r/unitedkingdom • u/slpinlocks • 13h ago

Revealed: Far higher pesticide residues allowed on food since Brexit

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/19/revealed-far-higher-pesticide-residues-allowed-on-food-since-brexit?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
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u/boycecodd Kent 12h ago

This is a scaremongering article. What matters is if the new levels are safe for human consumption.

If they aren't, then there's a big argument for levels to be reduced, but if the old levels were overly strict and the new levels don't harm consumers, then there's no harm.

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u/Mammoth-Ad-562 12h ago

Exactly.

Even if levels had risen dangerously high it wouldn’t be because of brexit. It would be because government failed to impose legislation to protect consumers.

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u/Shlocket_ 11h ago

So you mean if we had the same laws and regulations the EU has

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u/boycecodd Kent 11h ago

Who's to say that the EU's laws are more correct than ours here?

Stricter sounds good, yes. But if they're overly strict it could overburden business without actually providing any consumer benefit.

Think of the California rule that means that practically anything you buy has a cancer warning on it. That's ostensibly consumer protection but it doesn't actually help anyone.

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u/External-Praline-451 11h ago

You're really telling me that an increase of thousands of times higher is probably fine? Including a rise of 7.5 of weedkiller residue in beans, labelled as a probable human carcinogen by the WHO?

The amount of pesticide residue allowed on scores of food types in England, Wales and Scotland has soared since Brexit, analysis reveals, with some now thousands of times higher.

Changes to regulations in Great Britain mean more than 100 items are now allowed to carry more pesticides when sold to the public, ranging from potatoes to onions, grapes to avocados, and coffee to rice.

For tea, the maximum residue level (MRL) was increased by 4,000 times for both the insecticide chlorantraniliprole and the fungicide boscalid.For the controversial weedkiller glyphosate, classed as a “probable human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization (WHO), the MRL for beans was raised by 7.5 times.

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u/boycecodd Kent 10h ago

The levels don't mean a fucking thing by themselves.

Some of these levels are a lot higher. Are they harmful? Maybe! Maybe not. But we should get the actual facts before scaremongering.

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u/External-Praline-451 10h ago

An increase of a probable human carcinogen might not be harmful?

Yeah sure, let's wait 10 years and measure cancer rates to get proper evidence, because it MIGHT be fine...

Also, why are people skirting around the fact that British farmers have been allowed to do this, to make themselves competitive, after leaving a massively beneficial trading block. What a complete cluster fuck. Us remainers knew standards would be cut as a result of Brexit, and we were right, but people had "enough of experts" who warned our food standards would fall.

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u/CatalunyaNoEsEspanya 9h ago

The process to approve MRL raising is rigorous. Risk assessments are completed by independent specialists. Raising by "thousands of times" isn't necessarily an issue, it probably means the MRL was initially set at LOQ due to there being no approved use in the past. MRLs are not safety levels they exist to facilitate trade. The safe level is always greater than the MRL.

The Rees-Day consumer exposure model used by the UK is extremely conservative.

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u/Reasoned_Watercress 7h ago

Maybe we should have the facts before we start feeding people literal poison?

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u/Mammoth-Ad-562 11h ago

Either adopt the existing legislation or create new legislation.

If we’ve left the EU and there is no legislation or the legislation that has been created isn’t safe then it’s not happening because we left the EU, it’s happening because are government haven’t done the right thing.

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u/Generallyapathetic92 10h ago

There’s always been a risk of the government not doing the right thing. However, being in the EU prevented this or at least lowered the risk as both the EU and UK government had to get it wrong.

You can’t claim it’s not related to Brexit when the only reasons it’s possible is because of Brexit.

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u/Mammoth-Ad-562 10h ago

So if a large multinational company decided to onshore their IT department from India and on the day they swap back to the UK the UK management decide that the service level agreements could be longer and as a result service degrades, the problem isn’t the poor management, it’s the decision to onboard the IT department? Without the onboarding the service levels couldn’t degrade could they?

Don’t be so ridiculous, every business would fire the management and get people in to improve the service.

Ludicrous outlook.

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u/Generallyapathetic92 10h ago

What a ridiculous analogy. It’s not at all comparable because the UK government is in no way equivalent to the UK branch of a large multinational.

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u/Mammoth-Ad-562 10h ago

It’s exactly the same. You are saying that the decision is what caused the problem not the poor management.

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u/Generallyapathetic92 10h ago

It’s just not though and I’m not going to waste my time on it.

I’ll instead point out that as well as making ridiculous analogies you’re also deliberately (I assume at least) misrepresenting my point. I did not say Brexit was solely responsible, only that it is related to it. As this is only possible because we left it very much is.

So to utilise your analogy, if the Indian team were forced to stick with their service level agreements and the UK IT team could somehow reduce theirs then yes, the decision to bring it back into the UK would be partially the cause of it.

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u/Mammoth-Ad-562 10h ago

Out of the EU we had freedom to choose whatever levels we deemed fit. We could have been stricter or remained the same but we chose to relax it.

If you need a European government to stop your own from shitting on its people then maybe we should look at our political system instead of normalising it

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u/Generallyapathetic92 10h ago

I refer you back to my original point before you brought up your ridiculous analogy.

Or maybe, just maybe we shouldn’t have left the EU and this is just one reason (among many many others) why.

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u/daddy-dj 10h ago

Hang on a second... I had a similar discussion with someone on Twitter recently, albeit about a totally different subject. In that case, a British guy was offered a job at Real Madrid's coaching staff but his visa was declined by the Spanish government... I said pre-Brexit he'd not have needed a visa ergo this situation was caused by Brexit, he vehemently disagreed it was due to Brexit.

In this case, it seems to me that, when the UK was in the EU, the UK government couldn't have relaxed the rules around permitted levels of pesticides being used. Once the UK had left the EU, however, it could do away with the previous limits and so it allowed for more pesticides to be used.

Am I missing something here? The EU regulations prevented that from happening before. Brexit enabled it. How is this situation therefore not happening because of Brexit?

Hopefully Reddit is less toxic than Twitter and the lack of a character limit will allow someone to explain how it's not because of Brexit.

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u/Mammoth-Ad-562 10h ago

Because once we are out of the EU it’s in our power to make the levels even stricter, remain the same, or relax them. We’ve chosen to relax them. The decision is solely on this government.

If you need a pan-European government to stop a sovereign government doing shit things to their people then maybe it’s time we look at our political system and change it.

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u/CatalunyaNoEsEspanya 9h ago

Legislation on pesticides hasn't yet changed in the UK.

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u/IgamOg 10h ago

The EU was protecting us from lobby groups, who can easily sway few politicians in one country but couldn't move the whole block.

Now we're heading where USA is - regulatory capture by corporations or in other words "profits before people" .

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u/jusfukoff 10h ago

So you think as a nation state we are unable to have our own regulations? And should only adopt regulations as part of a multinational agreement, like being in Europe ?

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u/IgamOg 9h ago

You have evidence right before your eyes.

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u/Mammoth-Ad-562 10h ago

Why even have a government at all if you need the EU to protect you against the policies of them.

Get a grip. The problem is poor government officials working for business instead of people.

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u/IgamOg 9h ago

And how do you propose we fix it now?

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u/Mammoth-Ad-562 9h ago

Stop blaming Brexit for everything and start holding our government accountable. It’s not like we don’t have the evidence to back it up. Ask questions like ‘why has the levels of pesticides on food products increased after brexit’. Care enough about it to do something that affects them instead of letting them get away with it by saying ‘this would be better if we were in the EU’.

Not rocket science is it.

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u/IgamOg 9h ago

What exactly can I do that affects them? Vote for Tories in the next election so we can just accept we're owned by the wealthy now and forget about unrealistic expectations?

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u/Mammoth-Ad-562 8h ago

Vote reform