Parliamentary question - E-009044/2011Parliamentary question
E-009044/2011

Glyphosate

Question for written answer E-009044/2011
to the Commission
Rule 117
Sir Graham Watson (ALDE)

I refer to Commissioner Dalli’s response of 4 August 2011 to my letter of 4 July 2011 about my constituent Claire Robinson’s concern over the delayed glyphosate review scheduled for 2015. Commissioner Dalli says of the Earth Open Source and other reports about the toxicity of glyphosate: ‘So far, these reports did not reveal any possible risks from the use of glyphosate in plant protection products which were not taken into account at the initial approval in 2002’.

However, it is this very approval that is challenged in the Earth Open Source report, of which Claire Robinson is a co-author. Among other unscientific practices, the rapporteur Germany, in its draft assessment report that formed the basis of glyphosate’s approval in 2002, minimised and dismissed findings of birth defects in lab animals in the industry’s own studies. It:

For these and many other reasons, Claire Robinson and Earth Open Source say that the current approval of glyphosate has wrongly dismissed findings of clear harm from glyphosate and is scientifically unsound. They say it is not enough to claim that these findings have been ‘taken into account’ when their meaning has simply been ignored or dismissed.

Can the Commission provide scientific justifications for the above practices by Germany?

OJ C 154 E, 31/05/2012