Federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke and his State counterparts must seize the opportunity to fix Australia’s failing national pesticides regulatory system when they meet in Darwin this week, in order to better protect Australians from dangerous chemicals.<\/p>\n
The Primary Industries Ministerial Council will meet on Thursday to discuss a review of Australia’s national pesticides regulator – the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) – and decide whether to give the APVMA extended powers to monitor and enforce conditions around pesticide use.<\/p>\n
WWF opposes the proposed extension of the APVMA’s powers without significant reforms to the way it operates.<\/p>\n
The APVMA has been unresponsive to health and environmental concerns surrounding dangerous agricultural chemicals used in Australia, with a number of highly toxic pesticides under review for more than 13 years.<\/p>\n
"Public concern about the harmful impact of dangerous chemicals in our environment is rising. Our governments have a responsibility to respond in a timely way to these concerns," said WWF- Australia spokesperson Juliette King.<\/p>\n
"We are calling on the Primary Industries Ministerial Council to act decisively and urgently to reform the way we deal with chemicals. This is a once in a generation opportunity to right some wrongs of the past.<\/p>\n
"One of the major failings of the APVMA is the length of time it takes to review chemicals, so the last thing we want is the review of the APVMA to also drag on for years and years," she said.<\/p>\n
The highly poisonous insecticide endosulfan has been banned in over 60 countries and is being considered by the Stockholm Convention’s Review Committee for a global ban because of its toxicity to humans and wildlife and ability to bioaccumulate, yet it still remains available for use in Australia.<\/p>\n
The toxic pesticide diuron has been under review since 2002. Despite interim findings of unacceptable risks to seagrass and dugongs in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, it remains available for sale.<\/p>\n
Another toxic pesticide, atrazine, has been banned in Europe since 2007 but is still widely available in Australia. Atrazine is part of a cocktail of chemicals that has been detected up to 60 kilometres within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.<\/p>\n
Ms King said that more emphasis needs to be put on correcting the failures of the current system.<\/p>\n
"We have to protect our clean and green image and stop Australia being a laggard in terms of harbouring outdated chemical technologies."<\/p>\n
Charlie Stevens, WWF Media Manager – Queensland, 0424 649 689;<\/p>\n
Juliette King, WWF Australia Conservation Policy Officer, 0438 864 997<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke and his State counterparts must seize the opportunity to fix Australia’s failing national pesticides regulatory system when they meet in Darwin this week, in order to better protect Australians from dangerous chemicals. The Primary Industries Ministerial Council will meet on Thursday to discuss a review of Australia’s national pesticides regulator […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4259,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-536537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4259"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}