I was re-elected to the Commons – after a gap of 18 years, during which I had a real job – in April 1992. Almost immediately I set up a small all-party group of MPs and Peers who were concerned about the serious health effects for farmers who used organophosphate (OP) sheep dips. Having met all too many victims in the South West, I felt we should lobby to have OPs banned, or at least reverse the current compulsory dipping policy. In my ignorance I thought it might take six months to persuade Ministers to act. After all, these extremely dangerous chemical were originally developed by the Nazis as chemical weapons.
Now, 16 years later, we are still campaigning. In Hansard for Monday 28 April you can read our latest exchanges, led by my great ally on this issue, the Countess of Mar. There are still hundreds of sheep farmers, and indeed veterans of the first Gulf War, whose lives and livelihoods have been ruined by exposure to OPs. And there is also the unresolved problem of OP fumes in aircraft, which pilots and aircrews believe can incapacitate them.
As it happens, I have spent several hours this week sorting my files on this issue. My conclusion is that – when big businesses are involved, with deep pockets – all Governments are too scared to intervene. Whatever became of the “precautionary principle” – when in doubt, don’t let it happen?
I can’t believe that you are still having to bang away at this. I remember back in about 1993 assisting you in convening a meeting in the Jubilee Room on this subject. Back then the evidence seemed so clear – I am afraid that you are right – money talks and big money talks louder!
The attitude towards OPs beggars belief. If Health & Safety has concluded there is a risk, has there been a successful claimant in an Employment Tribunal?
Tiz
Most people have no idea of just how nasty organophosphate sheep dip really is and have probably never heard of it.
http://www.pan-uk.org/publications/Briefing/sheepdip.htm
Manufacturers do warn about its use and dangers. Health & Safety COSHH regulations apply too:
http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/as29.pdf
Farmers are sometimes their own worst enemies. Generally speaking they are financially very hard pressed indeed. Couple this with a bloody-minded pragmatism toward risk. Well! They have been known to take short cuts on occasion.
HSE suggests that safer pyrethroids be used:
http://www.buglife.org.uk/News/newsarchive/pyrethroid.htm
But they are behind the times as some have been banned.
If people feel that it does not really affect them then consider that these chemicals can pollute watercourses and reservoirs by insidious means and it can get through to your tap water.
They may even be vectors for polluting oestrogen mimics:
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=192916
DDT was found to be such a pollutant and its use was banned.
Lord Tyler,
The precautionary principle means nothing to big business. I read Joel Bakan’s excellent book ‘The Corporation’ in which he draws an analogy between a joint stock company and a psychopath.
The point is that however humane the humans in a corporation are, the corporation is, of course, a separate entity which has no feelings or emotions and is only concerned with maximising profits, and a board of directors has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders to pursue that.
Not to do so could be perceived as a breach of trust. Hence why airlines are doing their best to silence the ‘Aerotoxic’ story.
http://www.aerotoxic.org/
However, where does one draw the line between being ‘precautionary’ and opening up the possibility of responding to unlimited ‘scare stories’ ? The tricky one is over mobile phone masts. I don’t personally have a problem with these – but we must acknowledge that the mobile phone industry has a ‘multi-billion’ pound investment interest in ensuring that 3G networks are introduced nationwide.
If we were later to discover a problem then we might regret not having commissioned more independent research. Mobile phones are subject to the principle with guidelines about not allowing young children to use them, and all people to keep use below a certain time per day. But who listens to and enforces such ‘guidelines’ ??
I have contacts in the farming industry, and am sure that like much of it, they don’t always follow instructions to the letter of the law or read the ‘small print’ in detail – and I dare say the chemical companies may not have gone out of their way to point out the risks.
The answer to getting the balance right is surely to have the best scientific research done on any new developments, but sadly the truth is that most of this, from GM foods to phones and pharmaceuticals, is funded by the big businesses who most have a ‘vested interest’ in controlling the message coming out of the universities conducting it.