Five associations (Pollinis, Notre Affaire à Tous, ASPAS, Anper-Tos and Biodiversité sous nos pieds) filed on Monday an appeal against the State before the administrative court of Paris, asking it to review the pesticide approval process , which they consider insufficient.
Guest of franceinfo on Monday January 10, the campaign manager for “Our Common Business”, Justine Ripoll, believes that “the pesticide validation process contains a lot of flaws”. According to her, France has also “put aside 99% of scientific studies” on glyphosate.
franceinfo: The state was already condemned last fall for climate inaction. Why this new remedy?
Justine Ripoll: We ask the justice to consider that the State has, by the commitments made, registered and quantified in the law, a responsibility vis-à-vis the protection of biodiversity. The State must legislate on one of the main causes of the collapse of biodiversity, which is the massive use of pesticides in French agricultural practices, knowing that numerous studies show that biodiversity in the country is in the process of s ‘collapse, in large part because of pesticides which are currently not evaluated and authorized on the market in such a way as to respect the commitments of biodiversity and environmental protection. In France, this decline in biodiversity is really massive. Three quarters of pollinators have disappeared, we also see that on insects, and the species that feed on them.
Are pesticide control plans poorly implemented?
The pesticide validation process contains a lot of flaws because it is based on data provided by industry and not at all by reports from scientists, who carry out serious studies. The plans to fight against pesticides are badly done: in France, we see that the Ecophyto plans, which aimed at massive reductions in pesticides, are failures. We did not succeed at all in achieving our objectives. And that is because the State has not acted at all on the levers identified, in particular the evaluation process of ANSES (National Agency for National Food Safety). Pesticide tests are done in the laboratory and not in real conditions, we do not assess the cocktail effect at all, that is to say the way in which pesticides react together. And that has consequences for biodiversity, the health of farmers and consumers.
Emmanuel Macron admitted that he had not been able to get out of glyphosate, as he planned in his program, because of European competition: why attack at the level of the State and not of Europe?
The European and French scale are constantly passing the buck. Even if things are being done at the European level, the national level is important: the pesticide reduction plans can be implemented in a much more ambitious way at the French level. The French government has a role to play with the European presidency.
We can see that France is not moving in the direction of reducing pesticides.
Justine Ripoll, campaign manager “Our common concern”
France has published with three other countries a report on an assessment of the reintroduction of glyphosate at European and national level: we can see that France is not moving in the direction of reducing pesticides. With the case of glyphosate, for example, France is positioned for the reintroduction of glyphosate, and to do this, it has set aside 99% of scientific studies on the subject, which it deemed negligent, impertinent or incomplete. The remaining 1% are reports from the chemical and agrochemical industry. This is not going in the right direction at all. We want to attack at the national level because the elements of national law allow us to push the State to act.