GLYPHOSATE THE CURRENT POSITION
As a valued customer ,we felt we ought to highlight the current glyphosate situation. NOW COMES THE BORING BIT AND POTENTIAL BAD NEWS.... No doubt you are aware there is considerable attention being paid to the EU glyphosate renewal. It has been highlighted in the press on a National and Global level Glyphosate as an active substance is due to expire on the 30th June 2016 and so for products to remain on the market into 2017 the AS approval must be either renewed for up to 15 years or extended for a shorter period until further studies are evaluated. As the world?s largest pesticide, glyphosate is very high profile. There is a lot of pressure coming from NGOs to prevent the renewal. The campaign by the NGOs has gained a lot of traction politically, despite the fact that the European Food Safety Authority has concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to pose hazards to humans. It is a battle of politics versus science. The EU Commission has tried to stay out of it by relying on the member states to perform their role and collectively make the renewal decision. The result is 20 of the 28 MSs are in favour of renewal, while 7 are abstaining and Malta is against. Abstaining is counted as a negative and as this group includes Germany, France and Italy the overall result does not reach qualified majority (need to represent >65% of EU population, as well as at least
55% of the member states. If the qualified majority vote cannot be reached by member states, the decision will be pushed back on the EU Commission. As the Commission are not appointed by an election process it is much more likely they will make a decision based on science rather than politics and take into consideration the importance of glyphosate to agriculture. This would either be to renew glyphosate for up to 15 years, or more likely to extend the current approval for ~18 months until further studies can be evaluated and Europe has a definitive scientific position. HERE'S THE GOOD NEWS! After consideration of the information above, you may take the decision to forward order product whilst it remains available and we are permitted to supply it. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will do our best to answer them.Regards The Chemigro Team snipped-for-privacy@chemigro.co.uk