France, July 21 -- A petition against new rules allowing farmers to use a banned pesticide was gathering more success on Monday after crossing the one million signature mark on Sunday night - less than two weeks after it was launched.

La Loi Duplomb - named after one of its advocates Laurent Duplomb - was passed in the French parliament on 8 July.

It paves the way for the reintroduction of acetamiprid - a pesticide outlawed in France since 2018 but used throughout the rest of the European Union.

But two days after politicians sanctioned Duplomb's brainchild, Eleonore Pattery, a 23-year-old student from Bordeaux, south-western France. started a petition calling for the law to be scrapped.

Pattery's claims Duplomb's new law is a scienti...