Brussels, 01/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - European beekeepers gathered together in the International Apiculture Congress Apimondia called on Tuesday for member states' experts to adopt - without any watering down - the guidelines drafted by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on risk assessment of pesticides on bees.
The call not to repeat the errors of the past, which have led to a decline in bee populations across Europe, was launched on the eve of the meeting of member state experts on the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health, in Brussels, 2-3 October, at which the document published by EFSA in July will be discussed for the first time.
The European Beekeeping Coordination is calling on the experts not to give way to pressure from pesticide manufacturers to weaken the new risk assessment methods recommended by EFSA because “the survival of bees and pollinators, environmental safety, as well as food production is at stake”, states the European Beekeeping Coordination in a press release.
The European Beekeeping Coordination says that the EFSA guidance document is, as it stands, a clear step forward as it comes from a group of experts free of declared conflicts of interests, something that is not the case for the guidelines currently being applied and the new methodologies take into consideration most of the sources of exposure known currently, as well as chronic effects on larvae and adult bees.
The European Beekeeping Coordination says that risk assessment must meet regulatory criteria, which state that a pesticide can only be authorised when it is established that its use “will result in a negligible exposure of honeybees, or has no unacceptable acute or chronic effects on colony survival and development, taking into account effects on honeybee larvae and honeybee behaviour”.
European beekeepers call on the member states and the European Commission to learn the lessons of the past, so that, in future, pesticides authorised will not affect the welfare of bees and pollinators.
It is because current assessment arrangements do not take account of chronic toxicity, sublethal effects, larval toxicity, and different sources of exposure, such as exposure to dust, water and food, that the Commission asked EFSA to draft the guidelines. (AN/transl.fl)