Press releases
On explicit request of the dominant farmers unions and the pesticide industry, the department taking care of health and consumers issues within the European Commission (DG SANCO) has proposed to dismantle the European safety system by removing the obligation on countries and farmers to contain the spread of a highly destructive maize pest ‐ Diabrotica virgifera virgifera Le Conte (the Western corn rootworm – from now on cited as WCR).
Today the European Commission published a roadmap for European Innovation Partnerships (EIP) on “Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability”, as part of the EU 2020 Strategy.
Food Authority EFSA’s scientific committee last week ‘s planned adoption of the proposal to substitute toxicity testing of chemicals by a controversial ‘threshold’-approach (TTC) didn’t take place because of continuing diverging views with DG SANCO’s non-food Committees.
A working group of Food Authority EFSA aimed at allowing toxic chemicals to be marketed without any toxicological testing was put together in 2008 without any evaluation by EFSA management or external reviewers – against EFSA’s own rules.
The new EU biocides regulation adopted today by the European Parliament (1) sounds ambitious but represents a standstill for health and environmental protection, according to health and environment groups.
A new PAN Europe report reveals that 10 out of 13 members of the EFSA working group on TTC (Threshold of Toxicological Concern, a method to decide on the health impacts of chemicals), have a conflict of interest.
Yesterday European Commission published a roadmap for European Innovation Partnerships (EIP) on agricultural productivity and sustainability under the slogan 'achieving more from less'.
The 2009 EU report on pesticide residues, published today by EFSA, shows food on the European market is still heavily contaminated with cocktails of pesticides.
The documents show France is the main user of Metam, pumping 6,5 Million kg. of Metam in the soil, while Spain, Portugal, Greece and the Netherlands are also heavy users. UK and Italy failed to report the amount used.
The Common Agricultural Policy reform proposal is a step in the right direction but far too light a green to make the needed change to reduce external input dependency and to ensure long term food security.
