It is not enough that our food is healthy and natural, we also hope that it is cheap!
Thus, through powerful supermarket chains, we increase pressure on farmers to use “safe” and low-chemical agricultural products, such as biopesticides, while keeping costs low.
The time it takes to obtain licenses for new pesticides and other low-chemical agricultural products in some parts of the world is a major problem in achieving these goals.
This is a particular problem in a Europe riddled with bureaucracy, where there is talk of three to five years to complete the licensing process. Could the new updated EU regulations passed in October 2009 speed things up at last?
The Regulation of Phytosanitary Products.
The new regulations became law on December 14, 2009 and are due to apply from June 14, 2011. A key Regulation, Article 67: Registration and Disclosure of Information on Pesticides, aims to increase the level of protection for people and the environment, but also, crucially, to speed up decision-making and provide clearer rules.
European plant legislation was first formulated in the context of the 1950s and 1960s, when the use of heavy metal preparations was prevalent, with consequent negative effects on the environment and health.
The EU’s goal now is to eliminate as many substances as possible that have an adverse impact on health and the environment or leave hazardous pesticide residues in final products.
The new framework introduces substitution so that other solutions or safer methods, such as low-chemical fertilizers and biopesticides, replace problematic agents.
The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA) has a program called MASE (Microbial Activity for a Healthy Environment), which has been working with food producer Findus on the use of microorganisms in the cultivation of all their pea products. .
Christopher Folkeson Welch, director of the MASE program, hopes the new regulations will simplify and speed up the regulation of new, green biopesticides and other low-chemical products currently being developed.
He reports that there is intense pressure from the food industry for alternatives to chemical pesticides and that Findus is ready to use microorganisms in the cultivation of all its pea products and wants this to happen as soon as next year.
“The new legislation seeks to control the chemical and biological agents used for pest management. The result is good and bad for us,” he says.
MASE deputy program director Margaret Hokeberg says: “In the new proposal, the authorities have been given a limited evaluation period, which is very important.”
Another new aspect is the classification of pesticides known as “Low Risk”. This is where Christopher Folkeson Welch and Margaret Hokeberg hope biological resources will end up. But low-risk agents have a longer approval period than “traditional” pesticides.
At the same time, lawmakers are severely restricting the old option of temporary permits during the evaluation period, which meant a product could be sold in a limited market. This change could have negative consequences, especially for smaller companies with limited research budgets.
Often, it is small companies that depend on getting to market quickly that investigate biological pesticides. This, with impatient financiers, is a bad combination according to Margaret Hokeberg.
The time it takes to license in the EU is an issue for all biotech research companies, as highlighted by Marcus Meadows-Smith, CEO of AgraQuest, a leading US-based company specializing in research and develop agricultural products with low chemical content.
In a 2009 interview with Agrow – World Crop Protection News, he compared reduced regulatory requirements and review times in the US to the “considerably more onerous” EU process, which makes no distinction between biological and conventional pesticides .
He estimates that without a drastic change in the process it will take up to six years to license products in Europe and believes that it is wrong for farmers to have to compromise on yield and profitability as older and more toxic pesticides are banned, That leaves gaps in their portfolios.
The company already has several biopesticides on the US market, but only one product, a biofungicide called Serenade, is licensed in the EU in partnership with distributor BASF.
Hopefully, the new EU regulations will be good news for AgraQuest, European farmers and food producers, and ultimately American consumers.
Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers