Bayer Backs Away From Attempt To Suppress Pesticide Safety Data

by Sanjay Suri

(IPS) LONDON -- A curious British court action June 30 gave Friends of the Earth the right to tell people where to look for information on some pesticides -- but not to offer the information.

Bayer CropScience, the multinational agro-chemical and biotech corporation, dropped legal action against Friends of the Earth (FoE) in Britain that had sought to restrain the environmental group from telling the public how to access safety data on pesticides.

The pesticides include particularly glufosinate ammonium, a weedkiller used in many genetically modified (GM) crops that have been developed to be resistant to this pesticide. This would mean the pesticide can be sprayed to kill all plants and weeds other than the desired GM crop.

The dispute between FoE and Bayer arose in 2000 when the environment group asked the Pesticides Safety Directorate (PSD) of the British government to release information on some pesticides including glufosinate ammonium. Bayer launched legal proceedings to stop the government passing the information.

In May last year Bayer and FoE reached an out of court settlement under which the company allowed FoE "read only" access to the information.

FoE meanwhile obtained the information also from Swedish and Danish agencies. "We wanted to show that Bayer was trying to keep this information top secret, but that it was freely available all over the place," Phil Michaels from FoE told IPS. "We wanted to tell people where all they can get information."

Bayer again applied for an injunction in October last year to stop FoE from telling people that Swedish and other regulators have the information, or that it had obtained copies of Bayer's pesticide data from foreign regulators, or from making requests to other regulators for Bayer's data.

This was the action Bayer dropped Wednesday. An FoE statement says Bayer promised in a settlement "never to sue Friends of the Earth again for doing these things, and in particular not to sue Friends of the Earth for telling members of the public how to access this type of data or for requesting this type of data from regulators."

The dispute was "absurd," Michaels said. "What we can now do is simply to say that people can go to the U.S. and Sweden and access this data. That was what Bayer was trying to stop us doing. And it was doing this aggressively."

But FoE still cannot place that information on its website. "Bayer raised some legitimate copyright concerns over publishing of their documents," Michaels said. "So we are now calling for a change of system so that regulators pro-actively publish more information about pesticides than they do."

FoE can do no more than inform people where to get information. "We have won what we should never have had to win," Michaels said.

But the case has nevertheless set new precedents for access to information, he said. It also proved to be an example of a non- governmental organization (NGO) holding firm before a multinational giant.

"They thought that simply because of the cost of the litigation we would tuck our tails between the legs and run," Michaels said. The case had helped establish that in a confrontation NGOs are not likely to back down, he said.

"This is a humiliating climb-down by Bayer, a biotech bully," Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth in Britain said in a statement Wednesday. "Bayer tried to use its massive financial muscle to prevent members of the public having access to important health and environmental data about substances that are sprayed on our food crops every day. Bayer has gone to great lengths and expense to keep its data out of the public domain but in the end caved in because our case was right."

Juniper said the FoE victory is a "major step towards lifting the veil of corporate secrecy that surrounds pesticide approvals. It is an important signal to big business that we will not be silenced. It's high time the corporations making pesticides and chemicals moved into the 21st century and supported full access to information instead of resorting to bullying tactics in the courts."

Environment groups are now looking to the new freedom of information act due to be implemented in Britain next year to give people greater access to environmental and other information held by the government and regulators.

Friends of the Earth argues that "companies that market pesticides and other potentially toxic chemicals must recognise the public has a right to know the potential impact of being exposed to them through breathing, eating and drinking. Public access is also important because it means that independent scientists can monitor the effectiveness of the regulatory process in protecting people and the environment."

Meanwhile, there are only pointers to where to look for what people need to know.