Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to the regulation, or other oversight, of the sale of plant biostimulants, including consideration of their efficacy, safety and ecological impacts.

The existing UK regulatory regime for the manufacture and placing of fertilisers on the market in the UK is fragmented and in need of modernisation. There are currently no specific requirements for plant biostimulants in domestic fertilisers legislation. However, Defra intends to improve on this by consolidating and streamlining the statute book and putting in place a conformity assessment framework for fertilisers. The framework will smooth the route to market for new and innovative products which are less polluting to the environment or are less resource intensive in their creation.

To support reform of fertilisers legislation Defra has funded a review of the evidence for the safe and effective use of plant biostimulants and a review of methods for evaluating methods for verifying the efficacy of plant biostimulants.

The potential impact of a chemical on plant health, including soil microbiomes is already considered, as appropriate, as part of HSE’s robust risk assessment process for pesticides and for biocides. In our regulatory programmes we do not assess the impacts of chemicals specifically on human and animal microbiomes and are not currently considering the introduction of such measures.