The use of fake or illegal substances to treat crops is growing throughout Europe at an alarming rate, according to agriculture experts, putting people’s health — and growers’ livelihoods — at risk.
The European Crop Protection Association recently set up a taskforce to fight the trade, uncovering a vast business run by criminal gangs, according to Rocky Rowe, the Briton who heads it. The biggest scare to date came in late 2006, when German authorities conducting random tests found isofenphos methyl, an illegal pesticide, in peppers from southern Spain. They issued an alert and authorities in 14 European countries, including Russia, found the same problem.
But there is a big disincentive to prosecution, says Rowe. Pepper orders have fallen by a one-fifth and prices almost halved. "Nobody wants to talk about it,” he says. “Export markets would be shut. No one wants to engage publicly. That is a major issue.”
Rowe says that 5 percent to 7 percent of Europe’s supply of crop protection products — insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides — is fake. Almost 90 percent of the fakes come from China, from where imports of crop protection products as a whole have almost doubled between 2000 and 2005.
Ukraine has become a crucial crossroads in this trade. "We have only seen the tip of the iceberg," says Rowe. "Lots of fake product from China comes through Ukraine and is then distributed throughout the European Union." About a quarter of the products used in Ukraine are fake, he estimates.
