDAY’S EUROPEAN Parliament vote on pesticides poses well documented risks to viable crop production across the EU. But it has emerged that if the legislation is passed there will also be a devastating effect on the fight against malaria, writes Ewan Pate, farming editor.

Over a million people die from malaria every year, mainly in the world’s poorest countries.

According to a new report from the Campaign for Fighting Diseases (CFD) effective malaria control relies on insecticides, many of which are derived from commercial agrochemicals.

Apparently if these insecticides are banned in the EU, it is unlikely they will continue to be manufactured for public health uses, as there is almost no profit to be found there. Insecticide supplies will fall and prices will rise, leaving millions at greater risk of malaria.

The new legislation could also prevent people in poor countries from using EU-banned insecticides.

In 2005, for example, the EU threatened to impose trade restrictions on Uganda if it used the insecticide DDT for malaria control.

Uganda’s economic reliance on agricultural exports to the EU meant it was compelled to sacrifice one of the most effective methods of malaria control, resulting in thousands of unnecessary deaths.

This directly undermines the EU’s support for the Millennium Development Goals—one of which is to halt and reverse the incidence of malaria by 2015.

The UK’s Pesticides Safety Directorate (PSD) has been monitoring the EU proposals as they have moved towards next week’s vote. It estimates that 23% of pesticides will not satisfy stringent approval criteria which are hazard based rather than risk based as at present.

The likelihood is that 22 active substances found in scores of insecticides will be banned. Indeed it appears that there will be very few insecticides left in the armoury.

Some 160 scientists and malaria experts from around the world have already signed a petition urging the EU to re-think the legislation.

Signatories include Professor Sir Richard Feachem, former head of the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; Professor Sir David King, former chief scientist to the UK government; and Professor Paul Reiter, a medical entomologist who has advised the World Health Organization and US governments on insect-born diseases.

Professor Reiter said, “It is unclear whether this new legislation can improve health or the environment in the EU.

“What is certain is that the health of millions who suffer—and die—from malaria and other insect-borne diseases in less developed countries will be seriously compromised if invaluable insecticides are banned from the market.”

Philip Stevens, director of the Campaign for Fighting Diseases and report co- author said, “The EU makes much of its self-proclaimed status as the ‘the world’s largest donor of official development assistance.’

“It seems perverse in the extreme that it may enforce new regulations that will inflict unnecessary disease and suffering on millions.”

Meanwhile, nearer home the lobbying continues as Tuesday’s vote looms closer.

NFU Scotland soft fruit and field vegetable chairman, Blairgowrie grower Peter Thomson, was in Brussels earlier this week with cereals policy manager Peter Loggie. They met MEPs and members of other farming unions in an intensive attempt to gain support.

Mr Loggie said, “It was an uphill struggle to say the least. Many MEPs are put off by the complexity of the proposals and the debate has, up to this point been dominated by emotion and not by scientific fact which is very frustrating.”

The baton has now been passed to NFUS cereals committee chairman John Picken, who will travel to Strasbourg on Monday.

“We made great efforts to secure the signatures of 40 MEPs to submit amendments to the text and we hope very much that these will be accepted by the full parliament,” he said.

“It has been very difficult to determine how the vote might go, however, as the parties are split on the matter.

“That is why it is so important to persist right until the votes are cast so that we can make sure we have spoken to any MEP who might not have decided which way to vote yet.”

Last night Scotland’s cabinet secretary for rural affairs Richard Lochhead confirmed he had written to all seven Scottish MEPs asking them to make sure they do not vote for legislation that would adversely affect crop production.