The European Union
More
than 80 garden sprays and weedkillers were banned
from sale because of stricter regulations on
potentially harmful chemicals. The new European
rules primarily ban lawn treatments which kill
dandelions, nettles and brambles. They include
some own-brand products from Asda, Homebase and
B&Q. Stores face fines of up to £5,000 if
they sell the offending goods, but gardeners can
continue to use them until the end of the year
2003. They will not be allowed to store any of
them after the end of March. Environmentalists
warned that local authorities would struggle to
collect and dispose of the unwanted pesticides.
Friends of the Earth said many local authorities,
which are responsible for the clear up, were ill
equipped to dispose of toxic pesticide waste. It
is illegal to get rid of the garden chemicals
down drains, sinks or toilets.
"If pesticides are simply thrown in bins
they will end up in landfill sites and will end
up contaminating our environment," FoE said.
The group said some products were not covered by
the ban despite being proven to damage human
health, and it criticised the Government for not
putting money into projects to find safer
alternatives. "Many risky pesticides have
been given the green light, and safer
alternatives have not been found for those
products being banned," the group said. The
Crop Protection Association (CPA), which
represents the pesticide industry, said it had
sent letters to 200 local authorities to brief
them on the new regulations. "We have given
them sufficient warnings," said the chief
executive, Peter Sanguinetti. "Some
authorities are already very advanced with their
plans and some are not."
The organic movement said the ban on some
pesticides marked a great opportunity to promote
chemical-free gardening. Maggi Brown, head of
education at Europe's largest organic gardening
association, HDRA, said: "There has been
reliance on chemicals as a quick fix ... Those
people who say you can't possibly grow
vegetables, or fruit or flowers, without
pesticide should look at the hundreds of
thousands of organic gardeners up and down the
country and the rest of the world." The
move, led by the European Union, is part of a
process to regulate the pesticide industry, which
in Britain is worth £416m a year. The makers of
the pesticides that were banned from sale
yesterday were unwilling to put them through new
stringent safety tests.
The industry said the products were mainly older
versions of pesticides that had been superseded
or were for niche markets and were not worth the
estimated £1m cost of putting them through the
tests. The Department of Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs said the ban came into force
because the safety of the products could no
longer be guaranteed. Most contained dichlorprop,
which the industry said had been rendered
obsolete by a more environmentally friendly
version of the chemical. David Bowe, a Labour MEP
and a spokesman on the environment, said about 10
per cent of garden pesticide products sold in the
UK have had to be withdrawn from the shelves.
EU
officials have banned butchers from giving
customers bones for their dogs. New Brussels
rules class bones as a waste by-product and
butchers must pay for them to be incinerated.
Britain’s 10,000 butchers are being sent
letters by local councils warning them they face
FINES if they pass left-over bones to pet-owners
in the traditional way.
Butchers in Cardigan, West Wales, are the first
in Britain to get the warnings that they will be
breaking the law if they offer customers the
leftovers. Butcher Aled Morgan, from Aberystwyth,
said, “I just don’t see where the EU is
coming from. It’s going to cost at least
£2,000 a year to dispose of fat and bones.”
The Department for the Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs confirmed the bone ban. A spokesman
said, “If the bone is waste or for pet food
then it’s a by-product and cannot be passed
to the public. It must be properly disposed of in
line with regulations. Customers can take bones
when they buy deboned meat if it is for human
consumption.”
Plans
to build 1.4 million extra homes in Britain have
been DUMPED on by the EU. New rules in 2004 by
Brussels over landfill sites means there could be
nowhere to dispose of hazardous rubble. Britain
may end up with only 14 sites out of today's 182
- with NONE in the South East where Deputy
Premier John Prescott wants 300,000 new homes by
2016. Critics fear that will mean the South's
waste being dumped in the North's remaining
sites. The Commons Environmental Audit Committee
said Britain needs to build one 40,000 ton
processing plant a WEEK for the next 14 years to
cope. No chance of that.
Tony
Blair threatened to make Britain vote, vote and
vote AGAIN until we agree to an EU superstate. He
vowed to follow Ireland’s example and reject
any referendum which says "No" to a new
constitution. The PM admitted 24 hours later that
he would be forced to accept a "No"
vote in the referendum. However, Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw said the referendum might
never happen because Britain or another country
could veto the whole deal. He said, "There
may not be a referendum at all, don't hold your
breath. For this reason: we have not yet got
agreement to what goes into the constitutional
treaty."
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