A qualified majority of experts mandated by the EU’s 28 member states voted this Tuesday to establish the criteria for endocrine disruptor assessment for pesticide registration.

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals found to interfere with human hormones.

A majority of 21 member states voted in favour, three voted against and four abstained. Ireland voted in favour.

The criteria agreed as very complex but it seems likely that their application could effectively remove up to 78 actives from the market in the EU. Not all of these face endocrine disruptor issues and other factors will also bring about losses.

Danger list

Last year, the European Crop Protection Association published a list of actives that could potentially be lost depending on the criteria ultimately employed. It contains many actives used by farmers in this country.

The list of fungicides included actives such as cyproconazole (Cielex, Furlong), difenconazole (Score), epoxiconazole (Opus, Strand, etc.), fluazinam (Shirlan), folpet (Phoenix), metconazole (Caramba), prochloraz (Sportak), propiconazole (Tilt), prothioconazole (Proline), tebuconazole (Folicur), etc. Chlorothalonil (Bravo) is also under pressure from other elements of legislation.

Among the herbicides listed are asulam (Asulox), chlorotoluron (Tower), clopyralid (Dow Shield, GrazonPro, Thistlex), fluazifop-P-butyl (Fusilade Max) , fluroxpyr (Starane, Hurler, etc), glyphosate, MCPB, metribuzin (Sencorex Flow), pendimethalin (Stomp, Flight, etc) and triflusulfuron (Debut).

And from the small insecticide list, actives such as esfenvalerate (Sumi Alpha), dimethoate, deltamethrin (Decis), lambda-cyhalothrin (Karate) and Spirotetramat (Movento) are all on the danger list.

Veto

The European Commission will now send the criteria for approval to the Council and the European Parliament. Both bodies have the right to veto them, but such an outcome is thought to be unlikely at this point.

If there are no serious objections from those bodies, it seems likely that the criteria will be adopted in November 2017.

Some member states, medical and environmental bodies have argued that the criteria do not go far enough.

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EU decision on endocrine disruptor criteria spells out next pesticide challenge

The decision on the criteria to define potentially harmful endocrine disruptors would appear to effectively seal the fate of many current EU pesticides.