Sir,
In his article about food security, Lord Haskins is right to highlight the role of existing and new technologies to help us grow more food from a limited land area and with greater extremes of weather (Only free trade can guarantee food security, 5 August). Why then is the European Union currently considering legislative changes that could remove up to 85% of the pesticides that are currently safely used in the EU?
The UK Government’s Pesticides Safety Directorate’s impact assessment of the legislation concluded that “if the full potential impact of the current Parliament proposals were realised, conventional agriculture in the UK (and much of the EC) as it is currently practised would not be achievable, with major impacts on crop yield and food quality”. Not only would this reduce production at home but it would also compromise imports from other Member States where yields would be reduced and potentially compromise imports from non-EU countries due to legislation on residues.
The Commission may think that this will be an incentive for the industry to develop safer substances to replace those no longer approved but this is totally unrealistic and does not recognise the difficulties of developing new pesticides which can take 10 years from discovery to market. In the meantime, supplies of fresh, affordable, locally produced food would be threatened with no benefit to the consumer whatsoever.
Yours faithfully

Dr Anne Buckenham