Pesticides lobbyists are attempting to prolong the use in Britain of toxic pesticides that are banned in the EU because they pose hazards like cancer, infertility, and groundwater contamination, an Unearthed investigation has found. 

The pesticides lobby group CropLife UK is pressuring ministers to reject a quick ban of the chemicals, which could otherwise happen next year under a planned deal to bring Britain’s agricultural rules closer to Europe’s. 

The group has highlighted 14 pesticides that have been prohibited in the EU since Brexit but are still used in Britain, and claimed that British farmers could lose up to £810 million from reduced yields if the UK moves quickly to EU standards.

However, an Unearthed analysis has found that ten of those substances were banned in the EU because they posed serious hazards to the environment or human health. 

They include dimethomorph, a fungicide that is still sprayed on British strawberries, raspberries and onions, but is banned in the EU after it was found to be damaging to human fertility. They also include another fungicide, benthiavalicarb, that is used on British potato crops but is banned in the EU after it was proposed to be classified as a carcinogen.

Other chemicals on the list were found to pose hazards including groundwater contamination, endocrine disruption, and high risks to wild animals and birds. 

Conservationists and campaigners said that bringing UK pesticide standards back in line with the EU’s would help protect British people and wildlife, and make it easier for British farmers to sell their produce in Europe.

“Since leaving the EU’s regulatory system, the UK’s pesticide standards have fallen sharply behind, putting public health and wildlife at risk,” said Chloe Alexander, chemicals policy and advocacy lead for the conservation network Wildlife and Countryside Link. 

“Delaying re-alignment, as proposed by CropLife, would delay protecting citizens and the environment from chemicals linked to cancer, reductions in fertility, and groundwater pollution,” she added. “The UK must urgently match EU standards and reduce the widespread use of pesticides in order to protect food security and ensure nature’s recovery.”

Nick Mole, UK policy manager for the campaign group Pesticides Action Network UK (PAN UK), said that the planned deal with the EU was an “incredible opportunity” to return the UK to stronger pesticide standards, and would deliver a “massive economic win for British farmers” by  “restoring easy access to their number one export market”. 

He added: “No one voted for Brexit because they wanted more toxic chemicals in their food and fields.”

Unearthed has approached CropLife UK for comment. The group did not provide a statement on the record, but speaking to the Guardian last month its chief executive Dave Bench said that if the UK did not have “a transition period” for the EU deal it could have “very damaging consequences”. 

He told the newspaper that a “cliff-edge scenario” in which Britain immediately adopted EU pesticide rules could be “devastating” for British growers. “At a time of increasing pressure on farm profitability, this could prove a tipping point for many farmers and growers,” he added.

Unearthed understands that CropLife UK does not undertake advocacy work around specific pesticides, and does not consider that it has proposed a specific negotiating position for the UK. 

 

The pesticide gap

The UK is currently negotiating a new “sanitary and phytosanitary” (SPS) deal with the EU, with the aim of removing the red tape that British farmers now face when they sell to Europe. 

Extra border controls and paperwork since Brexit have been a major barrier to UK/EU trade in plants, animals and agricultural products, contributing to a 34% decline in British food and drink exports to the bloc. 

But in order to remove those barriers, the SPS deal will require British farmers to follow the same rules as their EU counterparts, including on pesticides. 

Since Brexit, the EU has banned dozens of pesticides, after finding that they posed serious risks to human health or the environment.  Many of these chemicals are still in use on British farms. 

According to PAN UK’s Nick Mole, the reason they are still used in Britain is that the UK has not had the capacity to carry out the detailed scientific assessments undertaken in Europe when deciding whether to renew a pesticide’s approval. 

“Since Brexit, the UK government has granted automatic licence extensions to dozens of toxic pesticides rather than go through the proper safety assessments,” he told Unearthed.

However, with negotiations underway on an SPS deal that would align UK pesticide regulations with Europe’s, CropLife UK – which represents a host of multinational pesticide companies – is calling on the UK government to “reject” any deal which “does not respect legitimately made [British] decisions”. 

“We need to listen to the science: these chemicals are banned by the EU for good reason,” Gemma Lane, land use policy manager for the Wildlife Trusts. 

Instead, it wants UK negotiators to push for a carve-out that would ensure “little or no change” to British pesticide rules in the “early years” of the SPS deal. 

Last month, the lobby group commissioned and published a report claiming that British farmers could lose between £500m and £810 million in the first year of the deal, if the UK moved immediately to EU pesticide rules in 2027. 

These losses, it says, would come from reduced yields as a result of losing access to pesticides that are currently on the market in Britain. 

According to the report, these include four new pesticides, which are still being assessed in Europe but are already approved here, and 14 older pesticides, which have been prohibited in the EU since Brexit. 

Unearthed analysed the EU regulations for those 14 pesticides, and found that two of them had been banned after being classified as “toxic for reproduction, category 1B”, a classification which means they can harm fertility or babies in the womb. 

Four were banned because of concerns about groundwater contamination, four were found to pose high risks to wild mammals or birds, and seven were classified as endocrine disruptors. 

Endocrine disrupting chemicals can interfere with the body’s hormonal system. Studies have linked human exposure to these chemicals to declining sperm counts, genital malformations, and some cancers. In wildlife, endocrine disruptors have been linked to impaired reproduction and population decreases. 

“We need to listen to the science: these chemicals are banned by the EU for good reason,” Gemma Lane, land use policy manager for the Wildlife Trusts, told Unearthed. 

“They pose a particularly high risk to birds, wild mammals, and humans as they were found to be endocrine disruptors, causing long-term problems with reproduction,” she added. “They contaminate our water and soils, both incredibly diverse ecosystems which, when healthy, contain millions of organisms critical to the wider food chain and our ability to produce food.

“We can’t have a resilient food system or tackle wildlife decline whilst relying on these chemicals.”

The CropLife UK report also complains that, for pesticides that are still approved in both the EU and the UK, the EU has prohibited a number of uses that continue to be permitted in the UK. 

For example, it notes that the EU has banned the use of the controversial weedkiller glyphosate as a “pre-harvest dessicant” which means spraying it on edible crops to dry them out and speed up harvest. In the UK this practice is still allowed.

Similarly, it notes that the EU will only allow the insecticide etoxazole to be used on ornamental plants, which are not grown to be eaten, whereas in the UK it can still be used on tomatoes and aubergines. 

Unearthed found that in the EU this chemical is classified as bioaccumulative (meaning it can build up in living organisms) and toxic, and its use on food crops was prohibited because there were outstanding questions about consumer safety and the “uncertainties are too high”. 

 

A ‘huge blow’

CropLife UK is calling on the government to deliver “a managed approach to alignment, and reject any scenario that does not respect legitimately made GB decisions”. 

According to the report, “managed alignment” means there would be “little or no change” to British pesticide rules in the “early years of the SPS agreement”. Pesticides that are not approved in the EU would remain approved in the UK until they could be assessed “under EU processes, at which point a common decision would apply”.

However, experts and campaigners told Unearthed that they did not think CropLife UK’s proposal was in line with the “common understanding” that was agreed at a UK/EU summit last May – and that the UK attempting to negotiate this position could imperil the SPS deal.

According to the common understanding, the SPS deal needs to deliver “timely dynamic alignment” of Britain’s farming rules with “all the relevant European Union rules”. Exceptions can only be agreed if they do not “lead to lower standards as compared to European Union rules”. 

Ben Reynolds, of the Institute of European Environmental Policy UK, said the government’s priority was for a “deal with the EU that would ease trade barriers for agri-food products, and benefit the majority of UK farmers and consumers.”

The government’s stated intention had been to align with EU pesticide standards, but to seek a “carve-out” in the deal for “precision breeding,” a gene editing technology where Britain’s agricultural rules have diverged from the EU. 

“Any suggestion that the UK would row back on its main commitment for alignment (on pesticides) would mark a huge blow to the likelihood of striking this deal, let alone getting exemptions on other elements of it,” Reynolds added.

Unearthed understands that, by contrast, CropLife UK believes the “managed alignment” approach set out in its report is the only one that is compatible with the terms of the common understanding.

This is because the common understanding states that the UK should “be involved at an early stage” and be able to contribute to the “decision-shaping process” when the EU enacts new rules that the UK would have to adopt under the SPS deal. 

CropLife UK believes that if the UK has to replace thousands of British regulatory decisions with EU decisions that have already been made, this would not meet the requirement for UK involvement in decision-making. That is because those decisions have already been made by the EU, without consideration of the way the pesticides at issue are used in Britain.

CropLife UK is not the only group pushing for a delay to the implementation of EU pesticide rules. The National Farmers Union (NFU) said earlier this month that aligning with EU rules on pesticide use and pesticide residue limits could “bring both benefits, such as the possibility of access to new active substances” and “significant risks, if there is no transition period”. 

In a briefing published in December, the NFU acknowledged that matching EU pesticide standards could give British farmers access to “more than 20 new active substances, mainly biopesticides”. Biopesticides are crop protection products based on natural products such as plant extracts or living microorganisms.

However, the briefing continued: “The NFU does not support the potential ‘hard stop’ to Great Britain’s decisions, and alignment with EU requirements, in June 2027. 

“While we see the end goal is alignment, we believe the transition should be phased, so Great Britain’s decisions on pesticide availability are retained, until the UK government has the chance to represent UK farming in the EU decision-shaping process.”

It added that the NFU was “lobbying government hard” on this issue, and also pushing to ensure that any pesticides being banned in this country are “given reasonable use-up periods – the regulation normally allows 18 months”. 

Martin Lines, chief executive of the Nature Friendly Farming Network acknowledged that EU alignment did bring some significant challenges, “particularly for arable farmers”, and said a 12-month transition period for phasing out EU-banned chemicals would “prevent farmers being left with crops they cannot sell”. 

However, an SPS deal offered “major opportunities” for British farmers, he added. “It opens doors to previously closed markets and unlocks smoother trade, while aligning with the EU’s more robust approach to banning pesticides, based on precautionary principles, would drive up standards in the UK.

“We need to respect the EU’s approach to the issue of chemical use, as we know pesticides have long-term impacts on our soil and water, our health and potentially our food. 

“While the UK has talked about reductions in pesticide use, in reality we have made little progress.

“As significant falls in pesticide usage are essential for a transition to nature-friendly farming, we should be aligning with examples of best practice.”