§ Mr. Campbell-Savoursasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what plans he has for setting performance targets and quantitative criteria and for publishing threshold pest infestation levels for spraying in relation to pesticide use.
§ Mrs. FennerMy Department's Agricultural Development and Advisory Service already operate a comprehensive weekly pest and disease intelligence service which indicates in particular where pests have not reached a threshold and where spraying would not be justified.
The present MAFF research and development programme is strongly oriented towards the determination of economic damage thresholds for the major pests and diseases. Collecting this type of biological information uses considerable resources and thresholds have to be validated over several seasons. We now have the 89W information for a number of pests including wheat bulb fly, leatherjackets, cereal aphids, several oilseed rape pests, flea moths and the major pests of apples.
§ Mr. Campbell-Savoursasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether the introduction of criteria of efficacy under the Food and Environment Protection Bill will enable the Government to assess from year to year whether or not the policy of reducing pesticide usage to a minimum consistent with food production is being achieved.
§ Mrs. FennerThe Government's intention is that the introduction of efficacy criteria into statutory arrange-ments for the pre-market screening of pesticides will contribute towards reducing pesticide usage to the minimum consistent with efficient food production. It will enable Ministers to ensure that no pesticide is released into the environment unless its use is demonstrably beneficial to agriculture, horticulture, food storage, wood preserva-tion or public health and hygiene.
§ Mr. Campbell-Savoursasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what information has been received from the West German Government regarding the prohibition of Paraquat in that country; and what steps are being taken to perpetuate the long-term experiment involving Paraquat application to soils at the Yarnton weed research laboratory.
§ Mrs. FennerI will reply to the hon. Member as soon as possible.
§ Mr. Campbell-Savoursasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when his Department will begin to review each pesticide with existing clearance under the pesticides safety precaution scheme, in relation to carcinogenicity, mutagenicity and teratogenicity.
§ Mrs. FennerThe Government already keep pesticides under review in relation to all aspects of safety including those listed by the hon. Member. We intend to introduce a system of regular reviews of all pesticides under the proposed statutory arrangements and this will commence as soon as the necessary statutory provisions are in place.
§ Mr. Campbell-Savoursasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to what exent his Department relies on farmers taking advice on the use of pesticides from agrochemical merchants and their representatives.
§ Mrs. FennerMy Department's Agricultural Development and Advisory Service (ADAS) offers advice on site to individual farmers and supplements this with promotional events, press articles and provision of a wide range of advisory literature. Nevertheless, we support the British agrochemical standards inspection scheme which ensures by examination that distributors' staff are adequately trained in crop protection and competent to give advice.
§ Mr. Campbell-Savoursasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will estimate the environmental cost of pesticides in use and their health and safety effect on the environment.
§ Mrs. FennerI regret that the information requested could be provided only at disproportionate cost.