Chair: Jenna Hegarty, Nature Friendly Farming Network
Vice-Chair: Nick Mole, Pesticide Action Network
Link: Chloe Alexander, Policy & Advocacy Lead (Chemicals)
Link’s Pesticides Working Group was established in 2025 to take over the work of the Pesticide Collaboration, bringing together a wide range of civil society organisations working under a shared vision to urgently reduce pesticide-harms in the UK.
The working group has recently written to the new ministers covering pesticides to set out measures that are needed to help farmers make the transition to Integrated Pest Management and reduce their chemical inputs.
Alongside other working groups, the Group has set out priorities for the UK-EU food and drink deal due to be finalised soon, that will involve dynamically aligning with EU standards on pesticides. Comprehensive dynamic alignment on EU pesticides standards is needed to bring GB regulation back into higher EU levels of protection, but this should set a regulatory baseline – and not a ceiling - for environmental ambition.
The group will seek significant restrictions on the use of glyphosate, which is due for renewal this year. Members of the Group have been campaigning for restrictions on its use – the Soil Association is campaigning to stop it being sprayed on crops just before harvest and Garden Organic is campaigning for a ban on amateur and urban use.
It has submitted to the European Affairs Committee inquiry on dynamic alignment, which was quoted by the Trade & Business Commission.
It published an independent report written by Matt Shardlow summarising the latest science on the harm from chemicals used in flea treatments for pets and measures needed to bring it to within safe levels. It also submitted to the Veterinary Medicines Directorate’s Call for Evidence on veterinary medicines containing fipronil or imidacloprid, which sets out some of the wide range of evidence supplied by its members on their harms, including severe declines in freshwater invertebrates and knock-on effects on fish and birds that rely on them as a food source.
The Group works with Agriculture and Blueprint for Water groups on the Sustainable Farming Incentive 2027 and water pollution from pesticides respectively. It also inputted into Link’s response to Defra consultation on regulatory framework for sludge applied to agriculture
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