- IUF joins 350 civil society organizations to protest FAO pesticide partnership plan
- CropLife is the global trade association representing pesticide producers and promoting pesticide use.
- Proposed partnership denounced as “damaging” and “directly undermining FAO’s goals of supporting agro-ecology”
- 286 scientists also express their concern in separate letter to FAO Director General
The IUF has co-sponsored a letter, supported by 350 organizations from 63 countries, calling on the FAO Director-General (DG), Mr Qu Dongyu, to halt recently-announced plans to deepen collaboration with CropLife International.
The letter delivered to the FAO DG today states that a partnership with CropLife “ directly undermines FAO’s priority of minimising the harms of chemical pesticide use worldwide, including the progressive ban of highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs).”
It quotes from a recent analysis of industry records showing that CropLife member companies BASF, Bayer Crop Science, Corteva Agriscience, FMC and Syngenta make more than one-third of their sales income from highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs). These pesticides are the most harmful to human health and the environment. The proportion of HHP sales is even higher in developing countries, the letter says, where safety regulations are often less robust and harms to human health and the environment are greater.
“This proposed partnership is deeply damaging to the FAO’s reputation and would undermine the FAO’s commitments to agro-ecology. It is completely inacceptable.” commented IUF General Secretary, Sue Longley.
