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On a visit to Dublin this week, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Vytenis Andriukaitis told the Irish Farmers Journal that he had secured the approval of fellow commissioners to seek the re-authorisation of glyphosate for 10 years.
“After a thorough assessment from the European Food Safety Authority, after a thorough assessment from the European Chemicals Agency, today we have clear scientific evidence that glyphosate is not carcinogenic, is not mutagenic, is not dangerous for reproductive health of people,” he said.
The current authorisation for the popular herbicide ingredient, used in Monsanto’s Roundup and other products, expires at the end of this year.
“The Commission position is 10 years, but nobody knows which discussions will withstand at Standing Committee level,” he added in reference to the group of experts mandated by EU member states to rule on the Commission’s proposal. It failed to agree on glyphosate last year, leading the Commission to apply an 18-month extension only.
Political sensitivities
Commissioner Andriukaitis said decisions surrounding pesticide authorisations had become dependent on “political sensitivities in different countries”.
“Some countries are very keen to promote more and more organic farming, and of course fighting to diminish the use of pesticides generally,” he said. He mentioned the “very active” NGOs and Green movement behind current efforts to collect 1m signatures across Europe, which would force the European Commission to consider their proposal for an outright ban on glyphosate. The Commission must also take account of a European Parliament resolution calling for the chemical to be re-authorised for seven years only.
“Today the political environment shows that we must discuss in a very detailed manner sustainable use of pesticides,” the Commissioner said.
He also hopes that shorter re-authorisations – 10 years instead of the legal maximum of 15 years previously in the case of glyphosate – will push the industry to develop alternatives.
Biopesticides
“Today we have possibilities to open the market to low-risk pesticides. We need to provide also a window of opportunity to provide biopesticides,” he said. He compared the pesticides situation with that of antibiotics, where the most recent drug dates from 1987 and the lack of innovation exposes public health to the risk of anti-microbial resistance.
Listen to the full interview with Commissioner Andriukaitis in our podcast below:
Listen to "EU Commissioner for Health on Brazil and glyphosate" on Spreaker.
The blockage observed at the Standing Committee last year may be removed in the future through changes the Commission is proposing in decision-making rules. As things stand, countries can abstain from decisions. Commissioner Andriukaitis accused them of hiding behind the Commission.
“People then look at newspapers and say the Commission is in the hands of multinational corporations, and then this distrust in European institutions feeds euroscepticism, and the we have the next wave – for example Brexit,” he said. He proposes that the creation of a higher-level appeals committee to take over if no decision is reached at the standing committee.
People are not ready to understand all scientific complexity of problems and sometimes they have no trust in science
Yet a deeper problem runs through the recent difficulties in finding agreement on glyphosate. “People are not ready to understand all scientific complexity of problems and sometimes they have no trust in science – it is a very difficult issue: how to restore trust in science, in our authorisation mechanism. How to guarantee people trust our decisions,” Commissioner Andriukaitis said. “My task is today to send to society a clear message that only one way is evidence-based arguments.” He acknowledged the Commission’s role in making scientific evidence more widely available and organising informed debate.
Endocrine disruptors
This will be all the more important as the EU prepares to regulate so-called endocrine disruptors – chemicals that may interfere with human hormones, with hundreds of pesticides to be assessed for potential risk in the near future. Commissioner Andriukaitis said the Commission’s role was to propose criteria and methodology for this assessment, and this is under discussion with member states and the European Parliament.
If and when chemicals are found to pose a risk to human health, he called on farmers to accept the findings rather than see them as restrictions. “Farmers are people and they must be worried about their health, he said. “It would be a disaster, knowing that you have a very dangerous chemical, to use it because it will kill you and your family, and not only on your farms but your relatives around.”
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