This page is a part of the corpus (Annexe 1) used to write Stéphane Foucart and neonicotinoids.
Here, I relate what the journalist said in his article “A Bruxelles, débat crucial autour des nouveaux tests pour évaluer les effets des pesticides sur les abeilles”. All quotes, originally in French, were translated by me.
On March 24 and 25, SCOPAFF met to study the risk assessment tests of pesticides on bees. According to MEP Pascal Canfin, the discussion focused on the mortality considered acceptable in a colony following exposure to a pesticide:
“The mortality threshold considered acceptable should be placed between 7%, a position defended by France, Slovakia or Sweden, and 25% which is defended in particular by Spain and Hungary”.
According to the NGO Pollinis, it is likely that more permissive criteria than those established in 2013 are retained. “This would irreparably precipitate the ongoing disappearance of these insects essential to European cultures instead of remedying it. “
S. Foucart recalls that Pollinis had asked for more transparency in these debates and the positions of the different countries.
“This is all the more important as the ambition of the new bee tests has, since 2013, been considerably reduced. A large part of EFSA’s recommendations have been abandoned (tests on bumblebees and wild bees, chronic toxicity tests, etc.) and the chosen approach is now based on a model simulating the response of a colony to stress. – the model used by EFSA having been co-developed by the agrochemical firm Syngenta, one of the largest producers of pesticides in Europe.”