EDC Criteria for Pesticides on the Way

At its meeting of December 12-13, the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (SCoPAFF) of the European Commission agreed upon uniform criteria for the identification of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDC) in pesticides. The draft is now with the European Parliament for consideration and study. The members of the SCoPAFF issued a summary report at the same time.

At the start of October, members of the European Parliament had rejected the initial draft because it did not include critical substances. The EU Commission provides documents about individual decisions and EDC on its Web site.

In parallel with the approval process by the European Parliament, an advisory group from the
ECHA and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) are working on guidelines for the identification of EDC in alignment with EU regulations of pesticides and biocides. The guidelines are to appear no later than June 2018. Comments on the draft can be submitted until the end of January. See the press release issued by the ECHA.

The EDC criteria for pesticides will be decided upon in a second round of voting, the EDC Criteria for Biocides have already been approved and apply as of June 2018. See our blog entry, EU: Criteria for Endocrine Disruptors Also Apply to Biocides.

Environmental groups, including PAN Germany, BUND, and the Munich Environmental Institute e.V. issued a joint statement (German only) critical of the criteria. According to the statement, the criteria cannot protect humans and the environment from EDC. The groups find the level of proof required to classify something as an EDC is too high, so that too few chemicals would be identified as EDC and, accordingly, prohibited. The authors warn that the precautionary principle would therefore become ineffective.

We have been involved in the approval of biocide products according to the Biocidal Products Regulation (BPR: (EU) No. 528/2012) for our customers for many years. Please contact us at biocides@kft.de.

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