Question 5727 — dangerous products

Summary

Ms. Delphine Batho questions the Minister of State, Minister for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition, on France's compliance with the EFSA guidance document concerning the assessment of the impact of pesticides on bees and wild pollinators. In 2012, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published a scientific opinion on methods for assessing the impacts of pesticides on bees and pollinators wild This opinion, adopted upon referral to the European Commission, highlighted the shortcomings of the methods and guidelines applied to test the impact of a pesticide before its authorization: “prolonged and intermittent exposures are not evaluated in the laboratory”, as are exposure by inhalation or exposure of larvae; insect exposure calculations do not account for all pathways exhibition; “effects at sublethal doses are not fully taken into account”; on semi-field tests, “weaknesses were identified for each of the test guidelines, such as the limited size of the crop surface, the impossibility of evaluating all possible routes of exposure of systemic compounds used in seed or soil treatment”; EFSA further emphasizes that “the guidelines field tests have several major weaknesses” (colonies too small, surface area of ​​the crop tested), etc. Still at the request of the European Commission, this opinion led the EFSA to publish in 2013 a new guidance document for the assessment of the impacts of pesticides on bees and wild pollinators. This document aims to replace the 2002 guidance document (which can be applied for applications submitted before December 31, 2015) and the 2010 EPPO standards, two documents having been criticized by the EFSA as not allowing the risk to bees and wild pollinators to be correctly assessed. However, this EFSA guidance document from 2013 is not applied by ANSES, nor by other European agencies, which choose to apply obsolete guidance documents and unsuitable for assess the risks for bees and wild pollinators These agencies and their governments explain this choice by the fact that this 2013 EFSA guidance document has still not been endorsed by the meeting of Member States within the SCoPAFF. However, not all agencies have made this choice since they have the possibility of applying this 2013 document if they wish. As a result, EFSA is already applying this 2013 guidance document for the evaluation of new active substances, as it announced in several conferences. In addition, Belgium also announced in June 2017 that it will apply the 2013 EFSA guidance document. Belgium justifies this choice by the fact that “from a scientific point of view, it is not acceptable to ignore robust toxicity data on vulnerable non-target species, simply because there are no generally accepted risk assessment guidelines.” While the situation of bees and wild pollinators is alarming, that one species of wild bees in ten is threatened, that French beekeepers lose 30% of their bee colonies each year, in 25 years, the flying biomass has fallen by 80% according to a German study. It is absurd that governments and agencies still refuse to apply the only scientifically valid guidance document that makes it possible to assess the reality of the impacts of pesticides on bees and wild pollinators. This is why she asks him to kindly make known France's position on this 2013 EFSA guidance document, and in particular on the position defended by France in the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals and Foodstuffs in regarding this document. Furthermore, it asks him to please indicate whether this document is applied by ANSES, and if not, when it will be, as well as the measures envisaged by France to assess in the most complete way possible the risks linked to the impact of pesticides on bees and wild pollinators.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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