How do you square that with the success of the Center for Pesticide Suicide Prevention in advocating for some pesticides to be banned in dozens of countries? Even if the CPSP wasn’t instrumental in all of these cases, it doesn’t seem to have been destroyed by the food and farming lobbies.
I think you’re right that industry pushback/inertia is a key consideration, and that pesticide suicides are a much more tangible harm to motivate regulation.
However, I think things are much more uncertain than you suggest. Industry have been quite on-board with the related international movement against ‘highly hazardous pesticides’ and the optics of ‘slowly poisoning pregnant women and reducing their kids’ potential’ may be a compelling narrative for regulatory action.
But I really don’t know—I’d be very interested to see what CPSP staff reckon.
Okay fair. And I just remembered something during my research that strengthens your point—there are a few papers critiquing the neurotoxic effect of organophosphates. And if memory serves all of them were authored by and/or sponsored by the pesticide industry. So there is pre-existing industry pushback!
I briefly worked in a research consortium which worked on the EUs precautionary principle, which is under attack by industry: they’re basically raising the bar for evidence and definitely push back against regulation a lot.
How do you square that with the success of the Center for Pesticide Suicide Prevention in advocating for some pesticides to be banned in dozens of countries? Even if the CPSP wasn’t instrumental in all of these cases, it doesn’t seem to have been destroyed by the food and farming lobbies.
I think you’re right that industry pushback/inertia is a key consideration, and that pesticide suicides are a much more tangible harm to motivate regulation.
However, I think things are much more uncertain than you suggest. Industry have been quite on-board with the related international movement against ‘highly hazardous pesticides’ and the optics of ‘slowly poisoning pregnant women and reducing their kids’ potential’ may be a compelling narrative for regulatory action.
But I really don’t know—I’d be very interested to see what CPSP staff reckon.
Okay fair. And I just remembered something during my research that strengthens your point—there are a few papers critiquing the neurotoxic effect of organophosphates. And if memory serves all of them were authored by and/or sponsored by the pesticide industry. So there is pre-existing industry pushback!
I briefly worked in a research consortium which worked on the EUs precautionary principle, which is under attack by industry: they’re basically raising the bar for evidence and definitely push back against regulation a lot.
See eg this: https://corporateeurope.org/en/environment/2018/12/innovation-principle-trap
I am not super clear on the delineation between DNT pesticides and suicide-risk pesticides and their relative importance so I’ll defer to you.