In Brussels, the Parliament’s Health Committee asks the authorities not to renew the authorization of glyphosate, a few weeks before a decisive vote.
The ranks of opponents of glyphosate are swelling. After the associations and several member states, stepped up against the reauthorization of the pesticide under discussion in Brussels, it is the turn of the European Parliament to issue an alert in a resolution adopted by 38 votes in favor, 6 against and 18 abstentions.
“As long as fears remain about the carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting nature of glyphosate, a herbicide used in hundreds of agricultural, urban, forestry and gardening tools, the Commission should not renew its authorization”, insists the committee of Environment and Health (ENVI) of the Parliament in a communicated.
The European authorities must indeed decide on the renewal for 15 years of the authorization of glyphosate, used in particular in the Round Up. The proposed vote is based on work commissioned by EFSA, the Commission’s health body, for which the pesticide would not ultimately be carcinogenic to humans – against the grain of the World Health Organization and of most research on the issue.
“Publish the evidence”
For parliamentarians, the Commission “should rather request an independent study and publish the scientific evidence used by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to assess glyphosate”, while a strong opacity surrounds this file.
“Why are we proposing to authorize glyphosate for an additional 15 years, which is the longest possible period?” These studies must be made public (…). Any uncertainty must be avoided before proceeding with the approval of a substance so widely used, ”add MEPs, who stress that the scientific literature seems less optimistic than EFSA.
“The industry suggests that the substance can be completely metabolized; it is now clear that glyphosate residues are everywhere – in the environment, in many everyday products, in our bodies ”.
Write a new project
“The fact that we have to resort to a parliamentary objection shows that something has gone wrong in the decision-making process,” said MP Pavel Poc (S&D, CZ), who drafted the motion for a resolution.
The text calls on the European executive to present a new project, and to publish “immediately all the scientific evidence which served as a basis for the positive classification of glyphosate and the proposal for a new authorization, given the public interest of a such publication ”.
The European Food and Veterinary Office should also be given a mandate to test and control glyphosate residues in food and drink, the text adds.
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