Dublin PP Symposium 2024 – Regulatory and Public Affairs: Perfect partnership for solid science
Dublin PP Symposium 2024 – Regulatory and Public Affairs: Perfect partnership for solid science
The final presentation of Kerona’s Dublin Plant Protection Symposium 2024 was delivered jointly by Sunita Bohra (Global Regulatory Affairs Manager at Bayer Crop Science) and Shiraz Dromi (Managing Director of Agri-food department at Penta Group Brussels). Sunita and Shiraz discussed the work carried out by the Glyphosate Renewal Group (GRG) in order to change the public perception and acceptance regarding the EU renewal of glyphosate. The GRG is a collection of companies that seek the continued renewal of the EU approval of the active substance glyphosate by joining resources and efforts to prepare a single dossier with all the scientific studies and information on the safety of glyphosate.
Glyphosate is celebrating its 50th anniversary on the market and over the past 5 decades has been one the most hotly discussed active substances in plant protection. This is related to several factors but mainly misinformation believed by the public and the politicians who represent them along with a lack of communication from the scientific community on the unequivocal safety of this active substance. To quote Sunita “it is loved by people who use it in their day to day businesses and of course, it’s loved by those who also like to spread misinformation about pesticides and chemistries in general”.
The submission of the glyphosate renewal dossier happened in June 2020. In July 2023 EFSA announced the completion of the Evaluation and published the Conclusions on the peer review. The implementing regulation was published at the end of November 2023. The GRG learned from the previous renewal in 2015, whereby the science and data was robust, but it wasn’t understood easily by non-scientists, and they didn’t factor in the emotional and political discourse. The 2020 renewal was underpinned by complete transparency providing a website with information regarding everything glyphosate and the re-approval to the public in 9 EU languages. The 2020 and 2021 dossiers (with the confidential information removed) along with the list of new studies for renewal were made available online. Everything about the stakeholder engagement (meeting minutes with the authorities, updates, next steps) was also made available to the public in the form of a regularly updated newsletter. The GRG’s transparency of information moreover aligned with the revised EU general food law requirement which came into effect in March 2021. Their goal was to simplify the communications around glyphosate without diluting the scientific accuracies through public outreach, so that lay people could understand that its safety is underpinned by solid data.
More information on the GRG can be found on their website: https://www.glyphosate.eu/
If you missed the Dublin Plant Protection Symposium, please contact Kerona if you wish to purchase a copy of the presentations. For assistance with the Regulation of PPP in the EU and UK the Kerona Regulatory team can be contacted at info@kerona.ie