Press releases
Today in Brussels, parents of children harmed by pesticide exposure, joined by a former Dutch politician who was himself affected by childhood pesticide exposure gathered to share their story and urge EU lawmakers: put public health first and reject any attempt to weaken Europe’s protections from pesticides.
Today NGOs from the ‘End Toxic Pesticide Trade Coalition’ called out the European Commission following media reports that it would not hold its promise to end the toxic export of EU-banned pesticides to countries in the Global South. The promise for a legislative proposal was announced in 2020 under the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS) to put an end to this double standard. By doing so, the Commission committed to set an example in protecting public health and natural resources and moving away from hazardous pesticides.
A new encompassing report released this week exposes a crisis brewing in the heart of the global coffee industry: the widespread use of Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs) across coffee-producing countries. These include pesticides linked to cancer, neurotoxicity, reproductive harm, endocrine disruption, and catastrophic biodiversity loss. Many of these pesticides are banned in the EU, yet European companies continue to manufacture them for export, creating a toxic double standard.
Background
A new scientific analysis published in Science is intensifying concerns over the European Commission's Food and Feed Safety Omnibus proposal, just days before key Member State vote on 26 June. The analysis adds to growing evidence that the proposed changes would weaken protection of human health and the environment from harmful pesticides, while slowing the transition to safer alternatives.
Providing so-called 'emergency authorisations' to keep toxic pesticides on the market is a recurrent practice from EU Member States. Belgium recently provided a derogation to Spirotetramat [1], a pesticide for which there is strong scientific evidence of endocrine disruption. According to PAN Europe and Nature et Progrès Belgium, these derogations are not in line with EU law. A formal complaint was submitted yesterday before the Council of State of Belgium.
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has officially classified trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) as toxic to reproduction (Category 1B), concluding it "may damage the unborn child" and is “suspected of damaging fertility” [1]. PAN Europe urges European authorities to act immediately and ban all PFAS pesticides that release TFA into the environment.
A coalition of public health, environmental, and consumer organisations is sounding the alarm in an open letter to the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU. The negotiations on the Food and Feed Safety Omnibus proposal are being pushed through at speed, with little scrutiny, no democratic debate, and insufficient expert input.
New information from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) proposes a safer, faster, and more effective alternative to the European Commission’s Omnibus “simplification” proposal, which would grant unlimited approval to pesticides and inevitably lower the level of protection. With a bit more resources, EFSA could address current delays in risk assessments within three years, improve the quality of evaluations, and prevent future backlogs in the EU pesticide approval system.
A new report by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) [1] reveals that 41.6% of fruit and vegetables sold in the EU contain pesticide residues, with 25.5% containing more than one residue. This means that one out of four consumed fruit and vegetables exposes consumers to pesticide cocktails that are not assessed by EFSA, despite its legal obligation to do so. Worryingly, most of the identified residues are neurotoxicants, putting our children's brain development at risk.
