(AOF) – The NGO Générations Futures announces its decision to launch several European legal actions this year to request “the re-examination of extensions of approval at European level” of 5 active pesticide substances that it considers “particularly worrying”, namely: S-metolachlor, tebuconazole, prosulfocarb, chlorotoluron and flufenacet. Two of these substances, tebuconazole and flufenacet, are marketed by Bayer.
Via these 5 legal actions, Générations Futures wishes to denounce “the system of systematic extension of approvals of active substances”. The European Commission, denounces the NGO, grants extensions “of a duration almost equivalent to the approval period usually granted” and which can even be much longer, in particular for substances candidates for substitution, normally authorized for 7 years (case of chlorotoluron and flufenacet).
These extensions are granted systematically “even when it is obvious that the substances do not comply with the approval conditions set out in the regulations”, estimates Générations Futures.
The NGO also alerts Anses, the French health authority, to the reprotoxic and endocrine disrupting nature of tebuconazole, whose uses as a pesticidal substance but also as a biocide must be banned, according to it.
This action comes after Member States opened the way in mid-November to the re-authorization for ten years of glyphosate, Bayer’s herbicide.
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