THE BICHEL COMMITTEE

Preface

In the autumn of 1997, the Minister of Environment and Energy appointed a committee to assess the overall consequences of phasing out the use of pesticides (the Bichel Committee). The Committee was established with a Main Committee and four expert sub-committees.

The Main Committee has had the task of co-ordinating and discussing the work of the sub-committees and of drafting this report for the Minister. This report is based on the reports of the four expert sub-committees and of an interdisciplinary group of members drawn from the four sub-committees, to whom the task of assessing the consequences of a complete restructuring for organic production was given.

This is the first time in Denmark (and probably also internationally) that such an extensive interdisciplinary analysis has been conducted, of the consequences for the agricultural industry of the total or partial phasing-out of pesticide use and of a restructuring for organic production.

The sub-committees and the interdisciplinary group have carried out a major specialist task. I would like to take this opportunity for expressing my gratitude to them.

At a large number of meetings, the conclusions of the sub-committees have given us reason to conduct many important discussions on the underlying reasons for those conclusions. Because of the widely-differing interests that were represented on the Main Committee, it has been necessary to discuss these conclusions from very different standpoints. Thanks to the highly constructive attitudes of the members of the Main Committee towards our mandate and towards supplying the politicians with a firm, specialist foundation on which to base decisions on pesticides and ecological matters in the future, we can now present what we believe to be a quite unique report. It would not have been possible without the constructive attitudes of the members or without the gigantic efforts of the secretariat. I would like to offer my special thanks to all who were involved in this project.

Svend Bichel

16 March 1999