Fungicides

This report reviews the existing scientific evidence regarding the impact of organic food on human health from an EU perspective and the potential contribution of organic management practices to the development of healthy food systems. Very few studies have directly addressed the effect of organic food on human health. They indicate that organic food may reduce the risk of allergic disease and obesity, but this evidence is not conclusive. Consumers of organic food tend to have healthier dietary patterns overall.

Expenditure for discovery and development of a new crop protection product is now approaching the $ 300 million mark, while at the same time underpinning information gaps in environmental safety assessment. Large information gaps also exist for the safety of a vast number of existing chemicals in commerce. Addressing safety information gaps of new and existing chemicals with increased conventional toxicity testing would skyrocket costs and animal usage and contravene the 3Rs principles to refine, reduce, and replace animal testing.

The idea that pesticides are essential to feed a fast-growing global population is a myth, according to UN food and pollution experts. A new report, being presented to the UN human rights council on Wednesday, is severely critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions”.

The greater prairie chicken (Tympanuchus cupido) once dominated the American Midwest, but today the bird is in trouble in many parts of its historic range. It is no longer found in Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas or Wyoming, states where it once flourished. And in Illinois, an estimated 186 birds remain in two adjoining counties in the southern part of the state. "They used to be all over the state," said Illinois Natural History Survey conservation biologist Mark Davis, who participated in a genetic analysis of the Illinois birds.

French farmers could reduce their pesticide consumption by 30% without losing profitability, a new study published in the review Nature Plants has revealed. More than three quarters of France’s farms could cut their pesticide use if they adapted their agricultural practices. According to the study published by the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), 77% of the country’s agricultural businesses could slash their use of pesticides without suffering financially.

At least 45 lochs around Scotland’s coast have been contaminated by toxic pesticides from fish farms that can harm wildlife and human health, according to data released by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa). Levels of chemicals used to kill the sea lice that plague caged salmon have breached environmental safety limits more than a hundred times in the last 10 years. The chemicals have been discharged by 70 fish farms run by seven companies.

Pesticide residue from rice polders and nutrient discharge from urban settlements are aggravating the pollution of Vembanad Lake, playing havoc with the fragile wetland ecosystem and jeopardising its tourism potential. A study conducted by the Regional Agricultural Research Station (RARS), Kumarakom, under Kerala Agricultural University (KAU), has reported a high level of eutrophication of the lake, a Ramsar site and the hub of backwater tourism in Kerala. Data collected by the environmental surveillance centre at RARS indicate that the organic pollution of the lake is getting worse.