Yesterday, 13 June 2007, at Shrewsbury Crown Court, Mr John Rawlings was found guilty on three counts of illegally storing foreign pesticides, the jury were unable to reach a decision on a further 11 counts of illegal storage and it was ordered that these counts lie on the court file.
The three illegal products which Mr Rawlings was found guilty of storing were:
* Italian MOCAP: an organophosphate insecticide which lacks the additional safety of a closed transfer system required in the UK approved version. The closed transfer system on UK MOCAP was a requirement of the independent Advisory Committee on Pesticides in order to ensure operator safety in using the product.
* Italian Sevin Flow: a product containing 473g/l (47%) of the carbamate insecticide carbaryl. Carbaryl containing pesticides were banned in the UK in 2001 following the safety review of carbamate and organophosphate acetyl cholinesterase inhibitors. Insufficient data to assess the safety of carbaryl were provided by the approval holder and all product approvals were revoked.
* Italian Oscar: containing the insecticide tebufenpyrad at a concentration significantly different to that of any UK approved product.
In evidence Mr Rawlings admitted that he had deliberately not applied for parallel import approval for any of the fourteen products as charged and had no approval for them as is required under UK and EU legislation.
The UK licensing system for pesticides reflects European regulations and guidelines which are operated in a similar way by regulatory authorities throughout Europe. They are an essential safety measure designed to protect the public, pesticide users and the environment from potentially hazardous products.
PSD urges farmers to ensure that the products they purchase are approved for use in the UK as part of their good agricultural practice. Failure to do so in addition to any possible prosecution offence may mean losing part of their Single Farm Payment under Cross Compliance rules.
Mr Rawlings was given 2 year conditional discharges for the offences and was ordered to pay prosecution costs of #8500 in addition to his own legal costs (estimated by his barrister to be #60,000).
PSD will not hesitate to pursue appropriate enforcement action against anyone who stores, supplies or uses illegal pesticides. The controls on pesticides are primarily there to protect consumers, users and the environment. Deliberately ignoring these undermines this protection and also places legitimate importers, farmers and agrochemical companies that do comply with the legislation at a competitive disadvantage.
