On 18 January 2018 the European Parliament decided to setup a special committee to investigate the potential failures in the scientific evaluation of the approval or renewal of pesticides such as glyphosate.

 

The committee’s main tasks will be to scrutinize the EU’s authorization procedure for pesticides and analyse whether the EU agencies responsible for the evaluation and classification of chemicals are adequately staffed and financed. To counter the many questions among citizens, this commission will clarify certain issues by explaining, in more detail, the functioning of the procedures at the level of the European institutions.

The final document on the committee’s tasks took out references to documents that investigated accusations that Monsanto tried to influence scientific data assessing the safety of glyphosate. It therefore sounds that the setup of the committee is to watch over the neutrality of the assessment, rather than over the quality of studies from whatever source. 

The European Parliament will vote on the committee mandate during the 5-8 February plenary session.

STEP-Water webtool

As industry, CEMA manufacturers have the strong commitment to supply machines that bring pesticides/herbicides at the right spot, at the right dose, ensuring that the application is done with care for the environment. CEMA manufacturers certainly deliver state-of-art product design as well as promote the right technologies and right handling, storing, applying of plant protection products.

In this context, the CEMA project team on pesticide application equipment 'PT24' has therefore linked up with ECPA to develop the webtool STEP-Water (spraying technologies for the protection of water). This tool will allow spraying equipment users to make a well-considered choice when purchasing or upgrading a sprayer. For ECPA it fits within their TOPPS approach designed to encourage the uptake of best management practices (BMPs) for water protection. With the STEP-water webtool also CEMA contributes to this goal.