A conflict of interest is causing the nation’s peak pesticide authority to fail in protecting people and animals from agricultural chemicals that cause deformities, according to a leading veterinarian.
The director of Future Fisheries Veterinary Service and a Sydney University research associate, Matt Landos, described the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority as ”risky and dysfunctional”.
Dr Landos said it was a problem that 96per cent of the authority’s funding was sourced by levies and fees from the agricultural chemical industry.
He also expressed concern about two of the Government authority’s advisory board members, Claude Gauchat and Mark Allison, saying they were also life members of CropLife, a lobby group for the chemical industry.
”I think we have an excessive amount of influence by chemical companies in the regulatory process … it raises the question of whether they may be a conflict of interest.”
Dr Landos is calling for an overhaul of Australia’s pesticides regulatory system and will speak at this week’s Australian Veterinary Conference in Brisbane about the impact of agricultural chemicals and pesticides on animals and humans.
He said Australian fish stocks were declining because fish were being exposed to a cocktail of sterilising agricultural chemicals below levels tested for by the authority.
”In the Murray-Darling Basin restocking programs have been very successful at maintaining fish populations, but there is very little reproductive performance by those fish in the river.
”Fish near dairy farms and sewage farms are being affected by agri-chemicals that act like estrogen. There are many little sources which can add up to be a big problem and the regulatory system at present does not count for this cocktail effect.”
Dr Landos recently investigated the impact of agricultural chemicals on a NSW property and discovered deformities and early embryonic deaths in horses and chickens.
”At a particular property I have been investigating I have seen chicken with deformed feet, birds that grew very slowly and didn’t feather properly and frogs that grew very slowly and developed abnormally small legs.
Yesterday on Tasmanian Times: Birth defect cluster sparks investigation
