Pesticide Action Network

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Pesticide Action Network
PurposePesticide regulation
Locations
Key people
Anwar Fazal
Websitehttps://pan-international.org

Pesticide Action Network (PAN) is an

NGOs in 90 countries which advocates for less hazardous alternatives to pesticides.[1] It was founded in May 1982 with its first meeting in Penang, Malaysia.[2][3]

Origins

The origins of PAN have been linked to the start of the "global anti-toxics movement".

International Organization of Consumers Unions (IOCU; later known as Consumers International), organized a meeting in Penang, Malaysia to explore the possibility of an international network of activists focusing on pesticide regulation.[2] The meeting included Weir and Bull, that represented their respective organisations, as part of 14 participants from consumer and environmental organisations in developed nations, as well as 25 participants from developing nations.[4] It was hosted by the IOCU and the Friends of the Earth, Malaysia.[2] They decided to call "for a halt to the indiscriminate sale and misuse of hazardous chemical pesticides throughout the world"[2] and proposed a model that would be based on an international communication network with regional nodes.[4] By the mid-1990s, PAN operated as a decrentalised regional network with offices covering Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America.[6]

Activity

Within two years of its founding, PAN organised several international meetings and engaged in negotiations with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization on the development of the International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides that was approved in 1985.[7]

PAN lobbied international institutions to regulate pesticide trade by drawing on the concept of "prior informed consent".[8] PAN led a civil society campaign that gained the support of the chemical industry in the early 1990s, after their initial opposition.[9] This concept, was adopted by the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.[10] Prior to the Rotterdam Convention’s entry into force, an interim Chemical Review Committee was established and the Pesticide Action Network coalition participated as representatives of non-governmental organizations, alongside representatives from intergovernmental organizations (such as the World Health Organization) and several industry associations.[11]

PAN has lobbied for the regulation of

methyl bromide which caused ozone depletion.[18]

In 2000, Genetically Engineered Food Alert was launched by multiple organizations, including Pesticide Action Network North America, to lobby the FDA, Congress and companies to ban or stop using GMOs.[19] On 18 September 2000, Genetically Engineered Food Alert announced it had identified StarLink, a GMO not approved for human consumption, in some Taco Bell-branded taco shells, leading to the StarLink corn recall.[20]

Citations

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External links