The General Court of the European Union has today delivered two very important judgments concerning glyphosate. The EU has ordered EFSA to open toxicity studies to the public.
Don't store avocado like this: it's dangerousThe General Court of the European Union has today delivered two very important judgments concerning glyphosate. The EU has imposed on EFSA a open toxicity studies to the public.
After a sort of back and forth of the parties, aimed at preventing or instead giving the possibility to all those who request it to view the results of the toxicity studies concerning glyphosate, today the EU has put an end to this situation .
Already in January a commission of the European Parliament created ad hoc, had asked to make public the studies used in the authorization procedure of each pesticide and greater clarity on the authorizations concerning glyphosate.
Today we have taken a decisive step forward in terms of transparency. The decisions of the European Food Authority (EFSA), which to date denied access to studies on the toxicity of glyphosate, have in fact been overturned by two judgments. The motivation clearly explains that the public has the right to know what is released into the environment and what are the risks to health and the environment:
“The public must have access not only to information on emissions as such, but also to information regarding the more or less long-term consequences of these emissions on the state of the environment, such as the effects of these emissions on non-target organisms. Indeed, the public interest in accessing information on emissions into the environment is precisely not only to know what is, or predictably will be, released into the environment, but also to understand how the environment risks being damaged by the emissions in question ".
This result was reached following two requests: the first from Mr Anthony C. Tweedale (case T-716/14) and the second from a group of MEPs, Heidi Hautala, Michèle Rivasi, Benedek Jávor and Bart) , (case T-329/17).
In both cases, EFSA was formally asked to be able to view various documents relating to the toxicity of glyphosate. We are talking specifically about two published studies, useful for determining the maximum daily dose to use of this pesticide, but also about results, analyzes and other studies concerning the carcinogenicity of glyphosate. All this was asked by appealing to the regulation on public access to documents and information on environmental matters according to the provisions of the Aarhus Convention.
EFSA had denied the request on the grounds, among other things, that disclosing this information could harm the interests of the companies that carried out the studies, that there was no public interest in disclosure and that what was requested to see did not concern information. on “emissions into the environment” under the Aarhus regulation.
The EU court, however, did not agree and has now overturned the situation by contesting one by one all the points on which the EFSA defense was based.
We hope that making these studies public will be therebeginning of the end of glyphosate, at least in Europe.
Read also:
- Glyphosate: Parliament calls for the review of studies and transparency on authorizations
- Glyphosate & co, no transparency: the European Parliament postpones the obligation and saves pestidics
- Glyphosate: Here's why it could do even more harm than known so far
