The Country, Land, and Business Association (CLA) has joined forces with the Crop Protection Association and other leading UK organizations to directly contact the Prime Minister to call for a halt to proposed pesticide legislation, which would remove pesticides deemed to be hazardous if not used correctly. Such a removal would have an adverse affect on the crop farming industry.
CLA President Henry Aubrey-Fletcher said: “If this draft Regulation becomes legislation, UK farmers could lose a great deal of the pesticides they currently use and that have been in use for many years. Such a cut back could mean that crops are more vulnerable to the diseases that periodically sweep Western Europe. In such cases, food prices would go up and we would have to rely more heavily on imports – imports often grown with the pesticides banned here.” Aubrey-Fletcher added: “In the current food security climate, the emphasis in UK farming should be on producing as much food as responsibly as possible, not eliminating pesticides that are used safely every year. Let’s not forget pesticides are used for a reason, to protect our valuable crops from devastating disease.”