Reporting compliance failure sees pesticide approval revoked

Over 30 pesticide products have been withdrawn from the UK market after companies failed to meet the legal reporting requirements on their products side effects.


Following warnings from the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) that companies in the UK were failing to report adverse effects to human health as a result of their pesticides, the Pesticides Safety Directorate (PSD) sent questionnaires to firms to obtain information they were legally required to divulge since 1998.

Despite being given several extensions to fill the forms in, 13 of the companies failed to respond at all, which prompted the PSD to revoke all of their product approvals.

PAN UK welcomed the revocation of approved products from companies that failed to submit data, but said stronger measures were still needed to ensure that incident details were known and acted upon.

“The need for firms to report any adverse health outcomes once the product has been approved and is in use is central to the government’s strategy for monitoring pesticides,” PAN UK stated, explaining why the effectiveness of this process is vital to the health and safety of the British public.

“Therefore, the fact that the post-approvals monitoring system intended to collect data on the human health effects from reported pesticide exposure has not been operating properly is a great cause for concern.”

A total of 184 companies were asked to participate.

By Jane Kettle

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