Craig Hunter, who has spent a lifetime working with farmers
and the pesticides industry on plant protection products, is calling on the
federal Pest Management Review Agency to change its protocols for reviewing the
registrations for a group of fungicides.
He is urging the agency to do a much better job of
consulting with growers, right from sharing the data in its files to checking
what they are actually using on their crops and how.
He warns the agency that using models, rather than actual
results gathered in the field, and that will mislead the regulators to be too
restrictive about fungicide uses.
He also notes that there have been times when water samples
taken after a pesticide spill have been used as the basis for restricting
controlled commercial spraying of crops that’s done in compliance with
regulations.
Hunter has outlined his concerns in a column he has written
in The Grower, a newspaper for Ontario fruit and vegetable growers.
He argues that it’s important for the federal agency. which
is part of Health Canada, to get this regulatory review right because lessons
learned this time can serve to improve reviews of other pesticides in the
future.
The fungicides under review are crucial to fruit and
vegetable growers. They include Bravo, sold as Echo, captan, sold as Maestro,
Rovral, Thiram, Ferbam, Ziram, Polyram, and mancozeb.
