Defra consults on banning five more chemicals under POPs rules
- Defra's draft legislation would add five substances, including chlorpyrifos and MCCPs, to the banned POPs list.
- The consultation ran from 18 March to 13 May 2026 and drew 25 responses.
- Northern Ireland applies the EU POPs Regulation directly, raising a possible GB and NI divergence.
Five chemicals now facing a UK ban sit quietly inside packaging plastics, feed inputs and personal care formulations.
Chlorpyrifos, the pesticide still used by many animal feed and crop input suppliers, is one of five chemicals Defra proposed banning this year. The consultation on that draft legislation, according to GOV.UK, has now closed, with a government response published on 10 September 2026.
Defra's draft legislation would add five substances to Annex I of the assimilated POPs Regulation (EU) 2019/1021: medium-chain chlorinated paraffins (MCCPs), long-chain perfluorocarboxylic acids (LC-PFCAs), UV-328, Dechlorane Plus and chlorpyrifos. It also asked for views on changes to the existing PFOS entry, and on recent EU amendments to the PBDE entry, which applies directly in Northern Ireland. The consultation ran from 18 March to 13 May 2026 and drew 25 responses.
Chlorpyrifos is a pesticide, so an added entry for it tightens residue limits and permitted uses on crops. For animal nutrition buyers, anyone sourcing grain, oilseed or other feed ingredients faces the same question. Supply agreements that set maximum pesticide residue levels, or that name a specific crop protection product, need checking against the finalised list.
MCCPs, UV-328 and Dechlorane Plus are all found in plastics, working as a plasticiser, a UV stabiliser and a flame retardant respectively. Between them they turn up in rigid and flexible packaging and in electronic components. A prohibition changes what a packaging supplier can legally put into that formulation, and a specification written years ago may still reference a material that now needs replacing.
LC-PFCAs sit within the wider PFAS family, used in some formulations for water or grease resistance, including in personal care products and packaging coatings. Where a supplier's ingredient declaration or a water resistant product claim rests on one of these substances, a ban forces a reformulation. That means a new conversation with the supplier about cost and timing.
Northern Ireland already applies the EU version of the POPs Regulation directly. The consultation also covered recent EU amendments to the PBDE entry, asking whether equivalent changes should follow in Great Britain. That leaves open the chance of Great Britain and Northern Ireland running different rules on the same chemical family, worth watching for businesses moving goods between the two.
Businesses that already hold up to date supplier declarations on chemical content in packaging and feed inputs will find this an administrative check rather than a scramble. Those relying on specifications last reviewed years ago face a longer conversation with suppliers about what actually goes into the product.