A simmering spat between the Soil Association and NFU seems to be deepening after the SA issued a press release calling upon NFU president Peter Kendall to withdraw recent allegations that the association was ‘scaremongering’.
Kendall told the Oxford Farming Conference in January that he ‘would welcome support from all the politicians here today to encourage ‘fact and real science’ to be given the lead over ‘scaremongering and misinformation’.
Kendall also challenged the Soil Association's concerns over the use and possible health impacts of pesticides at the Norfolk Farming Conference last month.
Now, in the wake of the government’s decision to ban aldicarb, a chemical used mainly on potatoes, but also carrots, parsnips and other crops, the association has written to Kendall, asking him to withdraw his comments.
“The Government's decision to ban the toxic pesticide aldicarb show that recent assurances by the NFU and agrochemical industry that pesticides are 'safe' and 'essential' were wrong,” commented Michael Green, author of the SA’s What’s Your Poison? Booklet. “As recently as December, Bayer CropScience claimed that aldicarb ‘does not pose unacceptable risks to either consumers or the environment’. Now the Government's own scientists have called for this pesticide to be banned, more than two years after the Soil Association was criticised for highlighting the dangers of aldicarb. Ultimately, farmers don't need to use pesticides to produce good quality food.”
But Kendall hit back, arguing: “My comments were not directed at the use of aldicarb, nor was I attacking organic producers. I was criticising the use of a title like What’s your poison? which sensationalises the issue in a highly negative way when we are looking to have a factual and scientific debate about the use of pesticides rather than resorting to scaremongering and misinformation.
“Pesticides, if used properly, do not damage the environment and are essential if we are to produce high quality food in increasing quantities without having to bring more and more land into cultivation, at the expense of the rainforest and other natural habitats.”
