Two years ago, the first draft of the Best Management Practices Manual for minimising the impact of Pesticides (&quote;Manual&quote;) had just been released. It was a booklet of some 70 pages, which listed a number of practices (with some details explaining the reasoning behind the practice), under four major headings. Apart from comments on some of the technical issues contained in the draft, and queries over the use of 'mandatory' language in the best practice statements, there were three issues which were raised consistently.