After member states failed for a second time to come to any agreement about whether or not to renew permission for the use of glyphosate, the European Commission recently extended its permission for use in Europe for 10 more years.
Its current EC permission was scheduled to expire in December. Member states remain responsible for national authorization of plant protection products containing glyphosate within their national borders. The renewal didn’t extend for the more normal 15 years for regulated substances because glyphosate had already had a five-year provisional permission.
“As required by EU legislation on pesticides, and in line with the Comitology rules, in the absence of a qualified majority in the Appeal Committee, the commission is legally obliged to adopt a decision before the expiry of the current approval (15 December 2023),” the EC said in explaining its decision. It said the permission followed a “rigorous” 4-year process by the European Food Safety Authority, which “considered a significant amount of scientific information” and found no risk that would warrant a denial.
Glyphosate is the world’s most-used plant protection ingredient. Ever since a single study by a European health agency suggested a link to cancer in 2015, the best-known branded product using it, Bayer’s Roundup, acquired when Bayer bought Monsanto, has been the target of thousands of lawsuits in the United States alleging that it caused non-Hodgkins’s lymphoma in plaintiffs. The suits have resulted in billions of dollars in settlements and impairments to Bayer’s balance sheet.
David Murray can be reached at [email protected].
