Central Zone Steering Committee – An Update

Central Zone Steering Committee – An Update

At the 2021 Dublin PPP Symposium, Sadhbh O’Dwyer from the Pesticides Registration and Control Division (PRCD) of the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine spoke about “Updates from the Central Zone”. Ireland is currently chairing the Central Zone Steering Committee (CZSC), and Sadhbh represents Ireland at their meetings.

Sadhbh described the latest agreed points or harmonized decisions from the 2021 CZ SC meeting: the mixture and risk assessment calculation tool, Brexit and Northern Ireland in renewal applications, the CZ evaluation manual for ecotoxicology, extraction efficiency, and DATA gaps in the EFSA conclusion. She gave an update on product allocations finalized in the CZ in 2021 and informed that the process to allocate products containing active substances from AIR 5 group 1 will begin by the end of 2021.

The presentation continued with a discussion on the challenges the CZ is currently facing, such as increased workload, shifting timelines (due the endocrine disruption “stop the clock” mechanism, but also due to COVID 19) and problems with harmonization (assessment and decision-making criteria are not fully harmonized across the CZ). All of these mean that delays can be expected in the coming years.

Sadhbh ended her presentation by talking about the effort to improve guidance documents and to develop new ones. This effort is taking place across the EU, coordinated through high level meetings in which Member State directors, the Commission and EFSA participate.

Headquartered in Ireland, in the Central Zone, Kerona provides assistance with application to this zone. Please don’t hesitate to contact our expert team at info@kerona.ie

If you would like a copy of the presentation, you can purchase the slides from the PPP Symposium here: https://kerona.ie/product/dublin-plant-protection-symposium-2021-speakers-presentations/