Sheep Dips (Hansard, 1 December 1993)

§ Mrs. Gillian Shephard

The VPC has carefully and thoroughly examined all issues surrounding the use of OP dips. It has found that there is no evidence to support either a ban or suspension on the use of OP dips when used correctly. Nevertheless the Government and the VPC have to treat with the utmost seriousness any suggestion of potential harm to human health. We are therefore taking clear and positive steps, in a carefully planned and organised way, to restrict their availability. A useful analogy to our approach is that used with regard to pesticides.

The Veterinary Products Committee gave further considertion to the future licensing of organophosphorous sheep dip products at its meeting on 21 October 1993 and confirmed its report at its meeting on 25 November.

Organophosphorous sheep dips are highly effective weapons in our fight to ensure that the United Kingdom's 40 million sheep are properly protected from harmful disease, and I welcome the Veterinary Products Committee's clear advice following their meetings that the marketing of these dips can continue. Over the last eight years, there have been 529 cases of reported human ill health associated with sheep dip exposure. The Committee found that in the majority of cases where information was available the full recommended protective clothing had not been worn or properly used.

The number of reported adverse reactions must be seen in the context of over a million occasions when flocks—involving hundreds of millions of sheep—were dipped during that eight-year period. I am disappointed that, notwithstanding the publicity drive we have carried out since the Committee's report in April, many sheep dippers are still failing to take the necessary precaustions. The Committee has therefore recommended the introduction of a new certificate of competence, which would mean in future that only dippers who hold such certificates would be allowed to buy these dips.

The Government fully support this proposal. We have already begun discussions with the National Proficiency Test Council and the Agricultural Training Board about arrangements to bring in a statutory certification scheme before the next dipping season. We will be consulting interested parties shortly about plans to require dippers wishing to buy OP sheep dips to have enrolled for the NPTC certificate by 1 April 1994, and to have obtained certificates by 1 April 1995. Meanwhile, the training that would be required to obtain a certificate will be available on a voluntary basis at NPTC—approved courses from early January 1994 onwards.

I have also agreed with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health that a panel of medical and scientific experts should be set up, as a sub-committee of the Veterinary Products Committee, to address the question of co-ordinating research into reports of long term health effects aising from exposure. Terms of reference and composition of the panel are currently being drawn up, and a further announcement giving full details will be made shortly.

The Government will also be undertaking a review to ensure that sheep dips are disposed of safely.

I am very grateful to Professor Armour for the care and depth with which he and his Committee has considered the issues and all the information put to it, and for its clear advice.

The report setting out the Veterinary Products Committee's recommendations to the Licensing Authority 590W (Agriculture and Health Ministers), and the measures through which the Government intend to implement them, is today beikng placed in the Library of the House.