Press hyperbole on pesticides detracts from a serious debate

The British press has been at its hyperbolic and inaccurate best this morning. The issue in question is on the proposed directive to re-classify pesticides that comes before the European Parliament's Agriculture committee this week.

The Daily Telegraph started the bidding, declaring that "plans to cut the use of pesticides in European farming could double the price of vegetables", a bid that was matched by the Scottish Daily Record. Not to be outdone, the Daily Express out-trumped them both by stating that "hard-pressed families' fruit and vegetable bills will triple under controversial EU plans", adding that "the number of crops grown in Britain is set to be slashed if bureaucrats give the go-ahead".

Now, if any of the so-called "journalists" that penned this copy had bothered to do their homework, they might have come to somewhat different conclusions.

First of all, we are talking about proposals to phase out dangerous pesticides in our food that carry significant health risks.

Secondly, any such pesticides would not be immediately banned. Instead, most of them would remain on the market until 2016 to allow safer alternative products to be developed, while the process of gaining authorisation for a new farming pesticide will be made much quicker and easier. Even then, if the 2016 timeframe is not sufficient to develop new products, the current proposals provide a further 5 year derogation, to minimise adverse effects on agriculture and crop yields.

In other words, the proposed directive is expressly designed to prevent any adverse effects on the agricultural sector that would lead to higher food prices. There are certainly issues with the proposal - my Labour colleagues and I are not happy with some over-zealous aspects which we will seek to amend - but it is a question of getting the right balance in the detail. What a shame that these newspapers chose to create a scare story that must have had families up and down the country choking on their morning corn-flakes.