DRACONIAN regulations are depriving Europe’s farmers of eco-friendly “biopesticides”. Unless the laws are eased or changed, their development will be abandoned, says Mark Whittaker of biopesticide company Koppert UK in Suffolk.
“The situation has been bleak in the UK for a long time, and it’s just as unsatisfactory in other European countries,” Whittaker will tell a conference on biopesticides next week. Yet in the US biopesticides are flourishing, thanks to regulations introduced in 1996 by the US Environmental Protection Agency to encourage safer pest control by fast-tracking their approval.
The EPA’s definition of biopesticides is very broad, including naturally occurring toxins or pheromones and the genes…
