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News Releases 18 May 2006 Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution on Crop Spraying and the Health of Residents and Bystanders The British Crop Production Council has published two important documents relating to this Report of the Royal Commission. REVIEW of the Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution on Crop Spraying and the Health of Residents and Bystanders The British Crop Production Council (BCPC) has published the Proceedings of a special discussion meeting it held to review the Report on Crop Spraying and Health published by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution last September. This meeting was organised at short notice as a special session at the BCPC International Congress in November 2005. BCPC brought together speakers and a broadly based discussion panel who provided authoritative and independent views on the issues raised in the RCEP Report. The papers and discussions reported in these Proceedings reflect the wide range of views expressed. They were presented in measured tones, but many of them are highly critical of the RCEP Report. BCPC recognises the difficulties that faced the Royal Commission in considering this topic, but believes there are serious shortcomings in the recommendations it has made. The challenge in the management of risk is to resolve the very real differences of opinion of current evidence based scientific conclusions concerning safety and those based on a conviction about the source of ill health. A common response to such a challenge is to invoke the Precautionary Principle and to call for more research, and the Royal Commission was no exception in the recommendations it made. But these approaches raise questions about the extent to which we should regulate on the precautionary principle, about whether this approach will ever deliver an acceptable solution, and about the costs of the recommended research in relation to the scale and extent of the problem and other priorities. Dr Barry Thomas, Chairman of BCPC, said: "This Review will make a valuable contribution both to the evaluation of the Royal Commission's Report and more widely, to the development of more effective processes for risk management. It is essential reading for all concerned with these topics." BCPC's COMMENTARY on the Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution on Crop Spraying and the Health of Residents and Bystanders BCPC has also published its own Commentary on the Royal Commission's Report. BCPC recognises that the Report and the recommendations for the management of risk made by the Royal Commission will clearly have major implications for crop production and other uses of pesticides in the UK. However, BCPC considers that this RCEP exercise has much wider and more generic implications for the management of risk and the conduct of risk management in other situations. The BCPC Commentary explores the application of the Precautionary Principle in our increasingly risk averse society and then comments of a few of the specific recommendations made by the Royal Commission. |
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