In order to clean out the stables where King Augeas kept his cattle in less than a day, Hercules had the brilliant idea of diverting the courses of two rivers. Today, he would have to divert two more, over near Parma. The problem is that Hercules is no longer of this world, other than the world of mythology, and that the European Commission does not really have the same talent for such exploits as the Greek demigod.
It is in Parma that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has its headquarters. Although you are more likely to meet pigs than cattle, dead or alive, in Parma, increasingly discouraging and disheartening pseudo-scientific miasmas have been emerging there over the last several months. Too many months, in the opinion of anybody in global scientific circles or European civil society who would like to be able to cherish the hope that the European Union always, and in all matters, acts in favour of the clear interests of the citizens and consumers of the 28 member states.
The glyphosate saga, which is as disturbing as it is abhorrent, suggests that this is not entirely the case. Or at least, harbouring doubts over it is necessary and understandable, although erring on the side of the principle of precaution should have made it possible to put such doubts to bed long ago. It has all arisen from a scientific hiatus: first of all, on 20 March 2015, an agency of the World Health Organisation, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. Less than eight months later, on 12 November of the same year, the European Food Safety Authority announced that the active ingredient of the weed killer Roundup, which has made the company Monsanto a fortune, is “probably not” carcinogenic.
Since then, the Commission has bent over backwards to ignore everybody but the European authority. Having proposed that the marketing authorisation for glyphosate be renewed for 15 years, up to 2031, it has since then constantly, but with very bad grace, reduced the length of this renewal: having extended the licence for glyphosate by a maximum of 18 months in June 2016, it is proposing that the authorisation be renewed for ten years and after that, it is now saying five years. But it is still wasting its time: its proposal will never receive the blessing of a qualified majority, as the countries in favour of the proposal as of 9 November of this year represented just 37% of the EU population, somewhat short of the 65% required (see EUROPE 11901).
To what should we attribute this stubbornness on the part of the Commission? Why isn’t it taking account of the reservations expressed by more and more EU capitals, where trade-offs between ministers for agriculture and their counterparts for health and the environment are increasingly going against the former? Why is it giving the impression of not taking seriously the European citizens’ initiative that attracted well over a million signatures to call for a ban on glyphosate (see EUROPE 11879)? Why did President Juncker have nothing to say when, in spring of this year, the renowned toxicologist, Prof Christopher Portier, wrote to him warning that the data submitted to the European agency had not been taken into account in the way that they should, scientifically, have been (see EUROPE 11881)?
These are all troubling questions that may ultimately become an embarrassment to the institution. For more than one reason. First of all, there is the obvious fact that there is simply no comparison between the credibility of the two scientific bodies in question. For instance, Dr Pierre-Michel Périnaud pointed out that “if you are a doctor and you have an interest in toxicological data and the causes of diseases, it would simply not enter your mind to disregard the opinion of the International Agency for Research on Cancer” (Le Monde, 9 November; our translation). In the opposite corner, the European authority does not enjoy the best of reputations, in scientific circles and civil society alike, as shown by this acerbic comment from our colleague Stéphane Foucart: “for nearly a decade, EFSA has striven methodically and with the greatest of perseverance to destroy its entire stock of credibility, by cultivating too much proximity to the industries it is supposed to be regulating” (Le Monde, 29 March 2016; our translation).
This undoubted proximity concerns not just the European authority itself: the report on which it based its decision on glyphosate was drafted by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) which, for the purposes of doing so, lost no time in cutting and pasteing passages from documents drawn up by companies calling for a certain herbicide to remain authorised in Europe! This proximity is even more questionable given that a lawsuit in the US brought by individuals who claimed to be victims of Monsanto’s star product allowed some of the American company’s internal documents to be disclosed, which proved just how much it – and, evidently, its peers – are developing aggressive and dishonest practices to influence European decision-makers and their advisers. Hence this comment by Dr Geoffrey Pleyers, a researcher at the Catholic University of Louvain: if glyphosate is a “major risk factor to the health of European citizens, it is also a major risk factor to the health of European democracy, given one of the greatest threats to it: lobbies” (Le Soir, 9 November; our translation).
In view of all of the above, you can’t help but wonder whether it is still far too often the case that assessing health and environmental risks clashes with the great priority the Commission places on an economic model resolutely geared to production, which may at times prompt it to take unfortunate liberties with the “application of the ‘principle of precaution’ regarding all chemical products for which there is a suspected serious and/or irreversible danger to animal and/or human health, without waiting for formal evidence of an epidemiological link” – according to the ‘Appeal of Paris’, in which 68 international experts recommended 164 measures to the people and governments of the member states of the European Union, the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the Commission (1).
If it is not, then isn’t it about time for Jean-Claude Juncker’s team to demand a significant increase in the Community budget, to allow, amongst other things, the Parma-based European authority the resources it needs to provide and guarantee the absolute independence of recognised and entirely reliable experts? It might even be easier than diverting two rivers.
Michel Theys
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(1) The ‘Appeal of Paris’ is referred to in Inès Trépant’s work Biodiversité: quand les politiques européennes menacent le Vivant (Biodiversity: when European policies endanger existence), published in 2017. See European Library of 5 September