Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on what date (a) his Department and (b) the Advisory Committee on Pesticides was first informed by the manufacturers that the hormone-based weed killer aminopyralid or similar chemical formulations were capable of surviving ingestion by horses or cows, and being composted in manure, and then having adverse effects on crops treated with the manure.
Answer
The properties of the group of herbicides to which aminopyralid belongs—pyridine carboxylic acids—have long been recognised. As a result of this, when the Advisory Committee on Pesticides considered the evaluation of aminopyralid in 2005 it concluded that products containing it should carry warnings on their labels that manure that could contain aminopyralid should not be used on susceptible crops, or on land intended for growing such crops, until all plant material had fully decomposed.