Allelopathy

Alleopathy is a phenomenon in which organisms interfere with each other. As a management strategy in agricultural systems and ecological, allelopathy can be used to help integrate weeds, pests, and diseases as a system and thereby improve the interaction of system components, for example, between soil nutrition and microorganisms.

APVMA

The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) is an Australian regulator that works to ensure pesticide use can be modulated to the point of being legally invisible while at the same time becoming more efficiently and effectively lethal to whatever it is that is not wanted and needs poisoning.

Biopolitics

Referencing Derrida's concept of deconstruction, or what Derrida later also called "autoimmunity", biopolitics occupies an “eccentric” place in the varied field of biopolitics and is preferred here as it radicalises the indissoluble knot that binds life to power. Life and death are not opposites, rather, they are inseparable from each other, as both have a component of a sign or "trace" of the other as constitutive. Derrida argues this should lead us to think of a politics survival, that is "survivance" or "surviving well together". (cf. Resta, 2024)

Biotremology

Detection of sounds and vibrations is important for species recognition and proper mate selection, for detecting and avoiding predators, for warning predators by mimicking the sounds of a noxious species, for startling predators, for defending a burrow or territory, or for parasitoid flies locating a host on which to lay eggs.

Brownwashing

Contaminant

A substance requiring control measures due to an unacceptable context. May include substances intentionally added to food that in one context are acceptable and in another not depending on assessment of risk or other factors.

Ecology

Ecology is the study of ecosystems and aims to understand the entanglement of relations that make immanent creativity pos­sible at every level of the ecosystem.

From the perspective of ecology, there can be no circumscribed, self-defined entity, and indeed ‘identity’ is a function of the larger ‘economy of nature’ where normal identity and immune function are negotiated in an openness to change and difference

As a commercial activity, ecology is a branch of the pesticide industry and specialises denying the above and instead concentrates on pest eradication via the use of toxins for the purpose of profiting from the application of the toxins.

Ecotoxicity

The ability of a substance to cause harmful effects on organisms or their offspring in a specific environment. These effects may include reduced survival, growth, or reproduction rates, as well as the potential for carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic effects. Additionally, disturbance of the endocrine system may result in further negative impacts.

Edible weed plants

Plant species used as sources of food that are neither cultivated nor domesticated but available from their wild natural habitats, including growing in agricultural and disturbed areas. (see: Transforming weeds to edible vegetables.)

Environmentalism

According to Peter Sloterdijk, the “environmental idea” is something that emerges from the drive to explication, that is, the development of regimes of knowledge necessary to understand how to deprive ­things of life, from bed bugs to, ultimately, ­humans ... gas attacks and the rise of aerial bombs, the levelling of cities, gas chambers, atom bombs and pesticides, are, for Sloterdijk, an industrialisation of the environmental idea (cf. Grove, 2019, p. 35).

Eradication

Eradication is a simplification of the concept of sadism. As Sloterdijk has noted, eradication does not aim at appropriating the freedom of the other, but rather, it is concerned with, "freeing one's own environment from the freedom of the other" (Spheres, v.3, p. 838). Put another way, eradication is the precise negation of ecology when defined in a positive sense.

Exposome

The exposome is the totality of all environmental exposures and our body’s response to those exposures across the lifespan. Understanding the human exposome is important because many health conditions, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, may result from multiple and varied environmental exposures over time, as well as interactions between certain exposures and genes. Exposomics is the transdisciplinary study of the exposome. "Omics" refers to the collective technologies used to explore the roles, relationships, and actions of various types of molecules that make up the cells of an organism. Exposomics is a field that considers the comprehensive and cumulative effect of physical, chemical, biological, and (psycho)social mediators on biological systems. Scientists in this field integrate data from a variety of interdisciplinary methodologies and sources to analyze environmental influences on health. While researchers know the structure of human genes, collectively called the genome, they have yet to characterise the totality of the human exposome. For more, click here. Reference The exposome at twenty: a personal account by Christopher Paul Wild, 2025.

Greenwashing

Communicating misleading information about an organisation's actions or performance in order to project a positive image to stakeholders.

Holobiont

From a non-biologist perspective, a holobiont can be thought of as a complex and interconnected system of organisms living in close association with each other.

A holobiont is not a single organism but rather a collection of different species of organisms, including the host organism and various microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi that live within and on the host organism. These microorganisms are not just passive inhabitants but are actively involved in various aspects of the host's biology, including their digestion, immune responses, and even behaviour.

For example, humans are holobiont and interact with thousands of different microorganisms that coat our skin and line our gut, living alongside our own cells.

Understanding the role of the holobiont and how it functions can help us better understand the complexity of the natural world and how species can interact and depend on each other for survival. Source

Invasive species

According to current understanding, the label “invasive species” is applied to species that are assessed by invasion ecologists to cause what is assess by them to be significant damage to local biodiversity by moving into new areas and outcompeting locally valued species. While the criteria for invasiveness vary between organisations and countries, the implications of the label remain consistent. Having been found guilty by an invasion ecologist of overstepping the boundaries of its ecological niche (a correspondence between a species and the environmental conditions that support its sustenance), a species labeled as “invasive” becomes species non grata. All members of the species found in the area of concern are then considered legitimate target for eradication efforts that are, for example, by and large exempt from animal welfare guidelines or chemical pollution controls.

Necrolabour

A term used to describe work that puts workers (including nonhuman labourers) at a higher risk of death or suffering due to the appropriated value of their labour, for example, as 'pest controllers'.

Network

Following the lead of Bruno Latour, we ought to take the term network in a topological sense. Instead of thinking in terms of surfaces - two dimension- or spheres - three dimension- we ask our readers to think of APRN in terms of nodes. Nodes have as many dimensions as they have connections. Virtual network nodes in x-dimension have the efficiency of any number of actual connections in real-time. Material resistance therefore does not come from concentration, purity and unity, but from dissemination, heterogeneity and the careful plaiting (weaving) together of weak ties (Latour, 2017).

Pesticide

In a legal sense, according to the APVMA: Any substance, or mixture of substances, other than a feed additive:

The term excludes fertilisers or other plant nutrients and agents, such as veterinary medicines and feed additives administered to animals for purposes such as stimulating their growth or modifying their reproductive behaviour, and substances added during processing of food.

• intended for preventing, destroying or controlling any pest, including unwanted species of plants or animals during the production, processing, storage, transport or marketing of food, agricultural commodities or animal feedstuffs
• administered to animals for the control of insects, arachnids or other pests in or on their bodies
• intended for use as a plant growth regulator, defoliant, desiccant or plant thinning agent, or agent preventing the premature fall of fruit and substances applied to crops, either before or shortly after harvest, to protect the commodity from deterioration during storage and transport.

In a cultural sense, 'pesticide' indicates a substance that has a property that can be used to kill a 'pest', more specifically, in a manner uncontaminated by any consideration for the being of the pest. A pest, therefore, as Judith Butler explains in Frames of War, is something that is not grievable, that is, "something living that is other than life". Butler goes on to explain that as a consequence, no duty of care applies to pests: "The apprehension of grievability precedes and makes possible the apprehension of precarious life.” (p.32).

Jacques Derrida defines pest in a similar manner. He says the pest animal is in a "sacrificial structure" therefore the destruction of a pest is a "non-criminal putting to death" (from The Animal Therefore I Am (More to Follow), Critical Inquiry, 28(2), 2002). Hence, a central aspect of the definition of a pest is that the animal has no protections legally, indeed, pests are legally defined as being exempt from all legal protections. The lack of legal protection may in part explain why the substances used to kill pests evade many of the usual means of legal control and oversight.

Regulatory affairs

Regulatory affairs is a profession developed by governments to protect public health by controlling the safety and efficacy of products in areas including pharmaceuticals, veterinary medicines, medical devices, agrochemicals, cosmetics and complementary medicines. This took place in parallel with the companies responsible for the discovery, testing, manufacture and marketing of these products wanting to ensure that they supply products that are safe and make a worthwhile contribution to public health and welfare. A new class of professionals emerged to handle these regulatory matters for companies under the title regulatory affairs manager or similar (e.g., see: TOPRA).

Rodenticide

Rodenticides vary in the active ingredients they include, but generally aim to kill rodents and other mammals by preventing normal blood clotting, causing internal hemorrhaging, or disturbing nervous system functions. These compounds, enhanced with attractive flavours and colours, are commonly placed around structures to attract unwanted wildlife, leading to a painful and extended death. Many of Australia's native species face high risks of rodenticide poisoning. In addition to rats, small animals such as Australian native rats and other non-target mammals and invertebrates are known to access bait boxes containing these poisons. This direct feeding is also contaminating the food-chain and wider ecosystem of predators that feed on small animals, for example, owls and other raptors are at a particularly high risk of secondary poisoning because of their dependence on rodents as a food source.

Sustainability silence can be defined as the under-­ communication or absence of communication to stakeholders regarding an organisation's sustainability achievements or performance. See: Avoiding Corporate Greenwashing? Sustainability Silence Narratives in the Agri-­ Food Industry (2025).

Vegetation that spontaneously proliferates within or around the periphery of cultivated areas without deliberate cultivation. A plant considered to have no worth and no value.

Primarily the study of pesticides’ effects on highly valued agricultural commodity crops. Less frequently the study of pesticides' effects on valued parks and gardens.