Bijdrage land­bouw­com­missie tijdens een gedach­te­wis­seling met EFSA over de risi­co­be­oor­deling van glyfosaat

Thank you, chair.

The European Citizens Initiative "Ban glyphosate" was submitted to the Commission in October 2017, after having been signed by well over a million citizens. And they wanted an end to this carcinogenic herbicide that is poisoning our waters, our soils and our fields. Instead, all they got was a change in the pesticide approval law, that meant that all studies that are generated by the big pesticide companies themselves about the toxicity of their own products, have to be made public. At least that change in the law meant that independent scientists can scrutinize those studies.

So how is it possible, that this planned re-approval of glyphosate again will be based only on the summary of EFSA?

We are told that the full studies, additional to the peer-review, will only be made public after the Commission proposal for re-approval is voted on by the Member States. This is unacceptable. We need the missing info and we need the full documents.

It is unbelievable and unacceptable.

The right to a toxic-free environment stands above any intellectual property objections by Bayer.

Is the Commission afraid of a public scrutiny of those studies?

Especially after the scientists who have shown that Syngenta deliberately withheld studies, that showed the true toxicity of their products. This course of action is inexcusable.

We need to save the health of rural citizens. We need to save the environment. And we need to ban glyphosate.