Struggle for the Implementation of New Pesticide Assessment Methods with Regards to Bees - The Truth

PRESS RELEASE - Louvain la Neuve, June 22, 2016

In 2013, the EFSA updated the methodology for carrying out the risk assessment of pesticides on bees. Today this methodology is not yet officially in place. Bee Life publishes a factsheet on the critics and arguments that have blocked for three years the implementation of these EFSA Guidelines.

It is important to highlight that these Guidelines are the only ones allowing an assessment of the risk of pesticides on bees as required by the Regulation (EC) 1107/2009 concerning the placing of plant protection products, pesticides, on the market. They include chronic toxicity tests as well as acute toxicity ones, tests on larvae as well as on adult bees, assessment of sublethal effects and tests on honeybees as well as on other species of bees (e.g. bumblebees and wild bees).

The critics and arguments gathered in the factsheet were those given by some Member States and by pesticide industries in order to obtain the non-implementation of the Guidelines. Indeed they were effective because three years have passed since these Guidelines were published. However, DG SANTE announced during the Bee Week their partial implementation somewhen in 2016 or beginning of 2017 (some tests will still not be included in pesticide risk assessment due to lack of methodological development).

Bee Life’s factsheet responds to those fallacious reasons given solely for the protection of the pesticides business and not for the protection of bees and pollinators.

Hopefully, this document will permit to highlight the importance of these Guidelines for the protection of bees and the environment and will enable to speed up the process of their implementation.

Contact Bee Life European Beekeeping Coordination Tel: +32 10 47 16 34 Place Croix du Sud, 4 bte L7.07.09 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve info@bee-life.eu www.bee-life.eu