There's a spate of inspections going on across the country due to MCPA being found in water course samples. I was at a meeting last night and it was discussed. Without getting into the legalities and morals of spraying, I know that there are a lot of you guys on here who do a good bit of spraying as part of your farm enterprise - but there's a cohort of smaller lads like myself who might only use 20 litres of MCPA in the year or a gallon of roundup and it's negligence from the smaller lads that's doing the most damage. (I'm not saying that I'm negligent, I have the course done and the sprayer tested, but judging by the responses last night, a lot of people would be in bother if they were inspected. it was pointed out to us that there are still a lot unlicensed sprayers operating in our area. There are also people applying pestacides without a PU number. There's a 1% SFP fine for either. There's a 1% fine for using mcpa products in a licker or in a knapsack sprayer as it is licensed for neither. As a person with a PU number, I can lick my own rushes. But I cannot go out on hire with my licker, nor can I lick for a bunch of different farmers voluntarily. I'm guessing that this is to stop a bunch of farmers using the one PU number by saying that a neighbour did it for them. I don't know how they will police it - I lick rushes for a couple of us in the family. They can't really stop me from doing that if I have the training course done.
Licker testing will be mandatory by 2022 but licence for glyphosate is being reviewed around that time too - if there is no glyphosate then there won't be any licker because no other product is licensed for it.
Finally, from 01/01/19, it has been mandatory for seller of spray to record PU numbers of herd numbers.