The Official Controls (Plant Protection Products) Regulations 2020 applies controls throughout the agri-food supply chain. Defra states its aim is to improve and provide assurance in feed and food safety, animal health and welfare and plant health.
The new rules mean that if you use PPPs or any adjuvants in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), you must register under the Official Controls (Plant Protection Products) Regulations 2020 by 22 June 2022.
However, it is a legal obligation to register with Defra and provide the required information, so they encourage all professional pesticide users to do this as soon as possible.
You can now record involvement in assurance schemes
Following successful lobbying by the NFU, Defra has changed the registration form so users can now record their involvement in assurance schemes. This could lead to being able to take into account earned recognition.
Hopefully this will go some way to allaying members’ frustrations about potential duplication of effort.
Answering members' questions
We asked Defra for answers to some of our members’ questions.
NFU Vice President David Exwood said: “While Defra's intention appears to have been to keep this simple, farmers on the ground see these new requirements as a burden and understandably have a lot of questions about them. It is good that Defra is starting to respond to these concerns we've already raised with them.”
Subsequently, Defra has issued the following guidance to all interested parties.
MEMBERS: Read Defra's Q&A on OCR