Australian farm chemical companies fear hundreds of products could be withdrawn

Australias peak body for farm chemical companies says hundreds of chemicals could be withdrawn from the Australian market if proposed reforms for the industry are put in place.

The Federal Government has released its discussion paper on streamlining how agricultural and veterinary chemicals are regulated.

CropLife Australia, which represents chemical companies, approves of some of the proposals in the discussion paper, like quicker registration for low risk chemicals, and bringing Australian regulators in line with international standards.

But in a statement to ABC Rural, CropLife says that some of the proposals will add to the "existing regulatory burden".

"In particular, a proposal for a re-registration program for agricultural chemical products," it said.

"This substantially duplicates the APVMAs existing Chemical Review program at significant cost but without any additional reduction in risk.

"Any measures that could help mitigate the cost of a re-registration program, and encourage registrants to support products that come under review, such as improved data protection, were completely absent.

"Without these provisions, CropLife would expect a large number of products (especially generic products) to be withdrawn from the Australian market."

The head of the school of Agriculture and Wine Sciences, Associate Professor John Kent, from Charles Sturt University, agrees thats possible.
"In my quick reading of the discussion paper, there is definitely that possibility," he said.

"Thats why people need to look carefully at it and make comment.

"We dont want to be losing very good products out of the system and we dont want an extra cost being put on to farmers and end users."

The National Farmers Federations Ben Fargher says the NFF is keen to talk to CropLife about the issue.

Mr Fargher says its important that farmers have access to quality, affordable chemicals in Australia.

"Of course we expect them to have gone through the required system to be safe," he said.

Mr Fargher says the NFF has been concerned that some groups have been pushing for farm chemicals to be regulated based on a precautionary approach, rather than a risk-based approach.

He says hes pleased to see that the discussion paper seems to take on a risk-based approach to chemical regulation.

Juliette King, from World Wildlife Fund, loudly criticised the APVMA earlier this year, saying that her organisation had lost confidence in the authority.

She says theres some positives in the review, but its going to have to make some big changes before it results in a system that WWF would be happy with.

The consultation will be open until January 25.