EU Referendum

Showing posts with label pesticide directive. Show all posts

Uganda+farmers[i-Uganda+farmers]Amid the gathering economic crisis, with the continuing sense that no one seems really to understand what is going on – and no one is in control, this might seem small beer. But it isn't. It tells of EU action which is going to add immeasurably to the sum of human misery, from which none of us will be insulated.

The subject is one we have visited before, most notably here - the EU's new pesticide directive. This particular piece exactly echoes our fears when it declares: "EU's false insecticide fears pose real threat to Africa".

The EU, it says, "banned scores of pesticides this month under the pretence of protecting human health and the environment." You might assume, it continues:

…that the EU could demonstrate some threat to humans or the environment, that it had found viable alternatives to the banned pesticides and that it had assessed the consequences of this ban to farming, to food prices and to the poor whose only defence against disease is pesticides. But you would be wrong on all counts. The new regulations not only damage food production in the EU but also threaten public health in distant countries — mainly poor countries in Africa.

The writer of the piece is Jasson Urbach, an economist in the Health Policy Unit of South Africa's Free Market Foundation think-tank, based in Durban, South Africa. He is also a director of "Africa Fighting Malaria". He goes on to write at some length of the specific problems faced by Africa from this EU move, stating baldly: "The new EU regulations compound the woes of the poor who suffer most."

When it comes to our own affairs, enlightened self-interest should come to the fore. Many times we have discussed the effects of poverty in the developing world as the driver for migration. This dire piece of legislation can only add to the pressures. Many of those migrants will end up in the EU and, either directly or indirectly, on our shores.

Then, as global trade collapses, an important part of our salvation package is, as it has always been, measures to increase the wealth of the global community – so that they can afford to buy our goods and services, the real wealth that drives what is left of our economy. In this way too, the this dire law will affect us all.

The trouble is that the linkage is not obvious. The effects are secondary and it is the effects which will be reported, not their cause. And there are many more such effects, many of them stemming from misguided legislation which emanates from Brussels. Jasson Urbach does us a service, pointing out one area of linkage. Tragically, he will be ignored.

He writes with a sense of optimism, noting that, although EU decision-making is opaque and usually unaccountable, "public pressure has brought this into the open, giving African governments, NGOs and charities a chance to speak up for the poor in all the capitals of EU member states."

Furthermore, he notes that UK Environment Secretary Hilary Benn has said: "The UK does not support these proposals". Thus, what is usually a simple rubber-stamp could meet late resistance from the UK and other governments, whose farmers and consumers have forced them to face the threat.

But there is also the killer line: Benn "did not clarify what he could do." The answer, Mr Urbach, is that he will do nothing. The UK will do nothing. The EU is not "usually unaccountable". It is always unaccountable. It will get its way. People will die. We will all suffer. The EU does not give a damn – it will not even accept that it is part of the problem.

We are truly stacking up trouble and, in the welter of bad news from other sources, the biggest trouble of all is that we have neither the means nor the political will to tackle his problem head-on. However, it is not going to go away. Trouble never does.

COMMENT THREAD

Spraying[i-Spraying]This is important. Gaza is terrible, and the suffering there – for whatever reasons – is appalling. But, in its own way, this will bring as much if not more suffering – a completely avoidable bureaucratic impost which will cause famine and war throughout the third world.

We are referring to the EU's pesticide directive, the third reading just approved by the EU's puppet parliament and, if you think I am exaggerating, read my earlier piece and ponder.

Bruno Waterfield gives the latest, noting that the EU parliament has just voted by a large majority to approve new legislation that will restrict the use of pesticides in agriculture on the basis of irrational fears rather than reason.

Farmers, writes Bruno, predict that the new European Union legislation will have pretty catastrophic impact, mean the end of the British carrot and a 50 percent collapse in potato yields. Experts forecast that the Brussels regulation will also lead to the doubling of the price of the Brussels sprout - along with other brassica, vegetables and cereals.

This is correct, but this does not take into account the effect on the third world, which will be similarly handicapped, as it tries to export agricultural produce to EU member states.

Bruno, however, takes on the broader point. He notes that "the real problem with the legislation is that it has continued the onward march of unreason as a principle of public authority." It is dangerous, he adds, to have public policy which is constituted on the basis of irrationality and laws that deliberately reject rationality for irrational fear-based concepts such as the precautionary principle. Thus he continues:

Public authority and policy should be subject to rationality, and measures on pesticides governed by the scientific method, to be properly accountable. Rationality is not detached or abstract, it is based on argument, testability and evidence. It is profoundly living, human and creative. It is the fundamental basis for proper democratic politics.

Public authority that is not based on argument but, like much environmental legislation, on fears or prejudices lifts itself beyond argument and thus the people. Authority exercised in this manner necessarily tends to unrepresentative.

Such authority (as we have seen time and time again with civil liberties restrictions on the basis of hyped up fears of terrorism) tends to be arbitrary and destructive, hence the impact on farming.

This could not be better said. We expressed our concern about the way this was sidelining the political process. Nothing has changed. And nothing will change. This is the EU. It will destroy us all.

COMMENT THREAD

sprayer+01[i-sprayer+01]Farmers representatives were out in force yesterday, lobbying their MPs about the new pesticide legislation – currently going through the EU parliament.

Reported by The Daily Telegraph, farmers are claiming that this law - which aims to reduce the use of pesticides by 85 per cent by 2013 - could double food prices.

Needless to say, the newspaper is late off the mark, with the BBC having covered it on 17 May of this year, although we covered it even earlier, on 23 April.

Covering the BBC effort, we noted how this damaging piece of legislation had become "detached from the political process", noting that:

…because this is EU legislation, the BBC report, itself, was offered in a rather detached way – almost an account of a distant event that had no real relevance to the views. Had the pesticide directive been British government initiative, with an Act of Parliament in progress, there would no doubt have been a government statement and views offered from opposition MPs – engendering some sense of political controversy and immediacy.

As it was yesterday, that detachment was reinforced as the MPs had to admit to their visitors that there was nothing whatsoever they could do about the law, until it reached Westminster, by which time it would be too late. The farmers’ representatives were wasting their time.

However, it should be remembered that this law does not just affect the UK – or even just the EU member states. the Daily Mail points to the wider catastrophe – albeit through a UK filter – telling us that, "Imported soft fruit and flowers could disappear from Europe after EU decision to ban pesticides on health grounds."

The effect of the law will be to prevent any third country exporting to EU member states also from using any of the newly banned pesticides, but what is not picked up is the effect it will have on their domestic production – which will be dire. As we pointed out in our first piece, up to 42 percent of the global harvest is lost to pests and plant disease, with an additional 10 percent post-harvest loss, bringing the total to 52 percent – more than half the world's food supply.

Yet, heedless of the devastation they will bring, the EU parliament's environment committee voted by 39 votes to 20 to "clamp down on a whole range of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides".

Cheerleader of the process was that great self-publicist and self-centred little madam Caroline Lucas, MEP extraordinaire and leader of the Green party. Comfortably padded with her inflation-proof MEP salary, expense account and non-contributory pension, she insisted that "human health must be given better protection".

And, with an almost staggering insouciance, she had the utter gall to declare: "With today's vote, MEPs have rejected industry scaremongering, and sent a clear message that they want to see a reduction in the use of dangerous pesticides."

What made it so staggering was her assertion that: "A record level of pesticides are being found in food items sold in the EU, with almost half of all fruit, vegetables and cereals containing pesticide residues." This, one could say – kindly – really is scaremongering, as is clearly evidenced by EU studies.

These demonstrate that levels exceeding the statutory maximum residue levels (MRLs) were found most often in peppers (at six percent), grapes (at five percent), cucumber (at three percent ) and aubergines (also at three percent). But then when it comes to driving the world into poverty and starvation, what does a little thing like the truth means to Caroline Lucas? She's a greenie after all.

The pity of it all is that any farmers would be wasting their time talking to her, as much as they were talking to their MPs. Seeking rational, sensible legislation these days is an exercise in applied futility.

COMMENT THREAD

Irrigation+channel[i-Irrigation+channel]The capacity for the great and the good of the tranzie world to get together and blather – usually at our expense – seems unending.

One of their latest gab-fests is "World Water Week", celebrated by the egregious Euractiv. It publishes an article which has scientists and experts from around the world warning that "global food wastage must be halved by 2025 to meet the challenges of feeding the rapidly-growing population and preserving global water supplies."

The event was also reported by AFP two days ago, not that I noticed, and it seems to have been ignored completely by the MSM. However, that report did usefully remind us that "as much as half the water used to grow food world-wide is lost due to waste," since "roughly fifty percent of the food that farmers grow is lost or wasted."

The outcome of the deliberations was that, "Weak policy, poor management, increasing waste and exploding water demands are pushing the planet towards the tipping point of global water crisis," with the meeting calling on governments "to place an effective water-saving strategy, requiring that food wastage be minimised, firmly on the political agenda."

All good stuff, of course, but what is missing entirely is a recognition that current policy initiatives, such as the EU's pesticide directive are set to make the situation immeasurably worse.

Despite this, the emphasis on waste is no bad thing. Far too often, the bulk of effort is directed at increasing production, heedless of the fact that, globally, half of that which is produced is then lost. Without devoting any more acreage to food production, the amount of produce that could be brought to market could be doubled if more attention was paid to disease and pest control, better storage and better distribution.

As much attention, though, needs to be given to perverse policy initiatives - for which the EU is justly famous - which actually create more problems than they solve. But then resolving these would require forcing the EU to act rationally, which is probably beyond the capability of mere mortals. Solving the world food crisis – or any other crisis for that matter – is child's play by comparison.

COMMENT THREAD

Vassiliou[i-Vassiliou]What seemed to be a new phrase burst into the linguistic currency last week, courtesy of Boy Miliband, currently our foreign secretary. He was referring to the Burmese ruling junta, coining the phrase "Malign neglect" to describe its response to the cyclone disaster.

In fact, the phrase was not new. It was coined in 1994 by US author Michael Tonry, the title of his book about "racial disproportion in the criminal justice system". It was also used in 2002, again in the United States, to describe the "unequal system of school finance" and then again last year, applied to the Amnesty Bill on illegal immigration.

Nevertheless, it is a good phrase – far too good to leave to the tender mercies of Mr Miliband. It can be applied, for instance, to the extraordinary inadequacies of our own media when it comes to reporting the affairs of the EU, the latest example of which easily justifies the epithet.

The example will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog, who will have been following the progress of the latest pesticide directive and the almost complete absence of comment in the British MSM.

As it happens, the directive went to the Council of Ministers for approval yesterday, an event which elicited an appeal from EU health commissioner Androulla Vassiliou, to "EU governments" to adopt stringent new rules "to ban the use of all potentially cancer-causing pesticides".

Reported only by the one news agency, Vassiliou was cited as declaring: "The key aim of the proposal is to protect the health of citizens and the environment, we must not lose sight of this" - a classic argument from a risk-averse, short-sighted commissioner.

What then happened we have no means of knowing from the British media – other than from a single report in the business section of The Scotsman which tells us, in passing, that the Council of Ministers failed to make a decision and have deferred any further formal consideration for "several months".

In what is clearly a rebuff to the commission (and the EU parliament), the Council is having second thoughts about this controversial directive. That is potential effects are extremely damaging is further reinforced by the Scotsman report with retails a view expressed by the British Pesticides Safety Directorate, which warns that "crop yields throughout the European Union could be put at serious risk," if the directive is approved.

"For once," the paper adds, "the UK government appears to be on side with farmers, judging from a statement issued by its Pesticides Safety Directorate (PSD) suggesting that cereal production could plummet by as much as one third."

From this, we might assume that the British government might have been instrumental in delaying the approval of the directive at the Council meeting yesterday, although we actually know not what our ministers did, owing to the notorious secrecy of the EU’s decision-making process.

However, even that level of secrecy cannot compare with the "malign neglect" of the media, and its failure to report on this important and contentious issue, the likes of The Daily Telegraph instead preferring to devote considerable space in today’s issue to a story on how the "middle classes" could "ditch organic food to cut bills".

The ironic thing is that, if the EU has its way, most of our food in the future – what little there is left - will end up being "organic" by default, as the progressive ban on agro-chemicals ensures that there are precious few products which farmers can use.

The end point of that, of course, is that not only will prices soar, but real shortages may occur – not only in the UK but in developing countries which will also be unable to use these products.

But nothing of this is important enough, in the eyes of the MSM, to report.

COMMENT THREAD

sprayer+01[i-sprayer+01]It terms of its potential impact on our lives and those of the global community – albeit in the medium to long-term – there was nothing more important in the news yesterday than the BBC television report on the EU's forthcoming pesticide directive.

Some credit, therefore, must be given to the BBC for running the piece, which is summarised on the BBC website, under the heading: "Effective chemicals may be lost". One should point out, incidentally, that it was reported by Reuters on 23 April and we carried a long report the same day.

By the same token that we must offer, albeit lukewarm, congratulations to the BBC, it must be noted that no similar reports find their way into the print media. This, after all, is EU business, and – like the Conservative Party, the newspapers don't do "Europe" in any meaningful way.

And, because this is EU legislation, the BBC report, itself, was offered in a rather detached way – almost an account of a distant even that had no real relevance to the views. Had the pesticide directive been British government initiative, with an Act of Parliament in progress, there would no doubt have been a government statement and views offered from opposition MPs – engendering some sense of political controversy and immediacy.

As it is, the story plops out – a marginally interesting but ephemeral curiosity – only to disappear as fast as it came, buried in the turmoil of current events. The BBC can tick a box, saying "we've done that", while the disinterested print media can continue devoting its space to the Westminster soap opera – leaving the business of government unreported.

Of course, there are issues of more immediate concern in the news and it is difficult – if not impossible – to stay focused on all the various events which claim our attention. But we can hazard a guess that if this was British legislation rather than a directive - in what is actually a very controversial subject - it would have claimed a great deal more coverage than it has.

It is that detachment which is perhaps as worrying as the impact of the directive itself. This is brought home by the BBC presenter in yesterday's report, Sarah Mukherjee. In retailing the potential adverse effects of the directive, she conveys the comment of an unnamed agro-chemist, who told her: "Everybody's jaws fell to the floor once we realised the implications, which appear not to have been based on science at all."

Thus, even in the "business", there is that sense of detachment and, while the farming press reports that the Council of Minister will vote on the directive on Monday, the chances are that this crucial stage will be ignored by the media.

In due course, with or without amendments, this dire piece of legislation will come into force and we may well then see a few feature articles and reports about its effects. But they will be too late to have any effect on the political process, which has been outsourced to Brussels where it has become all but invisible.

That, as much as anything, is the true cost of our membership of the European Union. Law-making has become detached from the domestic political process, leading to the self-exclusion of the media and MPs, and thereby the exclusion of the public, until it is too late to do anything about it.

The big problem is that we are not detached from the consequences.

Pic by North Jr.

COMMENT THREAD

MISC+-+cropduster[i-MISC+-+cropduster]With food shortages, inflation and the dire effect of the biofuels policy very much in the news, the EU is in the process of taking another massive step which will, over time, exacerbate the food shortages which are plaguing the global economy.

This is the framework directive on the sustainable use of pesticides, replacing and adding to the existing pesticide law, Directive 91/414/EEC, to which we have not given anything like enough attention (or any).

The regulatory onslaught about to hit European (and other) nations as a result of this new law will have a devastating effect on food production, and magnify the enormous losses already sustained from pest damage, plant disease and weeds.

What brings this into sharp focus is a report from Reuters today which has a "group of European Union scientists" warning against a planned reduction in the number of pesticides allowed in the EU – which is the necessary and intended consequence of the new law.

They are claiming this could increase resistance of pests and make crop cultivation uncompetitive. "The scientists from seven countries fear that reducing the available range of pesticides could lower their efficiency as it is likely that it will increase resistance," they said in a statement sent to Reuters and to Slovenia's Agriculture Minister Iztok Jarc, holder of the six-month rotating presidency of the EU.

They say the increased risk of developing resistance to the few remaining substances could make cultivation of many crops, including grapes, wheat, barley, cotton, fruit, potatoes and vegetables in Europe, uncompetitive.

"In order to safeguard the production of food at affordable prices, it is essential to provide farmers with access to sufficient diversity of crop protection solutions," the scientists' spokesman Ian Denholm from the UK's Rothamsted Research institute, said in the statement. "This is essential to prevent or delay the development of resistant pests, and to maintain the efficacy of remaining crop protection products," he added.

The point is that, under the earlier directive promulgated in 1991, something like half of all the then existing active substances had been withdrawn from the market in 2003. Many niche substances had disappeared and many more – some extremely safe and intended to replace hazardous products – never reached the market because of the enormous costs of gaining official approval – or "market authorisation" as it is called.

Yet, after the EU commission started the process of revising its pesticide laws in 2006, and the EU parliament added still further restrictions, it was anticipated that between 70 - 85 percent of the remaining 250 pesticides could be lost – with further and continued difficulties in bringing new products to the market.

For sure, there is no argument that pesticides and related products do need regulation, although the current regulatory model adopted by the EU is more than a little suspect. But, while the EU concentrates entirely on the harm done to humans, flora, fauna and the environment, there is another side to the coin.

Few people actually realise the extent to which the economy - and our survival - is dependent on modern agri-chemicals. Already, at a conservative estimate global annual pre-harvest losses of all crops as a result of inspect pests, plant diseases and weeds run to 34.9 percent of potential production.

Another estimate puts the loss at 42 percent, with an additional 10 percent post-harvest loss, bringing the total to 52 percent – more than half the world's food supply. Without the already widespread use of agri-chemicals, the losses would be that much greater, all in the context where, currently, even a few percentage shortfall in existing production is causing a global crisis.

This is actually the measure of the dire, claustrophobic and safety-obsessed approach of the EU regulatory machine, which cannot see the bigger picture and cares little for the unintentional consequences of its actions.

Those action, despite the European focus of the legislation, are likely to be global. On the one hand, without the European market to sustain production, many otherwise valuable pesticides will no longer be available. On the other, through export controls and other mechanisms, the imperial EU tends to impose its law on other countries, particularly in the developing world.

This we saw with the wholly irrational DDT ban, where the effects have been devastating and persistent. In this new directive, we are getting more of the same, and – on current form – we are looking to a situation where our EU bureaucracy will become the most important and direct cause of global hunger (with a little help from our American friends and their EPA).

Back in Washington last week, we achieved a great measure of agreement with members of many of the leading US think-tanks that one of the defining – if largely unacknowledged - issues of this century was the need to devise a means of controlling and limiting our bureaucracies, before the destroyed the societies on which they have become parasitic.

This is an example of where the battle lines must be drawn for, with this and the many other measures pouring out of Brussels, the bureaucrats will eventually kill us by the millions and drive the survivors into poverty and starvation.

COMMENT THREAD

EU+legislation[i-EU+legislation]Well, not quite the ranks but in the columns of Der Spiegel, which has a long article about the absurdity of the well-meaning regulations from the EU, which according to Hans-Jürgen Schlamp and Markus Verbeet, perfecting a system of total control.

Starting the article with a detailed description of rules about child-safe lighters that need to be tested but can never be completely safe anyway, and end with a suggestion that it might be a good idea to keep lighters away from children, the authors go on with other well-meaning and completely unnecessary, indeed, frequently counterproductive regulations.

Their repetition of how well-meaning all those people in Brussels are reminds one and, this being a German newspaper, probably is meant to remind one of Mark Antony’s speech in “Julius Caesar” in which he mentions repeatedly that the conspirators who had just murdered Caesar are “all honourable men” while turning the people of Rome against them. The result, as I recall, is a bloody carnage that includes the murder of Cinna the poet, torn “for his bad verses”.

Anyway, back to EU regulations.

According to the EU Commission's new "Consumer Protection Strategy Paper," the EU must demonstrate to Europe's 493 million consumers that it has their best interests in mind. This new zeal has led to many a bizarre or even completely nonsensical EU directive, even though many of the new regulations are fundamentally justified. But when taken together, they create new control mechanisms on top of old ones already notorious for their intrusiveness and inefficiency.

Inevitably the question of food, health and hygiene comes up.

The EU's self-proclaimed protectors of the general health and well-being are especially interested in food hygiene regulations. Their goal is to fully regulate the production, transport and sale of food products from the producer to the consumer's plate. Once again, the underlying concept makes perfect sense, and yet the new rules, while failing to prevent spoiled meat scandals or the excessive use of pesticides, have in fact served up all kinds of new absurdities. A Westphalian pig farmer who fattens his animals in his own forest, just as his grandfather did, runs afoul of the law if he allows the pigs' liquid manure to seep straight into the forest soil instead of draining it through standardized concrete pipes.

In some cases the Brussels bureaucrats' zealous rush to implement new standards has cost ordinary citizens their livelihoods. For instance, a regulation that requires all legal cheese production facilities to have running water and electricity spells the end of many Alpine cheeses. The small dairies that traditionally make these cheeses simply cannot afford the investments needed to satisfy the Brussels requirements.

Ah yes, cheese makers and their problems. Been there, done that, though again, as I recall, a good deal of that came from our own officious ministers and regulators.

So, it seems the writers are unhappy. “Are Europeans dim-witted and unable to cope with life?” – they ask somewhat despairingly. The answer in many cases has to be yes but I know what they mean.

By and large, people are capable of working out that it is not such a good idea to leave lighters within reach of children. Equally, it is a rare food producer who actively wants to poison his or her customer. There is a down-side to losing all your customers, one feels.

There is also a description of the role of various lobbying organizations though, obviously, within the framework of a general article. It would appear that German lawyers are questioning the whole notion of continuous and overwhelming protection, raising such notions as individual responsibility:

In truth, even legal experts find the well-intentioned flood of regulatory fervor overwhelming. Last year the president of Germany's Federal Constitutional Court, Hans-Jürgen Papier, warned "against the constantly increasing regulation of virtually all areas of society and the economy, as well as large segments of private life."The "expanded apparatus of the Brussels EU Commission" contributes to the fact "that there is now a layer of overregulation that exceeds the reasonable scope of the law," says Papier, the chief justice of Germany's highest court. For this reason, says Papier, the legal system runs the risk "of suffocating the individual responsibility and self-determination it is in fact intended to guarantee." Torsten Stein, a European legal expert at Saarland University, warns that one day EU citizens will become aware "that, long after the end of absolute rulers, a new authority has established itself that once again claims the authority to decide what is good and what is bad for subjects."

It would be something of a historic irony – I do like that expression – if the supposedly individualistic British continued to call on the government to do this, that and the other while the Germans rebelled in the name of individual rights and responsibilities.

Read the whole article.

kenya%20flowers[i-kenya%20flowers]Despite the earnest guff we hear from all corners - and particularly the EU - about "saving Africa", once again we are hearing from The East African Standard in Nairobi a tale of woe about how EU rules are damaging the vital trade in fresh-cut flowers from Kenya.

Strangely, it was in August 2004 - almost two years to the day – when we first wrote about this issue. Then it was rules covering the "traceability" of export consignments, creating such a vast burden of red tape that the smaller growers could not cope with it.

Then, in August 2005, we wrote about how EU inspectors were failing to enforce their own rules on pesticide usage, to the detriment of local workers – in a situation where the "soft power" of the Union could have been a force for good.

And now the problem is EU Directive 2000/29/EC that demands flowers be subjected to 100 percent inspection at the EU entry point.

The complaint comes from Erastus Mureithi, chairman of the Kenya Flower Council, who is seeking government intervention in addressing what he says is a non-tariff trade barrier that threatens entry to U markets. "Although the directive is meant to ensure that member states do not allow the importation of harmful pests/diseases in to union, it is a non-tariff barrier since the pests are known to be present within the EU", he says.

What he wants is a relatively simple solution, that the EU should extend accreditation to Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service for flower inspections at the point of exit, similar to arrangements in place now fruits and vegetables, so that the inspections can be done in Kenya, saving the growers the costs of high-priced inspections in EU countries.

Gatoka01_200[i-Gatoka01_200]From this and previous posts one gets the impression that the greatest obstacle to Kenya's commercial development is the EU and, even if the inspection problem was solved (unlike the others), another is looming.

On the table at the moment are negotiations for the continuation of trade arrangements with the EU which currently exempt Kenyan horticultural produce from duty which would otherwise be imposed at a rate of 8 to 11 percent.

Freedom from duties is indeed vital to the Kenyan economy, where the horticulture sub-sector earned the country $400million, accounting for 14 percent of the country's total exports. Last year, the flower industry commanded 31 percent share of the EU market, providing 100,000 jobs directly and 1.5 million indirectly.

But the continuation depends on the country successfully negotiating a favourable Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU, which must be concluded by January 2008. Yet, again according to The East African Standard, Kenya could well become a victim of its own success.

The negotiations, which will gradually involve all members of the 79-state Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group is aimed at replacing the Cotonou Agreement. But the new arrangements will apply to what are known as the less-developed countries (LDCs) and such is Kenya's prosperity that it no longer qualifies as an LDC. It is now ranked as a "non-less-developed country".

On top of that, the country also faces WTO pressure to turn the Cotonou Agreement, which gives all ACP countries preferential access to the EU, into a reciprocal agreement, where subsidised EU exports can also enter ACP countries freely

With these complications comes uncertainty and Kenya Flower Council members are getting anxious about whether the negotiating deadline will be met. Erastus Mureithi warns that, if it is not, the consequences will be grave.

That is the reality of EU relations with Africa. Away from the "feel-good" crap of "making poverty history", it is a dog-eat-dog world, where countries like Kenya are being given few breaks and are having to fight for their economic survival, against the very organisations that so publicly claim to help them.

As always, it is the hypocrisy that stinks.

COMMENT THREAD

chemicals[i-chemicals]Such is the power of the European Union as a trading bloc that some of its regulations have a global reach. This we see with the RoHS Directive. Although it is based on flawed science, inordinately expensive and counter-productive, manufacturers as far afield as China, Japan and the United States are having to comply with it in order to keep open their access to European markets.

For those manufacturers, it is then often too costly and troublesome to run separate production lines for the export and domestic markets so the regulation – despite being farmed by a foreign power – ends up being applied to the home market, by which means the EU is effectively dictating world standards in some commodity sectors.

Your would have thought that US manufacturers particularly would object to this process, except that many of the big players are multi-nationals with significant European interests. They find it convenient to work to a single global standard and there are often other advantages.

What is not generally understood is that many large companies – while making ritual protests – actually welcome regulation and, in fact, much of the technical legislation promulgated by the EU actually originates from such companies, or the trade associations in their pay.

The reason for this is quite simple. Basically, in crowded and highly competitive markets where there is little scope for expansion, market share can only be gained at the expense of competitors. While the traditional route, through advertising, is expensive and uncertain, these companies have found that regulation can do a much better – and cheaper job.

The mechanism works because regulation generally has a disproportionate effect on small and medium enterprises so that suitable framed law can put competitors out of business, leaving their customer base up for grabs. Compared with the costs of advertising, compliance costs tend to be relatively modest, and can often be recouped through price increases, making regulation one of the most cost-effective means of increasing market share.

This is effectively one of the ways in which Ruth Lee, in the article my colleague reviewed earlier, goes astray. She puts the responsibility for "regulatory reform" directly onto government, declaring that it will not happen "unless the Government is prepared to get off people's backs", not acknowledging that much regulation stems from industry pressure and lobbying.

However, even EU legislation has it limits, where the costs of compliance exceed the commercial advantages gained from it, tilting the balance of utility. And, hitting the buffers, it seems, is the infamous REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of CHemicals) directive which, according to one report is meeting with stiffening resistance from a US-led coalition.

Already opposed by India, Brazil and South Africa who predict that compliance costs will exceed what the EU gives in aid, the US has enlisted India, Japan, and ten other countries to denounce the likely trade disrupting effects of directive, arguing that it will hit developing countries and small businesses.

The directive itself was given a first reading in the EU parliament last year and the Council of Ministers voted on the text in December. The draft will now be given a second reading in the parliament in October this year.

The proposal has been around now for three years and the law, if passed, will require producers to perform health and environmental safety checks on some 30,000 chemical substances out of the 100,000 or so which are currently used in daily household and industrial products.

But the US and representatives of the 12 other nations in the coalition, including some of the EU's largest trading partners have issued a joint declaration, asking the commission to revisit the draft. They denounce "the opacity of the regulatory process" and highlight concerns regarding the high cost burden that REACH will inflict on SMEs, particularly in developing countries.

Needless to say, the arguments are given short-shrift by the greenies, at the forefront of which is the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which accuses the US of trying to weaken the law "to the benefit of its chemicals industry". "There is nothing new in this document," it says. WWF also disputes the costs, claiming that ACP countries will have to find a mere €50 million over 11 years.

What the WWF and its fellow-travellers do not argue though – and neither indeed does the US-led coalition – is that REACH perpetuates a flawed regulatory model which, in practice, will reduce consumer safety and make health threats more difficult to resolve.

This we noted with the pesticide licensing model, on which the REACH regime is loosely based, relying on a predictive model to determine safety and a system of governmental "prior approval" before a product can be marketed.

In the first instance, while predictive models are relatively effective in determining the acute response to toxic chemicals, they are poor at identifying potential chronic toxic responses, especially where there are extreme genetic or environmentally induced variations in population sensitivities. Where high sensitivity occurs at low frequency and the size of the population exposed is large, a chemical which passes all safety checks can still give rise to high absolute levels of morbidity.

Furthermore, no test on any specific chemical can predict synergistic effects, where two or more relatively innocuous chemicals can, in combination, cause significant ill-health to those exposed. Mixing certain, relatively safe pesticides with detergents to improve their wetting can, for instance, increase their toxicity by several orders of magnitude.

Most dangerous of all, however, is the little-discussed phenomenon of "regulatory capture". In this case, it manifests itself in a particularly sinister way.

Where governments in addition to product suppliers are party to the process of assuring safety, they also bear some of the blame when the assessment process fails – as it inevitably will. Thus, the regulatory authorities, far from representing sufferers, end up siding with producers, seeking to avoid liability for their joint failure. And those sufferers, who seek recompense through the courts have an extra burden. In addition to proving injury from any particular chemical, they also have to demonstrate with whom the liability lies – the supplier of the agency which approved the chemical. As we have experienced, tax-funded lawyers defending governments, can run circles round often poorly-funded claimants and thereby evade liability.

As if that was not enough, there is also the problem of generic products, where there is no patent holder and thus no commercial advantage from paying the substantial fees required to gain approval for a product. This can have the perverse effect of removing from the market entirely safe products and force the use of others which are considerably less safe.

This is what we came to call the "Hugtite" effect, which will have to be the subject of another posting, in which I will also deal with more effective regulatory models for what is, in fact, the real problem of ensuring chemical safety. For the moment though, we wait and watch as the drama plays out and – most likely despite the US intervention - another regulatory disaster grinds its way onto the statute books.

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