Member states’ scope of intervention in the authorisation of the marketing of pesticides as a finished product and the mutual recognition of national authorisations were discussed with the representatives of the relevant national authorities of Belgium, Spain and Romania and heard, on Thursday 28 June, by the special PEST committee of the European Parliament (see EUROPE 12049).
The need to harmonise assessments in the different member states in the three demarcated areas of the EU to manage requests for authorisation (zone A/North, zone B/Centre and zone C/South) was underlined by Maarten Trybou, who heads the “pesticide” department at the Belgium Ministry of Health, the Food Chain, Safety and the Environment; José Maria Cobos Suarez from the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food and the Environment; and Paulina Gabor, the director general of the phytosanitary authority of Romania. They also underlined the interest of introducing more flexibility for the various assessments to be made, “timeframes being very tight”.
It was, however, the absence of assessment on the toxicity of co-formulants, the additives that strengthen the main active ingredient at the base of the finished product, which was the focus of the discussion during more than three hours.
The intervention by Robin Mesnages, who is researcher and toxicologist at King’s College London, gave rise to many questions. Using studies on glyphosate as a basis, deeming them to be valid for all pesticides, he explained that there were around 50 different commercial preparations using the active substance glyphosate and co-formulants but that, in the long-term studies on toxicity, the co-formulants and other active ingredients were never included. This comes as studies on rats have shown that “such preparations are up to one thousand times more toxic than glyphosate” and that there is no interaction mechanism of the active substance glyphostae on humans. “Glyphosate alone is not very toxic on a human population”, he said.
Hence his suggestion to test mixtures of pesticides (cocktails of chemical products), “a test on just one molecule never being representative of the level of toxicity of a pesticide”, and to add this factor to the acceptable daily dose.
“It is a huge task”, said Eric Andrieu, the chairman of the PEST special committee. He took the view that this could be an avenue to be explored in recommendations that will be made by the co-rapporteurs Norbert Lins (EPP, Germany) and Bart Staes (Greens/EFA, Belgium) on 18 September.
Anthea McIntyre (ECR, UK) asked whether Mesnages did not have a conflict of interest with biological agriculture but this was dismissed out of hand by the researcher.
Addressing the three national representatives, Michèle Rivasi (Greens/EFA) said: “Do you have the means of knowing what the ingredients of phytopharmaceutical products are? France has banned 126 products because of the active substance glyphosate and tallowamine”, a co-formulant prohibited by the Commission.
The Spanish representative said that her agency has “all the information on the composition of phytosanitary products” but that “for now, no product containing tallowamine has been registered in Spain”. Trybou gave his assurance that, in Belgium, all preparations on the market contain a description of their composition. “We have a whole battery of studies indicating what the final composition is”, he said. The representative of Romania, for her part, took up saying: “We do not have a list of substances that are dangerous for human or animal health but we take account of the opinion of the rapporteur for the zone”.
Mireille D’Ornano (EFDD, France) expressed concern about the potentially adverse effect for human health of mutual recognition of decisions between countries of one and the same zone not having the same resources or means.
COPA-COGECA Secretary General Pekka Pesonen highlighted the importance of pesticides for agricultural production and argued in favour of the competitiveness of European farming. “Farmers are trained, their spraying equipment is inspected. Application by aerial spray is the exception. And yet, the system does not protect the competitiveness of European farming”, he said.
In response to Norbert Lins, who asked whether it was necessary to abolish the system of three delimited areas in the EU, he said that the system had its relevance but that one could improve the way it works in the Centre zone. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)