The NFU has once again condemned EU plans to impose new crop protection controls, calling them "disproportionate, impractical and highly bureaucratic".
It added that existing legal measures, plus the measures already in place under the Voluntary Initiative are more than sufficient to ensure that sprays are used safely and responsibly.
The union’s vice president, Paul Temple, said: “The draft Pesticides Directive, particularly as amended by the European Parliament’s Environment Committee, would have a serious impact on costs of production and crop yields, without producing any worthwhile benefits in how crop sprays are used.
“Farmers take their responsibility to use plant protection products safely very seriously. We have already voluntarily adopted many of the EU’s proposed measures such as operator training, sprayer testing and residential buffer zones. All this has been achieved as part of the Voluntary Initiative and has shown very good results."
Temple added that the EU should concentrate its efforts on bringing practice in other parts of Europe up to the "high levels" of those in the UK, rather than penalising all farmers with ‘yet another piece of impractical and disproportionate regulation’.
“These proposals are without any scientific justification. Decisions on how and when to spray should be taken on an individual field basis by farmers based on the existing legal framework and common sense,” he said.
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