In a report published Thursday, the European Food Safety Authority explains that it has not identified any level of risk linked to glyphosate. Conclusions welcomed by Jean-Baptiste Moreau, former LREM deputy.
“We shouldn’t ban products just because it’s fashionable and because it makes three eco-friendly people in the 8th arrondissement happy“, tackle Thursday, July 6 on franceinfo the farmer Jean-Baptiste Moreau, former LREM deputy for Creuse and author of the information report filed by the joint information mission on the follow-up of the glyphosate exit strategy, put back in 2019.
A report from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published on Thursday paves the way for the renewal of the authorization of glyphosate within the European Union. The latter did not identify a level of risk linked to glyphosate which, in its view, would justify banning it in the European Union, in this study submitted to the European Commission, and contested by several NGOs.
franceinfo: You said at the time that the presidential commitment to ban glyphosate would be kept. How far are we in 2023?
Jean-Baptiste Moreau : It was following the president’s speech in 2017, when he said that glyphosate would be banned within three years, that there were a number of amendments to the Egalim law, and that a commission of inquiry was born. We worked for more than a year on this theme to support this opinion and see if it was really feasible to ban this glyphosate within three years. As a farmer and an agricultural engineer, we’ve known for a long time that glyphosate pays the price of being a symbol, but it’s not the most dangerous product used by farmers, especially that we have restricted uses since 2021. We have been reducing the quantities used for three years, following the report that we submitted. We discussed at the time with the President and the Minister of Agriculture, Julien Denormandie, saying that we could not ban at the Franco-French level a molecule widely used because it is effective, inexpensive and not dangerous, just out of dogmatism. We advocated theno ban without solution“, banning glyphosate whenever there were alternatives, and leaving a number of permitted uses.
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Why is it so hard to get away with it?
It is a formidable effective herbicide and at a price largely compatible with production costs and selling prices as they are today. Farmers don’t use it for fun. They use it because they need it, because there are a number of plants that we don’t know how to destroy with anything other than this molecule. It is also what is used for soil conservation agriculture, which avoids plowing the soil, releasing carbon, which is a perfectly virtuous agricultural practice from an environmental point of view. Without glyphosate, they no longer know how to do this technique. It is not because a nonsense is repeated thousands of times throughout news channels and media that it becomes the truth. Indeed, two studies said that it was a probable carcinogen, just like other products, no more and no less. But you have hundreds who say the opposite. You have to make rational decisions.
“We have penalized our energy sectors for dogmatic reasons, we are not going to do the same with our agricultural and agri-food sectors.”
Jean-Baptiste Moreauat franceinfo
What would be the consequences of a glyphosate ban?
There would be a food safety issue, with a number of weeds growing in the crops which could possibly be toxic to humans. You would have yield drops in a context where we no longer have food sovereignty. It will increase production costs, because it means using other molecules or other more expensive techniques. We shouldn’t ban products just because it’s fashionable and because it makes three eco-friendly people in the 8th arrondissement happy. They must be banned when they are dangerous for humans, for the farmer in the first place because he is the one who is most exposed, and for the consumer. As long as they are not dangerous, there is no reason to ban them.
Is this report a relief for a majority of farmers, breeders, of which you are a part?
It is above all anything but a surprise. When we have worked on the subject, or when we have a little experience in agriculture or agronomy, we have already known this for a long time. Except that a number of people stuffed the slack of the population at air length by explaining that glyphosate was super dangerous. An elected official must make informed decisions, this is what we did with this parliamentary mission which made it possible not to end up with a total ban on glyphosate, but with a restriction of uses, and we will continue in this direction. -there. We already knew in 2021, when I met the President and Julien Denormandie at the Elysée, that overall European countries would not go our way and that EFSA (the European Food Safety Authority) would not conclude not dangerous.