Global union IUF slams EC on chemicals retreat

Voting in the European Parliament, public opinion and credible, independent scientific research appear increasingly irrelevant to the European Commission (EC) when it comes to the protection of public health and the environment, the global farm and food union has charged.

Peter Rossman, of the plough-to-plate union federation IUF, writing in Social Europe, noted: “An estimated 100,000 workers die each year in the EU from work-related cancers, prompting the ETUC to demand stronger laws and enforcement. Yet we are experiencing a generalised retreat from regulation.”

Rossman cites the case of glyphosate – the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup and the world’s most widely used herbicide – whose authorisation for use in the EU is currently up for renewal. He says despite growing evidence of cancer, reproductive and other health risks, the EC has proposed renewing the approval of glyphosate for the maximum period of 15 years.

The European Parliament has called for a highly restricted seven year renewal, and has said the EC had exceeded its statutory powers. But, according to Rossman: “There are no democratic mechanisms in place to stop the Commission from cutting a deal with the corporate agrochemical giants which would keep Europe locked into the deadly spiral of increasing pesticide applications for another decade.”

He concluded: “The rush to glyphosate renewal is part and parcel of the EU’s general retreat from regulation… Nothing is more political than food, which involves, or should involve, choices about what we produce and how we produce it, bearing in mind that foodworkers are in the frontline of exposure to the hazards which consumers experience as residues.”

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