Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Environmental NGOs press charges against Monsanto, German government institute and European Food Safety Authority

Brussels, 2nd of March 2016. Six environmental NGOs (Global 2000, PAN Europe, PAN UK, Generations Futures, Nature et Progrès Belgique and Wemove.EU) from five European countries are filing today a formal complaint against those responsible for the assessment of glyphosate in Europe, for denying the cancer causing effects of glyphosate and getting its European market license renewed.

On March 2015, glyphosate was classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as a probable human carcinogen. But in Europe, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) ,-acting as a Rapporteur for the European Commission- and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), approved the industry’s application and proposed to classify glyphosate as “non-carcinogenic”. The 2009 EU pesticides law (1107/2009) forbids active substances, which can cause cancer, from being used as pesticides but now the green light has been given for glyphosate's re-approval in Europe.

 Wednesday, December 9, 2015

PETITION DELIVERY

16 Organisations deliver a message: 135,733 Europeans call to ban glyphosate

Wednesday 9 December, at 12:00 the call was delivered at DG SANTE’s premises located in Breydel Street, No 4, 1040 Brussel (Etterbeek), to Mr Flueh, Chair of the Standing Committee for Food Chain and Animal Health - Section: "Phytopharmaceuticals - Legislation, on behalf of Food Safety Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis.

The Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed of Member States and the Commission is meeting this Thursday 10 and Friday 11 December to discuss, for the first time, EFSA’s conclusion on glyphosate. 

Thursday, November 12, 2015

PAN Europe is extremely disappointed with today’s European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) opinion concluding that glyphosate is not classified as a human carcinogen. Instead of doing an independent assessment on the pesticide, EFSA’s work is a copy of the German Government agency BfR’s assessment and the pesticide industry dossier compiled by the Glyphosate Task Force, hiding and misinterpreting the tumour incidences from experimental studies. This opens the road to the re-authorization of this dangerous pesticide in the EU, which was recently classified as “probable human carcinogen” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization[1].

EFSA published today its conclusion on glyphosate and found it “unlikely to pose acarcinogenic hazard to humans”.

This contradicts the previous assessment from 17 international experts of IARC concluding glyphosate is a “probable carcinogen” due to limited scientific evidence of carcinogenicity in humans, sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals and evidence on genotoxicity. 

Monday, September 28, 2015  

PAN Europe examined the recent technical report of European Safety Food Authority on pesticides with endocrine properties and revealed that the pesticides characterised by EFSA as of "critical concern" due to their endocrine properties, are in the agenda of DG SANTE for prolonging their authorization period, rather than terminating it. This shows, once more, the great resistance of DG SANTE to remove endocrine disrupting pesticides from the market, at the cost of human health and the environment.

EFSA’s report on endocrine disrupters challenges DG SANTE’s work

Fifteen of the pesticides that the European Commission is currently evaluating for market approval are of “critical concern” regarding their endocrine disrupting properties- the European Food Safety Authority reported last Wednesday[1]. Out of these, 11 have been in the market for years and their 10-years authorization expires at the end of this year. But EU Commission’s health and consumer division, DG SANTE has a different agenda: instead of considering their “non-approval”, the experts of the Standing Committee have been discussing the extension of the re-approval period for these exact eleven pesticides.