Denmark Considers Total Pesticide Ban

In response to calls from members of parliament to make the country totally organic by 2010, the Danish government is initiating an assessment of the impacts of a total pesticide ban in the country. The Danish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is establishing a committee of experts to analyze how a ban would affect the country's economy, environment, health, employment and agricultural production. The committee, which will hold its first meeting in late 1997, will deliver a report to the Ministers of Environment and Energy by the end of 1998.

Officials from Denmark's EPA stated that the committee is not charged with making recommendations, only with assessing the feasibility of different plans, including total and partial bans. According to Nina Herskind of the Danish EPA, "the proposal does not automatically mean that Danish agriculture will go totally organic in the next few years, it is just one of the scenarios that we are seriously considering."

The committee of experts will include representatives from government, the food and chemical industry, labor and environmental, health and consumer organizations. It will be assisted by four sub-committees comprised of independent scientific experts. These will study the consequences of a pesticide ban on farming in general; economics and employment; environment and health; and legislative issues. The legislative committee will focus primarily on how such a policy would affect relationships with other European Union (EU) member states.

Jesper Lund-Larsen, an official with the Danish General Workers Union, which has been campaigning to phase out all pesticides, stated, "I hope the committee will recommend a total pesticide phaseout within a couple of years, and we are looking for the rest of the EU to do the same eventually."

The Danish EPA recently announced bans and severe restrictions on ten pesticides it considers "seriously damaging" to health, the environment or both. These include captan, deltamethrin, dichlorvos, diquat, fenarimol, guazatine, iprodione, thiram, trifluralin and vinclozolin. The restrictions will come into effect next year following completion of reviews under the country's re-registration process. This will bring the total number or pesticide bans and severe restrictions in Denmark to approximately 30 since 1994, when Denmark banned atrazine, cyanazine, hexazinone, lindane, paraquat, propachlor and thiabendazole. Bans and severe restrictions on an additional 12 pesticides came into effect earlier this year. These included 2,4-D, dazomet, diazinon, dichlobenil, dichlorprop, dichlorprop-P, maleic hydrazide, MCPA, mecoprop, mecoprop-P, thiophanate-methyl and ziram. In addition, the Danish EPA announced in 1996 that approximately 100 agrochemicals considered to have estrogenic effects will be phased out before 2000.

In related news, the Danish agrochemical association (DAF) said recently that pesticide sales in the country fell by 32% in 1996. They stated that industry members had expected this decline because 1995 sales were artificially high due to advanced purchases in anticipation of new and higher taxes under the Danish Pesticide Act, which came into effect on January 1, 1996, and not because of increased usage.

Sources: Pesticides News 37, September 1997, The Pesticides Trust; Agrow: World Crop Protection News, September 12, August 15, July 11, 1997, and October 18, 1996.

Contact: PANNA.

11/5/97