Sir,
Sir Mark Walport’s excellent GCSA report, on which the article was based, laid out the challenges that UK and European farmers are facing in taking world-class science and technology from the laboratory to the field in order to strengthen UK food production. A key point being that our farmers remain unable to access many technical advances that elsewhere in the worldprove themselves safe.
The precautionary principle that Sir Mark refers to is now being applied in the face of scientific evidence and is seriously hindering food production in this country. The question to be asked is who is benefitting from decision-making that negatively impacts jobs and growth?
The NFU's Healthy Harvest campaignunderlines the importance of supportive regulation based on sound science for plant protection products to control pests, weeds and diseases in our crops.
Innovation needs to be embraced by policy-makers to bring benefit to the farming sector and we need to be able to retain the plant protection products we already have. We need to rethink the ways we regulate so we can hope to see healthy and bountiful harvests in the future.