Farming News - Is industry lobbying holding back efforts to assess endocrine disruptors?
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Is industry lobbying holding back efforts to assess endocrine disruptors?
According to the Guardian, top-level EU officials failed to act on a report warning of the public health and environmental implications of certain pesticides. Commission sources have suggested the paper, which looked at categorising certain chemicals, was buried under pressure from their powerful manufacturers.
Exposure to the chemicals, which could potentially have an endocrine disrupting effect – mimicking hormones in the body – could lead to reproductive problems, infertility and certain cancers. As well as agchems, these endocrine disruptors are also found in toiletries and cleaning products.
This week, EU Commission sources told the newspaper that the EU should have introduced new criteria for assessing the threat posed by certain chemicals last year, but that this was blocked, with lighter assessment and a delayed response being enacted instead; the 'lighter' assessment is not now expected to be completed until 2016.
The EU's Secretary General blamed miscommunication between the Environment and Health departments for the delay.
Instead of the proposed identification of endocrine disrupting compounds, the current EU approach will concern itself with filtering out more potent chemicals, though the 'buried' report suggests the risks from lower-potency endocrine disruptors remain high; the report's authors explained that exposure to less-potent, but more common chemicals could carry a greater risk than that from infrequent exposure to more potent ones, and highlighted the degree of uncertainty on the subject of endocrine disruption.
Earlier this month, campaigners at the Pesticide Action Network said research showed that, of 31 pesticides which they contend should be regulated as endocrine disruptors, between seven and zero will face regulation as a result of the Commission's chosen course of action.
This runs counter to claims made in a report commissioned by the Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC), NFU and Crop Protection Association, which found last year that "40 active substances are highly likely to be lost or restricted." The report claimed that yields of certain crops could be reduced by up to 50 percent as a result of restrictions on plant protection products (PPPs), and "Domestic production of some 'iconic' British foods such as frozen peas, apples and fresh carrots would be severely curtailed."
In the UK, the NFU has supported industry counter-measures aimed at avoiding restrictions on certain active ingredients. The union has criticised the use of the precautionary principle in the assessment of PPPs. NFU has instead called for "A risk-based approach" and led grass-roots style lobbying campaigns, mimicking the "Green lobby".
Read more on the Guardian website.