Food and Biological Security: Agricultural Fungicide

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on securing this debate and welcome the opportunity to respond on the assessment of how the UK’s current agricultural fungicide use will affect long-term food and biological security. I thank her not only for the way in which she opened the debate but for giving notice of the very serious questions that she put; I will endeavour to answer them and other questions that have been put in this debate.

The noble Baroness is entirely right: fungal diseases can cause serious damage to crops and other plants. Potato blight, which was mentioned, and Dutch elm disease are well-known examples but fungal infections can affect all crops. Fungi can also leave poisonous chemicals, such as mycotoxins, in infected plants, with consequent risks to people.

Most of the food we eat here in the UK is produced here in the UK. While the diversity of our food supply chain, where domestic production is combined with imports through stable trade routes, ensures its resilience, we cannot underestimate the importance of British farming in delivering food security in the UK. A key component of this is the management of pests, weeds and diseases. Careful selection of crop varieties and attention to good husbandry will help to limit fungal infection of crops. However, fungicides will be essential in some situations to prevent or control infection.

I come to some of the points raised by the noble Baroness. She asked what was being done to address the damage done to the microbiosphere and soil fungi—a point also mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. We know that agricultural fungicides can affect the structure of soil microbial communities, including beneficial soil fungi, of which there are many. We promote the use of integrated pest management approaches, including the use of cover crops, which are known to increase soil microbial diversity. Through our environmental land management schemes, we are encouraging, incentivising and supporting farmers to develop integrated pest management into how they farm, and the use of green cover crops, which is absolutely vital. I will perhaps come on to say a little more about that.

I come to the noble Baroness’s specific point about ipflufenoquin and whether its use in agricultural or other commercial sectors is right, pending further investigation into the risk of cross-resistance emerging. I am of the belief—and I am happy to discuss this further with the noble Baroness—that this is not an active substance that is currently approved in the UK, or one that the HSE, which regulates this area, has received an application to approve. As and when it does, there is a very proper debate that the noble Baroness would be right in raising.

The noble Baroness also asked what work the Government were doing to reserve certain modes of action of antifungals for human medicine only, and about a risk management framework against cross-resistance development. The scope of the current regulatory regime extends only to considering resistance in the target pest, weed or disease, and therefore does not consider human pathogens. This is consistent with internationally accepted standards and guidance. However, we recognise the importance of understanding the broader impacts of resistance beyond single species. The new antimicrobial resistance national action plan, due to be published in 2024, will include a focus on plant health and will have commitments focused on better stewardship of antimicrobials in plants, as well as a call for a search on drivers of AMR in plants and the transmission routes of AMR through plants—directly responding to the very good point that the noble Baroness made—and on our greater understanding of the impacts of these fungicides in the wider contexts of the food we eat and the environment we seek to protect.

As with all pesticides authorised for use in Great Britain, fungicides can be placed on the market only after a thorough scientific risk assessment. That assessment and subsequent reviews consider risks to the environment and human health, as well as the efficacy of the fungicide. The assessment of efficacy is important in this context. To avoid excessive use, the regulator, the Health and Safety Executive, assesses the minimum dose of the active substance—that is the chemical that delivers the required effect—needed in the product. This will ensure that the product is sufficiently effective without applying more of it than is required, minimising the potential for resistance to develop. However, any pesticide must be used with care. We know that overuse of pesticides can have an impact on the natural environment but it can also lead to resistance, which costs farmers more and may cause further downstream impacts, including to human health, as the noble Baroness said.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, asked about compliance. There is a very strict enforcement process, governed mainly by the Environment Agency, on the release of chemicals into the environment, particularly into watercourses. I do not have a figure for the number of cases that we have dealt with in recent years, but it is certainly available and I am very happy to provide it to the House.

Managing antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, effectively is essential for biological security in the UK and globally. Our understanding of fungicide resistance as an emerging AMR threat is still growing. We are currently reviewing evidence of the link between fungicide resistance in crops and transition to animals, including humans. This work will fit into the broader context of the action this Government are taking on AMR, which encompasses resistance to infections caused by fungi, bacteria and other micro-organisms. In 2019 we published our 20-year vision to contain and control AMR by 2040. This strategic vision is supported by our current five-year AMR national action plan, running from 2019 to 2024, and a new action plan due to be published next year.

We have already made significant progress in combating AMR in agriculture. Our work on antibiotic resistance in animal agriculture has led to a 59% reduction in the use of antibiotic medicines in farmed animals between 2014 and 2022. It is a remarkable story, and there have been some staggering increases of way more than that. Alarmingly, last year there was a big spike of antibiotic use in salmon farming. We hope to see that continue to improve, but there are serious issues to answer there. Within this new plan, we seek to promote research into better understanding the transmission of antifungal resistance through the environment to humans and to encourage responsible antimicrobial use in crops by providing evidence-based guidance.

The noble Baroness asked what the Government are doing with the Quadripartite on these issues. Antifungal resistance is a subset of AMR and is taken into consideration in the UK and in global AMR strategies. I work with Ministers in other departments to make sure that the UK is absolutely at the forefront of these issues through our “one health” agenda. The UK is a leading member of the Quadripartite multi-stakeholder partnership platform on AMR, which is driving action on AMR across the sectors, including Governments, researchers, civil society organisations and funders.

A question was put about the national action plan on pesticides. We appreciate that noble Lords are concerned that the publication of the NAP has been delayed, and we will publish it shortly. We have not waited for its publication to move forward with work supporting sustainable pest management. Farmers can now sign up to new paid integrated pest management actions within the sustainable farming incentive scheme. We are really pleased with the level of interest in the new scheme, which includes integrated pest management, and we have had more people showing interest in the first month after the new actions were announced than we had in five months under the previous one. We are starting to see real buy-in to this. Feeding into that is a near doubling of the number of farmers in Countryside Stewardship, and our landscape recovery schemes are also taking place. This is moving into a good place, but there is much more work to be done.

We are also supporting research into pest management and IPM through the £270 million farming innovation programme, through which farmers and growers in England, with industry partners, can apply for funding to develop innovative methods and technologies to boost sustainable productivity in agriculture and horticulture. This work will help farmers access the most effective pest management tools available and ensure that we understand the changing trends in pest threats across the UK. It is really important that we see this grow and that research can be scaled here in the UK. Too often in the past we have seen really good ideas brought forward by unbelievably talented universities that have to go abroad to be scaled up. We want to see this investment here and this great new green tech boom exporting good practice and innovations across the world. We have not waited for the new AMR plan to be published to take action on pesticide resistance, as I said. This Government are already supporting this in a variety of different ways.

This holistic approach carefully considers all available plant protection methods to ensure that pesticides are used only where they are needed. Alternative methods of prevention and control are encouraged, and decision-making tools and monitoring systems are used to track pests and understand when intervention is required. IPM therefore helps to minimise chemical intervention and diversify the techniques used for pest and disease management, which reduces input costs for farmers and growers. We are all pulling in the same direction here: it absolutely makes sense for a farmer to use fewer pesticides, fungicides, sprays and other interventions if they possible can. The added advantage is that, over time, that will increase their resilience and reduce the likelihood of resistance. This year we announced new IPM actions as part of the SFI. That is working holistically, seeing better results for food security, the environment and, we hope, our health.

Around 10 years ago, when people started talking about precision farming, it seemed to be the future. Now, precision farming seems a little analogue in a digital age, when we are starting to see technologies coming through that can treat individual plants using data that is in the tractor cab and available through satellite imaging and other tools. We are starting to see benefits to both agriculture and horticulture, which could mean a dramatic diminution in the amount of spray we use.

Finally, in 2021 this Government established a £19.2 million research programme called Pathogen Surveillance in Agriculture, Food and the Environment, PATH-SAFE. This programme, led by the Food Standards Agency, will bolster our understanding of AMR in the environment, including the importance of different sources and potential transmission routes. We expect the final details of this project to be published next year.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Before the Minister concludes, I want to raise a couple of points that he has not covered. One thing that he alluded to is how this crosses over with the Department of Health. I have an easy question for him: will he please refer this debate to that department and make sure that it is aware of it? On the new AMR action plan, can the Minister ask the department whether we can have a meeting to talk about the specific issue of antifungals and make sure that it gets the attention it deserves?

I have two other questions that have not been covered. The Minister said that he does not know of any attempt to get ipflufenoquin registered here. Of course, if it is being used in the US, it is creating resistance that will be imported here, which is where the issue of trade deals will come in. Can the Minister make sure that this is drawn to the attention of our trade negotiators?

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked about the numbers in terms of the SFI and integrated pest management. I understand that the Minister may not be able to answer now, but can he update us in a letter on the numbers of people applying to that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for those points. I sit on a cross-ministerial committee with Health Ministers, and we are absolutely making the point that antimicrobial resistance is a matter not just for health but for Defra, and that we have an international role in different fora, such as the WHO, UNEP and others. We certainly take this extremely seriously. I will write to the noble Baroness with more details about when the AMR action plan comes out. I am very happy to connect her with the officials who will draw that up.

On trade deals, we have a write-round process in government and I can assure her that we take this really seriously. There is perhaps enough interest in the House on SFI that I could write and put a letter in the Library with up-to-date figures on the uptake of ELMS.

I am conscious of time, so I will conclude by saying that, as with many areas of environmental and health policy, there are connections and tensions between two priorities. We are bringing together expertise from across government to ensure that our policy, regulation and strategy strike the right balance, so that pests, weeds and diseases can be managed effectively, while reducing the impacts of resistance across society, our environment, the food we eat and our reliance on it.

The specific actions being taken on resistance through the AMR national action plan and pesticide-specific policies and regulation are only one component in this broader picture. The recently published UK Biological Security Strategy and next year’s edition of the UK Food Security Report—a requirement of the Agriculture Act—showcase the UK Government’s focus on these key areas and how we will ensure that this country remains ready to handle these challenges.