A new regulation coming before the European Parliament’s Environment Committee on 26-28 April threatens to remove all anticoagulant rodenticides from the market across the EU from 2013, preventing effective rat and mouse control in most situations.
Clearly this would seriously increase risk to both public and animal health as well as raising particular dangers for the safety and quality of food not to mention the adverse impact on our environmental quality.
The anticoagulant rodenticides currently supported under the EU Biocidal Products Directive are the essential foundation of rat and mouse control throughout Europe, accounting for an estimated 95% of current EU rodenticide use.
Despite wide acceptance of the vital role anticoagulant rodenticides play in protecting human and animal health and the environment, the proposed text (Article 5.1) of the EU Commission’s proposed Biocidal Product Regulation, could prevent their inclusion as ‘active substances’ in the definitive Annex 1 List, completely prohibiting their future use.
This would be especially damaging given the fact that none of the very few available alternatives for Annex 1 inclusion provide anywhere near an equivalent level of control and all have significant practical or safety limitations to their use.
Under these circumstances, it is essential the proposed new regulations do not exclude anticoagulant rodenticides from continued EU use.
We would therefore ask you to write to your Member of the European Parliament, stating how important it is to retain the use of anticoagulants in rodent control as well as passing this message to all other stakeholders and influencers that you know.
Approved by NPTA Management Board March 2010.
