The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) does not have enough budget to fully take over the assessment of new agricultural substances from all 27 EU countries.
In response to questions from Dutch MEP Bert-Jan Ruissen (SGP), EFSA director Dr. Bernhard Url acknowledged that it takes a very long time for EU countries to complete their national testing of new substances.
The EFSA leadership also admits that many EU countries lack sufficient research capacity and administrative expertise to quickly assess every newly submitted substance. Ruissen pointed out that EFSA bans various chemical substances, but hardly any alternatives are introduced for agriculture and livestock farming.
Url noted this week in the Agriculture Committee that the process for the approval of new substances is inherently a collaboration between European and national authorities. Furthermore, EFSA does not have the budget to carry out all these evaluations and studies entirely on its own.
The EFSA director said that ultimately ‘it is a political choice’ if food and health are said to be important, but politicians must then back this up with action and allocate sufficient funds in the budget.
Regarding EFSA’s decision to take an extra year for the renewed approval of glyphosate, Url said this was not a matter of postponing a difficult decision.
He pointed out that several hundred substantiated responses had been received. In some cases, new scientific research is needed, he said. Moreover, authorities and EU countries had also submitted several thousand comments that needed to be addressed.
The current approval period for glyphosate expires at the end of this year. Initially, the intention was to complete the re-evaluation by the end of this year so that it could be extended or rejected in 2023. The Netherlands is part of a group of four EU countries monitoring the glyphosate assessment process.