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. (229905)

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.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on what date members of the Advisory Committee on Pesticides were first informed that aminopyralid or similar chemical formulations had been found to cause adverse effects outside the United Kingdom on crops when manure made from animal waste from animals that had grazed pasture treated with these chemicals was spread on land growing such crops. (229907)

The potential of aminopyralid and other pyridine carboxylic acid herbicides to produce the effects observed were taken into account when the Advisory Committee on Pesticides considered this pesticide in 2005. That this group of chemicals can produce these effects has been known since at least the 1980s.