Brussels, 18/03/2013 (Agence Europe) - Bees will have to put up with bad health. That is the outcome of a vote on Friday at the European Union's Standing Committee on Food and Animal Health, which was unable to get enough votes either way to back or reject plans to issue a two-year ban on the use of the three most deadly bee-killing pesticides (see EUROPE 10807). The European Commission has announced that it will look at the matter again within two months and either amend its legislation slightly or take the matter to an appeals committee but, since a qualified majority vote was not forthcoming to reject the draft legislation, the comitology rules give it the power to introduce the regulation of its own accord.
Whatever happens, the new version will include exemptions because the draft regulation that almost won qualified majority approval on Friday would have given member states the power to allow the deadly pesticides to be sprayed onto leaves if diluted with water. The Commission will adjust the rules to take account of reservations by countries like Germany, which abstained from the vote because it did not win exemptions on technical grounds.
Last Thursday, the day before the widely criticised failure to take action, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), whose scientific advice issued in January formed the basis of the Commission's draft legislation, said that it had slightly changed its risk assessment for one of the three neo-nicotinoid pesticides in question, thiamethoxan. EFSA says the minor amendments follow the submission of new information by Greece and Sweden confirming the use of thiamethoxan on sunflower, colza and sugarbeet seeds. The amendments will not lead to any changes in the conclusions published by EFSA on 16 January.
Pesticide company Syngenta - which makes a pesticide containing the Cruiser 600FS chemical - said that the information it had supplied to the Greek authorities was not correct and therefore for the use of the pesticide on sunflower seeds (allowed under Greek legislation), the risk assessment of “acute” risk of exposure to dust was not as initially thought an “identified risk” but a “question that could not be resolved”. KEMI, the Swedish chemicals agency, says that it erroneously sent EFSA information about two pesticides - Cruiser 600FS and Cruiser OSR - whose use is illegal in Sweden and, therefore, the references to the chemicals had to be withdrawn from the risk assessment. (AN/transl.fl)