Η κρίση του Glyphosate: Ίσως το δεδικασμένο, γενικώτερα για την χρήση των φυτοφαρμάκων στην ΕΕ.
Beneath the Glyphosate headlines, a crucial battle for the future of EU pesticide approvals
October 24th 2017 Food and
agriculture
“A non-re-authorisation of the substance would be a
disaster for the industry”, reads a note from a a March 2016 meeting
between pesticide industry lobbyists from the European Crop Protection
Association (ECPA) and members of Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan’s
cabinet.
The “substance” in question? Glyphosate, the active
ingredient in Roundup, the world's most widely-used pesticide and Monsanto's
flagship product. True enough, a European Union ban on this key ingredient in
many weedkillers would be a major blow to the biotech and pesticide industry,
its shareholders and its future owner Bayer.
Since the World Health Organisation's International
Agency For Research On Cancer (IARC) declared
glyphosate a probable human carcinogen in 2015, the decision as to whether
this weedkiller deserves another license for the EU market has been closely
scrutinised. In addition, lawsuits against Monsanto in the
US regarding
Roundup’s health effects have enabled the release of internal company
documents, which show how the company ghostwrote studies signed by
‘independent’ experts and tried to underplay data indicating health
damage.
The heightened scrutiny has also finally brought wider
attention to some of the fundamental flaws in the EU's pesticide approval
system – precisely what the pesticide industry and government agencies have
been fearing, as highlighted by lobby documents obtained by Corporate Europe
Observatory. They seem to regard an evolution of the EU regulatory system for
assessing pesticides towards more independence and transparency (and better
aligned with the normal scientific methodology itself) as an outright
threat.
For sustainable farming, public health and nature, a
ban on glyphosate would be a leap forwards. On 23 October 2017 a coalition of
civil society organisations handed over more than one million signatures to
Vice-President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans and Health
Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis, which had been collected from across the EU
as part of a European Citizens’ Initiative. The demands: a ban on
glyphosate-based weedkillers, crucial improvements to EU pesticide approval
system, and support for farmers to transition to a non-toxic food production
system.
On 25 October however, EU member states are voting on a
proposal by the European Commission to give the weedkiller a license for
another ten years with few restrictions. The temporary 18-month license
extension, granted in June 2016, will expire by the end of this year, forcing a
decision. But member states are divided and the Commission is not expected to
gather enough support for its proposal.
- Read more about how the pesticide industry and European Commission instrumentalised farmers’ lobbies to support their interests and proposals.
- Check the facts on Monsanto and the smear
campaign of the wider pesticide
industry against leading environmental health and carcinogenity expert, Dr
Christopher Portier, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer
(IARC).
'The system must be saved'
When the Glyphosate Task Force, led by Monsanto,
learned that the Commission in June 2016 only wanted an 18-month extension of
the license for glyphosate in order to await another opinion from the European
Chemicals Agency ECHA, it labeled this a “dangerous precedent” and “a marked
departure from science-based decision making”, ramping up the attack by
calling the move “highly irresponsible and fundamentally
irrational”.
The Glyphosate
Task Force wrote: “The long term consequences of the current situation for
the EU regulatory system should not be underestimated. In our view, a clear
signal is now being sent that established rules and ways of reaching
decisions can easily be side-tracked if special interest campaigns
against modern technology and, in this case, modern farming, are allowed to
unduly influence and politicise the application of EU rules. We would ask that
reason and evidence should be the hallmarks of EU decision-making, rather than
populism”. (Emphasis added.)
A “special interest campaign” targeting “modern
technology”? In reality, what triggered the glyphosate issue is the fact that a
highly respected scientific institution (IARC) concluded that an old pesticide
from the seventies is a probable human carcinogen.
Big farm lobby COPA-COGECA
sent a similar message to DG SANTE in March 2017: “Pressure from certain parts
of the society through social media is putting this system more and more in
question and undermines the confidence.”
On 19 October 2017 the European Parliament’s
Environment Committee voted on a resolution that calls for fundamental changes
in the way pesticides are approved. Ahead of the vote, the pesticide lobby
group ECPA put an advertisement Politico which echoed: “Calling into
question the approval process only serves to undermine consumer confidence in
the EU food safety system, to the benefit of no-one.”
Interestingly, this ad was co-signed not only by the
usual suspects, including EuropaBio, COPA-COGECA and grain traders’ lobby
COCERAL, but also by a group called Consumer Choice Center (CCC). As Corporate
Europe Observatory revealed recently, this
grouping claims to represent consumers while it counts neoliberal US
plutocrats and oil industry influencers the Koch Brothers among its main
funders.
EFSA, BfR and DG SANTE getting nervous too
Four of the scientists who were involved in the IARC
assessment had
a meeting with Commissioner Andriukaitis on 22 January 2016. Several flaws
in the EU system were discussed, such as conflicts of interest, and the way that
the EU pesticide approvals process focuses on one active ingredient, whereas
the final mixtures (formulations) sold in the shops remain
under-researched.
But three days later, in an
internal meeting of Directorate General for Health and Food Safety (DG
SANTE) it was decided that a meeting would be set up between the German
scientific agency Bfr and the Commissioner, “in view of dispelling the doubts
as regards the regularity and robustness of the process”. Xavier Prats Monné
(from DG SANTE) said shortly afterwards, in a meeting between DG SANTE and
European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) staff that “SANTE and EFSA have to 'stick
together' in general terms and in particular when the EU regulatory framework is
questioned.... The joint aim now is to defend the EU system and to provide to
the Commissioner the arguments to defend himself.”
And so it happened. In March 2016, Commissioner Vytenis
Andriukaitis held a
meeting with head of the German BfR, Andreas Hensel, who informs him that
“glyphosate is in focus of extreme lobbying not only due to its link to biotech
but also as a non-approval of this substance for safety reasons would not allow
any other pesticides to be approved in future.”
The minutes do not further illuminate on the rationale
for his argument. The EU pesticide legislation demands that pesticides that are
for instance carcinogenic, toxic for the reproductive system, or hormone
disrupting, to be banned; but other substances, even though toxic and harmful
for many life forms, are not affected.
In this meeting Andreas Hensel also emphasised to the
Commissioner alleged “disagreements inside WHO (IARC vs JMPR), which should be
more highlighted in communication”. This alleged internal “disagreement” inside
the WHO – widely picked up in media last year and which continues to create
confusion – is entirely false (see Box). Though true that another panel (Joint
FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues, JMPR) connected to the WHO made an
opinion related to glyphosate, it was of a very different kind than IARC
(studying risks of exposure through diet, rather than its intrinsic hazardous
properties). In addition, the person leading the JMPR work is also the
Vice-President of ILSI Europe, an agribusiness and food lobby group.
German BfR head Hensel is a strong defender of the
current EU system that he told the Commissioner is “most robust”. In the past
he has breezily dismissed concerns over conflicts of interests, defending the
fact that the pesticide committee of his agency Bfr includes Bayer and BASF
employees (something that, in contrast, EFSA’s rules on conflicts of interest
would not allow), explaining to German
newspaper TAZ that facts
about products “can only be judged by those that work with them”.
Monsanto Papers
Following the release of the Monsanto Papers in March
2017, Monsanto was quick to call the European Commission’s department for health
and food safety, DG SANTE. The person in the Pesticides and Biocides unit who
picked up the phone noted
down: “He [Monsanto representative, red.] said that some of the scientists
who have been named in the released papers have already defended themselves
against the accusations. He also mentioned that some of the named experts were
under police protection following death threats.”
Some of the named experts, such as David Kirkland, have
stated that Monsanto employees were being “naïve” when suggesting in internal
emails they would be able to have him sign off on documents in fact produced
internally by Monsanto – a defence Mr Kirkland brought up at the European
Parliament hearing on the Monsanto Papers. Even if this were to hold true,
Monsanto doesn’t come off looking much better. Who says their ghostwriting
attempts were limited to the cases we now have information about? Another key
figure named in the Monsanto Papers, the US Environment Protection Agency’s
(EPA) Jess Rowland, has in the meantime become subject
of an investigation by the EPA’s Inspector General.
What next?
If this week’s vote indeed fails to produce a majority
for the EU Commission’s 10-year proposal, the EU institutions will need a plan
B. If they opt for a phase-out of Roundup, it is vital to clarify that any
re-authorisation only represents a transition period that will end in a ban of
the substance. The glyphosate saga has also underlined the dire need to
fundamentally strengthen the EU approval system and has shown just how
important it is to provide all necessary support to farmers to help them make
the transition to a pesticide-free agriculture.
All of these demands are at the core of the European
Citizens’ Initiative StopGlyphosate, which has been
supported by over 1,3 million EU citizens from across Europe and was handed
over to the European Commission on 23 October. On 24 October the European
Parliament voted a resolution making similar demands. And on 12 October, the
French tribunal of Foix sent
four prejudicial questions to the European Court of Justice, that also
question the reliability of the current EU pesticide risk assessment. The need
to change the way pesticides are approved can no longer be
ignored.
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Food and agriculture
Attached files:
38._bto_prof._hensel_redacted.pdf extracts_from_meetings_gestdem_2016-7243_redacted.pdf 3_11_doc_2_gestem_2017_3503_minutes_of_meeting_with_ecpa_march_2016_redacted.pdf 27._bto_meeting_redacted.pdf 41._gtf_letter_27_06_2016.pdf_redacted.pdf 26._bto_copa-cogeca_17_march_2017_redacted.pdf 26._gtf_email_17_may_redacted.pdf 29._call_from_monsanto_monsanto_papers_redacted.pdf
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