Rob Edwards

Lochhead accused of “spineless sell-out” on bee pesticides

28 April 2013

A new compromise plan by Scotland’s environment minister, Richard Lochhead, to agree - but not implement - a ban on the pesticides blamed for killing bees has been condemned as a “complete fudge” and a “spineless sell-out” that could help usher in “ecological Armageddon”.

Scientists, beekeepers, environmental groups, and politicians reacted angrily yesterday to a bid by the Cabinet Secretary for two years more research before deciding whether or not to restrict the use of nicotine-based nerve poisons used by farmers to kill insects and protect crops.

Lochhead has written to UK ministers urging them to accept proposed European restrictions on neonicotinoid pesticides, due to be discussed in Brussels tomorrow. But he said that the restrictions should only be implemented in 2015 if further evidence proves that bees are being harmed. 

The pesticides have already been banned in France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia, and by major retailers in the UK. The proposed European restrictions, which look likely to go ahead, have been backed by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee.

Lochhead, however, argued that the science was not clear-cut. “Given the lack of conclusive evidence I think it would be sensible to carry out a further programme of research over the next two years,” he said.

How wildlife has suffered from Scotland’s £575m farming subsidies

from Scottish Wildlife magazine, March 2013

Lapwings used to be one of those birds that defined the countryside. They were always there, swooping and flocking, flashing black and white in the air, racing across the ground, or standing crested and proud.

Their loud, liquid ‘pee-wit’ call was the soundtrack to every lowland walk. Sometimes, during the nesting season, they would become impossible to ignore as they sought to protect their chicks by dive-bombing anyone who came close. 

These days, however, you have to be lucky to see lapwings. According to the government wildlife agency, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), their population in Scotland has crashed by more than 50% over the last ten years.

Distressingly, the same could be starting to happen to another of the birds that has characterised the countryside – skylarks. They have declined 14% over the last decade, says SNH, particularly in the last couple of years.

There is also evidence that kestrels and rooks have suffered, along with other animals, insects and plants. Specialist species of butterflies decreased by 48% between 1979 and 2007, according to a 2010 report by the Rural Policy Centre at the then Scottish Agricultural College.

The feature that all these species have in common is that they live on farmland, suggesting that farming has been eroding biodiversity. There are other species that seem to have done better, like swallows and goldfinches, but experts think that the overall trend could be downwards, and that changing agricultural practices must take a share of the blame.

Revealed: how the Scottish government sold out to supermarkets on food waste

from Sunday Herald, 17 March 2013

A high-profile Scottish government campaign to cut food waste had to be soft-pedalled to avoid offending the big supermarkets, a document leaked to the Sunday Herald reveals.

Campaign staff were forbidden from advising shoppers to buy less food or to ignore ‘buy one get one free’ (BOGOF) offers because Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco were “extremely sensitive about this subject”. Winning their co-operation for the campaign had been “very difficult”, says an internal briefing.

Environmentalists have accused ministers of “selling out” to big business at the expense of pollution and waste. “You wonder which campaign will be neutered next in the supermarkets' BOGOF deal with the government,” said Dr Richard Dixon, the director of Friends of the Earth Scotland. 

The campaign, launched by the environment minister, Richard Lochhead MSP, last October, included TV, radio and newspaper adverts, social media and a travelling supermarket roadshow. The aim was to try and prevent people throwing away up to a fifth of their food, which is reckoned to cost Scotland a massive £1 billion a year.

Over two months, teams were recruited to staff stalls at major branches of Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco in Glasgow, Paisley, Falkirk, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness and elsewhere. They were equipped with branded bodywarmers, baseball caps and iPads and told to “engage as many people as possible”. 

The strapline for the campaign was “shop smarter, waste less, save more.” But according to the official 69-page briefing for staff obtained by the Sunday Herald, they had to play down the central message for fear of upsetting the supermarkets.

Ministers under fire for promoting food packaging

from Sunday Herald, 17 March 2013

Scottish ministers have been accused of surrendering to the propaganda of the £11 billion packaging industry by forming a partnership that promotes food wrappings.

A government website aimed at encouraging people to waste less food waxes lyrical about the benefits of packaging – and it is backed by the industry’s Packaging Federation. “Food loves the packaging it comes in,” the website says.

“There’s nothing better to protect it and keep it fresher for longer. From ziplocks on cheese packs to breathable fruit and veg bags, it has been cleverly designed with all sorts of cunning features.”

But according to the Green MSP, Alison Johnstone, this will confuse the public. “Most waste information urges you to try and avoid over-packaging of fresh food, not tell you how brilliant it is,” she said.

Ministers under pressure to ban pesticides blamed for killing bees

from Sunday Herald, 03 March 2013 

Scottish ministers are under mounting pressure to defy the Westminster government and back a European ban on toxic pesticides blamed for killing bees.

A powerful coalition of environmental groups is urging the Scottish environment secretary, Richard Lochhead, to support a move by the European Commission to restrict the use of nicotine-based nerve agents designed to kill insects that prevent crops from growing.

Their campaign has been backed by the Scottish National Party MEP, Alyn Smith, who is calling on his party colleagues at Holyrood to change their minds. To use incomplete science as an excuse for delaying a ban is a “shoddy lobbying tactic”, he said.

So far Lochhead has steadfastly supported the UK government’s rejection of a ban, stressing that there are “gaps” in the science and concerns for farmers. But the Sunday Herald understands that some of his senior officials now regard restrictions as inevitable. 

Environmentalists point to more than 30 scientific studies suggesting that the pesticides are harming bees and other wildlife, including some from Scottish universities. Bees and other pollinating insects like bumblebees, butterflies, moths and hoverflies are vital to the production of food, and are reckoned to be worth £43 million a year to the Scottish economy.

Food fraud scandal needs tough action

Comment from Sunday Herald, 17 February 2013

The possibilities for food fraud today are endless. As well as substituting horsemeat for beef, whiting can be used instead of cod, sea trout instead of salmon, and cheaper varieties of potato instead of the revered King Edward.

Food can be adulterated by adding water to chicken breasts or fruit juices, or mixing coffee husks in with beans, or adding glycerol to wine. Companies can pretend that beef came from Britain instead of South America, label farmed fish as wild and try and pass off conventionally produced food as organic.

All these things have happened. The possibilities for duplicity and misrepresentation go on and on, and a litany of apologies and promises do nothing to assuage public concern. People aren't losing trust in the industrialised, multinational food chain - they have already lost it. Little wonder then that consumers who can afford it are increasingly turning to known local producers.

Whatever we might wish, the international food industry is not going to wither away. It must be policed, and policed hard by tough, well-resourced, independent regulators, rather than by itself, as increasingly seems to be the case. 

That's why our revelations today that food safety sampling has dropped by one-third over the last four years, as meat inspectors and environmental health officers have lost their jobs, is particularly disturbing. It only adds to the toxic mix that these reductions in sampling and job losses have come about because of public sector cuts.

Among all the priorities of government, surely ensuring the integrity of the food its citizens eat is one of the highest?

Fears of more horsemeat scandals as food safety tests fall by a third

from Sunday Herald, 17 February 2013 

The sampling of food to ensure that it’s safe to eat has plummeted by more than a third in Scotland over the last four years, as safety inspectors have lost their jobs and public spending has been slashed.

An investigation by the Sunday Herald has uncovered steep declines in the testing and inspection regimes meant to prevent frauds like horsemeat being sold as beef. Experts are warning that such scandals could happen again, and politicians are demanding urgent action.

The revelations come as the crisis in the multinational food industry triggered by the discovery of horsemeat in beefburgers continues to escalate. Last week saw police raids on meat plants in England and Wales, three arrests, a string of new meat products withdrawn by supermarkets and horsemeat in school and hospital food. 

An unauthorised drug known as bute was detected in some horsemeat, and Investigations were launched across Europe to try and identify exactly who was guilty of passing horsemeat off as beef. A French company, Spanghero, was implicated by the French government.

As governments, regulators, supermarkets and meat processors struggle to restore consumer confidence, one of the crucial emerging questions is how the public are protected from food fraud and abuse. The answer is that protection is steadily being stripped away.

Scottish government fails to ban pesticide blamed for poisoning bees

from Sunday Herald, 23 December 2012

The Scottish government has come under fierce fire for failing to ban pesticides that are blamed for poisoning bees and threatening Scotland’s £100 million soft fruit industry.

The environment minister, Richard Lochhead MSP, has refused to outlaw the use of nicotine-based toxic chemicals used by farmers to kill insects that damage crops. This is despite mounting scientific evidence that the toxins harm bees, which pollinate strawberries, raspberries and other soft fruits.

The 30,000-member Scottish Wildlife Trust is now launching a campaign to ban the pesticides, known as neonicotinoids. Trust officials met with Lochhead earlier this month, but came away frustrated by his failure to act.

“We are extremely disappointed with the Scottish government’s response to our call for a moratorium on neonicotinoids,” said the trust’s head of policy, Dr Maggie Keegan.

“We urge the government to adopt the precautionary principle and ban these chemicals until there is convincing scientific evidence that pollinator populations are not significantly harmed.”

The trust warned that delaying a ban could have a “devastating” impact on pollination, which is economically vital, particularly to the soft fruit growing industry. Neonicotinoids already face bans or restrictions in France, Germany and Italy, but not in the UK.

The chemicals are made by multi-national pesticide companies to paralyse insects by attacking their nervous systems. With sales of over £1 billion a year they are the world’s most widely used insecticide, and are applied to 10% of Scotland’s crop-growing land, mostly to protect oil seed rape.

Move to defy Westminster to protect soil

for Sunday Herald, 02 December 2012

Scottish councillors have defied the UK government in a bid to prevent soils across Europe from being damaged by developers, farmers and pollution.

A European Union committee agreed on Friday to push for the introduction of a new law to force countries to protect their soils so they can grow more food, contain climate-wrecking carbon, control floods and limit landslides.

But the move, led by the Labour leader of Stirling Council, Corrie McChord, flies in the face of Westminster, which has long opposed a European directive on soils. “I don’t agree with the UK’s views on this,” said McChord. “There is an urgent need for action.”

With the expert help of the Scottish Environment Protect Agency (Sepa), McChord won the backing of the 350-strong Committee of the Regions in Brussels for a report urging tougher legal measures to protect soils. “I hope this will kickstart the argument, and help break the logjam,” he told the Sunday Herald.

New bid to tackle Scotland’s £1bn food waste

from Sunday Herald, 07 October 2012 

Throwing away food costs Scotland a massive £1 billion a year, and has prompted a new campaign by Scottish ministers to try and persuade people to cut back on waste.

As much as one fifth of the food and drink people buy ends up being dumped in the bin, costing the average Scottish household £430 a year. Yet most of it could be eaten or drunk.

Top of the most-wasted league are the 70,000 tonnes of drinks dumped down the sink, worth about £140 million. Then there’s the 62,000 tonnes of fresh vegetables, the 46,000 tonnes of baked goods and the 34,000 tonnes of fresh fruit that are annually discarded (see table below).

According to the Scottish government, nearly 400,000 tonnes of the food thrown out every year can be avoided. And householders could save themselves £35 a month by reducing their waste.

Wasting food also has a high environmental cost. Most of it is dumped as landfill and rots to produce methane and other greenhouse gases that are disrupting the climate around the globe. 

This week ministers are launching a renewed drive to get people to buy less, cook less and waste less. The key, they say, is better household planning, improved storage and smarter shopping.

Bumblebee group in bitter row over pesticides

from Sunday Herald, 29 July 2012 

A major bee conservation group in Scotland has become embroiled in a bitter row for failing to back a ban on nicotine-based pesticides blamed for killing bees.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust, based at the University of Stirling, is facing calls for the resignation of its newly-appointed chairman, Professor Michael Usher, and criticism from its founder over its cautious stance.

One reason the trust has refused to support a ban is revealed in a paper agreed at the last meeting of trustees in May. “If we take an aggressive campaigning stance then we risk reputational/relationship damage with government and, importantly, with farmers,” it said.

Neonicotinoids are a group of toxic chemicals designed to paralyse insects by attacking their nervous systems. With annual sales globally of over £1 billion, they are used on four million acres of crops in the UK to protect them from pests. 

Scientific evidence that they are harming bees has been mounting, with a series of studies linking neonicotinoids to the “colony collapse disorder” that has decimated bee populations worldwide. According to beekeepers, more than ten million honeybee colonies have died since 1992.

Hundreds of thousands of suicides blamed on big company farming

from Sunday Herald, 15 May 2011
Pastapur, India

Big business agriculture promoted by western corporations is to blame for up to a quarter of a million farmers committing suicide over the last ten years, according to community leaders in India.

Poor farmers are forced to take out big loans to buy expensive pesticides and fertilisers, and to dig wells for the increasing amounts of water they need. But when their crops fail, or their wells dry up, they fall into debt - and many thousands kill themselves out of desperation.

That is the bleak picture painted by P.V. Satheesh, the director of the Deccan Development Society, which supports community farming in one of the poorest parts of rural India. Sitting barefoot with his laptop in the shade outside his house in the village of Pastapur, in the Zaheerabad region of Andhra Pradesh, he gets angry about what’s happening.

Farmers are “misled” into believing the promise that the high-input, chemical-intensive, single-crop agriculture of the so-called ‘green revolution’ is their salvation, he says. So when it fails, they end up trapped in a debt spiral that too often leads to despair and suicide.

“Those that say that the green revolution will save the world should come and see the hundreds of thousands who have committed suicide in India," he warns. “The green revolution is a downhill slide into disaster.”

Unveiled: undercover eco-spooks emerge from the shadows

from Sunday Herald, 13 June 2010

For 15 years they have been working undercover to expose environmental criminals around the globe, spying on wildlife smugglers, secretly filming animal abusers and infiltrating planet-trashers.

They have witnessed appalling cruelty, adopted numerous fake identities and sometimes put their lives in danger. In so doing they have helped put crooks behind bars, changed government policies and made many headlines.

But they have not, until now, claimed any credit. Today, for the first time, they are emerging from the shadows to court a little publicity for their daring deeds. 

Welcome to the eco-spooks - or, to give them their proper name, Tracks Investigations. They are, as they say, “not MI5, not 9 to 5”, and they boast an “amazing success record.”

They don’t want to be pictured, and some of them don’t want to be named. They don’t like speaking about their current investigations, but they have just set up a website. And they’ve agreed to talk to the Sunday Herald.

Since 1995, Tracks Investigations has carried about 250 investigations in scores of countries. They have exposed destruction of the Amazon rainforest, mass sheep shipments from Australia, pig cargoes trucked across Europe and the stripping of protected peatlands in the UK.

McDonald’s: playing chicken with British food

from Sunday Herald, 06 June 2010

The cattle crowded into the barn near Bishopton stared intently at the group of visiting dignitaries, blissfully unaware of their fate. “These animals are very close to being burgers,” said the farmer, John Ritchie, with a smile.

He was helping the world’s most famous fast food chain, McDonald’s, do its public relations. Surrounded by the US company’s irrepressible executives, he carefully spelled out how his beef cattle were reared locally on local food, before they were killed to make Big Macs.

It’s the patriotic pitch at the heart of McDonald’s new, high-profile marketing campaign, which jetted in and out of Scotland on Friday. The company’s beef, pork, eggs, milk and potatoes were virtually all British: that was the message, repeated ad nauseam.

“Our customers care about where their food comes from,” insisted Nick Hindle, the company’s vice president for communications from London. “People want to eat British food. They think it is supporting the British economy and they trust the quality.”

But there’s one McDonald’s staple that is not mentioned in any of the blurbs, that fails to feature in any of the media spin, and that makes a mockery of the whole PR exercise: chicken. That’s because 99% of it comes from abroad.

Does factory farmed meat make us sick?

from Sunday Herald, 30 May 2010

The video clips are upsetting. There’s a big bin full of dead lambs, a piglet slipping across a filth-strewn floor in search of its mother and a calf lying dead in a shed with blood seeping from its nose and mouth.

The latest compilation of factory farming horrors assembled by the campaign group, Animal Aid, packs an emotional punch. But it also underlies the serious message that the anti-meat activists want to get across: that industrial farms can hurt humans as well as animals.

At least 12 major diseases, which between them cause millions of people to suffer and tens of thousands to die around the world, can be blamed on factory farming, they claim. These include swine flu, bird flu, salmonella, e-coli and mad cow disease.

But their campaign has provoked a vitriolic response from the National Farmers Union (NFU) in Scotland, who condemned it as “poisonous”. Others, however, are less critical, arguing that the campaigners have a point, but just take it too far.

The arguments, though sometimes bitter, are important because they are about how we look after the animals on which we rely for food. And they raise the question of what we can eat without being cruel -  and without putting our own health at risk.

Thousands of school children at risk from pesticides

from Sunday Herald, 31 January 2010

The health of thousands children is being put at risk by the widespread use of toxic pesticides in Scottish schools, according to a new survey by environmental groups.

Local authorities across the country have admitted spraying chemicals suspected of causing cancers and other health problems on playing fields, paths and playgrounds to control weeds. They have also laid poisonous bait to try and get rid of rats.

Exposing children to such risks is “staggering” and “unacceptable”, say campaigners, who are demanding a ban. Some councils say they would prefer not to use pesticides, but manufacturers insist they are safe if properly used.

Councils across the UK were asked for the first time to identify which pesticides they used in schools. The survey was carried out at the end of last year by the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), which brings together 65 organisations in 26 countries across Europe, along with the UK campaign group, Pesticides Action Network.

Pesticide company under fire for funding research into bee decline

from Sunday Herald, 04 October 2009

One of the world’s biggest pesticide companies, Syngenta, has been accused of a “howling conflict of interest” for funding research into the disappearance of honeybees - a problem which some say it may have helped cause.

Syngenta, based in Basel, Switzerland, last year clocked up £7.3 billion worth of sales in more than 90 countries. Among the products it markets to farmers are insecticides which have been blamed for harming honeybees.

It now also co-funds a £1 million project in the UK, announced last week, to research the decline of the bees. But the company insists that its money will not influence the outcome of the research, and dismisses criticisms of its role as “perverse”.

A film due to open in cinemas this week exposes the global plight of the honeybee, and argues that insecticides are partly to blame. Called ‘Vanishing of the Bees’, it is backed by the £9 billion Co-operative retail group, which has banned suspect chemicals from being used on its fresh fruit and vegetables.

According to beekeepers, honeybee populations in the UK crashed by nearly a third in 2008. The implications are alarming, as bees contribute £200 million a year to the UK economy and pollinate one in every three mouthfuls of food that we eat.

New campaign to make Scotland more fruitful

from Sunday Herald, 06 September 2009

A fruit tree in every street. That is the vision of a new campaign that will be launched at Holyrood later this month to plant apple, pear and plum trees across Scotland.

If the organisers have their way, fruit trees will begin to bloom on housing estates, parks and canal banks, as well as in the grounds of schools, universities, hospitals, churches and businesses.

“Our vision is an ambitious one,” said John Hancox, director of the Commonwealth Orchard, the voluntary group that is launching the campaign. “That all children across Scotland will grow up seeing the fruit trees they planted, blossoming and bearing fruit, near where they live.”

Across the UK it is estimated that 90% of orchards have been lost to development or agriculture over the last 100 years. Scotland has been left with just 105 commercial orchards covering less than 50 hectares.

The UK used to boast as many as 6,000 different varieties of apples, only a tiny number of which are now grown. There are more than 40 types of apples specific to Scotland, including the Coul Blush from Easter Ross (see below).

Fiji Water: not so cool after all

from Sunday Herald, 23 August 2009

The walls are all lime green and glass, the clientele all lip gloss and tan, and the waiters’ smiles sometimes seem like sneers. But the world’s most expensive water is off.

Ask for Fiji Water at the restaurant in Edinburgh’s most upmarket store, Harvey Nichols, and you’ll be met with incomprehension. Walk across the shop floor, buy a bottle of the hugely-hyped drink from the cooler for £2, and you’ll be told that you can’t consume it on the premises.

Such an ambiguous attitude towards the bottled water that is meant to be the epitome of chic may not be deliberate, but it is understandable. The water comes, after all, half way across the globe clad in plastic from a country ruled by one of the world’s most repressive regimes.

The elected government of the Fiji islands in the South Pacific was overthrown by a military coup in 2006, led by the armed forces commander, Frank Bainimarama. His rule was declared illegal by the Fiji court of appeal in April this year, since when he has abolished the judiciary, banned public gatherings and delayed elections until 2014.

In the circumstances, how Fiji Water has managed to maintain its image as the water celebrities like to be seen drinking is a marvel of the marketing age. But now, the cracks are beginning to show.

The madness of filleting Scottish fish in China

from Sunday Herald, 23 August 2009

by Mike Merritt and Rob Edwards

Cod caught off Scotland is being sent on a 10,000-mile round trip to China and back again to be filleted for supermarkets, shops and chip suppers.

The fish is caught in the North Atlantic, deep frozen, shipped to China for processing by workers earning less than £1-a-day before being refrozen and returned to Scotland.

The globe-trotting trek made by cod has been condemned as “madness” and “ridiculous” by Scottish fish producers, fishermen and environmentalists. And it happens despite pledges by supermarkets and food producers to reduce their climate pollution and food miles.

The revelation also raises questions about the environmental and social impact of the globalisation of the Scottish food industry. “Surely it would make more sense to process the fish here,” said Hugh Raven, director of Soil Association Scotland, which backs organic food.

“Something's wrong with a food system in which cod caught off Scotland is transported to China and then back to be eaten.”