UK Pesticides Campaign - Chronology

Chronology

• 2001 - Downs started the UK Pesticide Campaign to challenge UK Government policy.

• 2002 - the Campaign presented to the Advisory Committee on Pesticides (ACP) its first evidence suggesting a causal link between pesticide spraying and ill health. The Committee subsequently rejected the evidence as insufficient. Perversely, the UK Government's Pesticides Safety Directive (PSD) recognises the danger of pesticides to organisms as they lead a campaign to protect wildlife against illegal poisoning by the use of pesticides.

• 2004 - the Environment Minister said there was no evidence to support the introduction of buffer zones, but requested the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) to carry out an independent study into the effects of pesticides on human health.

• 2005 - the RCEP's report agreed with Downs' claim that current regulations are inadequate, and concluded that crop spraying is a health risk. However, its recommendation was that a minimum five-metre buffer zone be imposed around sprayed areas as a precautionary measure. Downs considered this conclusion to be arbitrary and inadequate.

• 2006 - the UK government rejected the RCEP report's conclusion stating that the findings were "not robustly founded in scientific evidence" and highlighting the "lack of rigour in the underlying science" of the evidence.

• 2008 - Downs has recently won a landmark High Court Judicial Review action against the government for failing to protect people in the countryside from pesticides and also knowingly allowing residents to continue to suffer from adverse health effects without taking any action to prevent the exposure, risks and adverse impacts occurring. The Judgment concluded that Downs had produced “solid evidence that residents have suffered harm to their health”, particularly in relation to acute effects, and that “a different approach” should have been adopted and accordingly there has “been both a failure to have regard to material considerations and a failure to apply the Directive properly.” This legal challenge was the first known legal case of its kind to reach the High Court to directly challenge the government's pesticide policy and approach regarding crop spraying in rural areas. The ruling is obviously a very significant and landmark ruling for the potentially millions of residents throughout the country who, like Downs, live in the locality to pesticide sprayed fields. The press release Georgina Downs issued regarding her High Court victory and the full statement she made outside the High Court on 14 November 2008 can be seen on her UK Pesticides Campaign website.