Set up activities delay pesticide sales summary release

Monday, July 23, 2012

by SUSAN MANN

Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency released its first summary of pesticide sales data this spring, five years after the mandatory sales reporting program began in 2007.

But Craig Hunter, crop protection and research specialist with the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, says the “whole concept of the sales data list is totally flawed and it has been from day one.”

Knowing how much product is sold in Canada is totally irrelevant, he adds. Rather than collecting sales data, growers have proposed that PMRA implement a national pesticide use survey “so we know what products are used on what crops, in what province and in what part of the province so that if there’s an issue you can focus because you know what’s used on what crop and where,” he says.

Pesticide sales reporting in Canada became mandatory in 2006. The PMRA’s initial report covers the first two years of the sales reporting program, 2007/08. But the PMRA only provided detailed information on 2008 sales in its summary as the first year, 2007, was a “learning experience” for both the agency and companies reporting their information, it says in PMRA’s summary.

A total of 87.5 million kilograms of active ingredient was sold in 2,105 end use products in 2008, the summary says. Of that total, 49.2 per cent were herbicides, 37 per cent were antimicrobials, 7.8 per cent were fungicides and 4.8 per cent were insecticides. Ten active ingredients - four herbicides, one fungicide, four antimicrobials and one other - represented 71 per cent of the total sales.

Sixty per cent of all pesticide sales were in the agricultural sector, slightly more than 35 per cent were in the non-agricultural sector and four per cent were in the domestic sector. In the agricultural sector, 79.4 per cent of sales were herbicides, 12.5 per cent were fungicides and 5.7 per cent were insecticides.

Health Canada spokesperson Olivia Caron says by email it would normally take two years from the time PMRA collects the data to when it releases the sales figures. The first report took longer because “of the need to develop a new data base to help record and analyze the information along with an adjustment period to make the reporting from companies more accurate.”

Caron says the PMRA is trying to reduce the time to publication for future reports through educational efforts with its stakeholders. BF