All literature, including independent studies (i.e. science financially independent of private interests), now need to be taken into account when the EU Commission and EU member states (MS) discuss whether to approve a pesticide for sale. This is what politicians decided in the 2009 pesticide Regulation 1107/2009.
PAN Europe analysed a sample of seven of these new pesticide dossiers (risk assessments, RA) to see if the pesticide industry and governments are living up to this provision. We discovered that only 23% (99) of 434 important toxicity studies from academia were identified by industry in these seven RA. Further, not one of those 99 studies was seen as relevant and reliable enough to be used for decision-making, generally because they were not performed according to OECD-test protocols (including Good Laboratories Practice, GLP). A guideline of Food Authority EFSA showed industry the way for dismissing these independent studies. Yet independent scientists regularly find risks likely because of the more sensitive methods of detection used. For the seven pesticides in the sample of PAN Europe, we found several studies falsifying the alleged RA safe doses (based on a chronic exposure ‘key study’) from 2 to over a 1.500 times.
The MS overseeing the dossiers allowed industry to disqualify the independent studies without any logic, and didn’t demand a revised assessment before authorizing a pesticide’s use, as politicians envisioned their doing. MS mostly did not even ensure industry’s mandatory search for independent studies were performed – Spain even claimed, without rationale, that there is no such mandate. Sweden did call for some independent studies to be considered in one particular risk. PAN Europe is very concerned about the way democratic EU decisions turn into a “dead letter” when implemented at the Commission and MS. The EU institutions and stakeholders must discuss this.