A Multicriteria Evaluation By The Public Approval Of Pesticides – A Case With The Plant-growth Regulators In Grain

Our object is to develop a method for the public approval and re-evaluation of pesticides that emphasises a wide evaluation of social benefits. This is done through the case for the three plant-growth regulators approved for use in Norwegian grain production at present: chlor¬mequat chloride, ethephon and trinexapacethyl. A multicriteria method is founded on the premises for an expert based model as opposed to e.g. a market based model. It seems to be a possible method that allows for the use of several incommensurable criteria in the approval process by National Agricultural Inspection Service (NAIS). Furthermore, it results in greater transparency, which may be an important quality in a public decision process. However, there are problems connected to a social benefit evaluation like this, some of these are: • There may be other criteria that also should be included • Effects outside the agricultural sector are not considered The environmental effect and the health effect are estimated by NAIS, while a model for estimation of the economic margin is developed in this project. The economic margin for a specific strategy is calculated for a specific species in a specific region and a specific lodging category. Afterwards the economic margin for each lodging category is multiplied with the probability of having that lodging category and finally the lodging categories are summarised. This leaves then together with the other evaluated criteria a multicriteria basis on a ha-basis. The modelled economic benefits and usage of growth regulators are the aggregated due to the registrered acreage of the different crops to a regional and national level corrected to absolute numbers by the total registered use of every growth regulator. A general problem is that such an approval has to be based on future behaviour and effects where the trial data is relatively scarce when it comes to the agronomic effect. The environmental and health effects are even less well documented and only the direct effects on health and the environment are considered by NAIS.