Pesticides & GMOs

In order to tackle the grave threat of the biodiversity crisis, the EU will table a proposal for targets for the reduction of pesticide use. This has put the pesticide industry into survival mode. A new leaked document from pesticides lobby group CropLife Europe shows that while it talks a big talk about backing the Green Deal, in reality it is employing a wide variety of lobbying tactics to undermine ambitious, binding targets.

The EU Green Deal includes bold promises to vastly reduce the use of toxic pesticides. But big pesticide corporations like Bayer, BASF, Syngenta and Corteva are lobbying hard to counter these initiatives. They also want to continue producing and exporting pesticides that are banned in Europe to other countries. This video tells the story of toxic pesticides, international trade and these EU Green Deal promises.

The glyphosate battle is back. A new scientific analysis finds that most of industry’s studies provided to EU authorities to prove glyphosate’s safety, did not meet basic international scientific standards as set by the OECD. This comes at a moment when the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is about to start its re-assessment of glyphosate, a key ingredient of the infamous weed killer Roundup.

The biotech industry is waging a battle to get new genetic modification techniques excluded from European GMO regulations. This would mean that these new GMOs would not be subject to safety checks, monitoring or consumer labelling. Corporate Europe Observatory has uncovered precisely how the biotech developers are preparing the ground, and lobbying hard, for such deregulation.

The EU’s current model of agriculture directs billions in EU taxpayers’ money to fuel climate change, destroy biodiversity, and even undermine farmers’ livelihoods. While the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is approaching a key vote, freedom of information requests show that farmers and agribusiness lobby group Copa-Cogeca, along with pesticides and food industry giants, are doing their best to stop the CAP reform from aligning with the new Farm to Fork strategy of the Green Deal.

Germany will shortly take over the EU Council Presidency at a critical time. A new report looks at the German Government’s record in its own EU decision-making and exposes how time and again it is too close to corporate interests.

Corporate Europe Observatory filed a complaint to the Register regarding the inaccurate, low-ball lobby spending figures declared by both Monsanto and its lobby firm FleishmanHillard. In response the Register’s secretariat has now announced it will present new guidelines to make sure registrants will include their lobbying spending at national level if it concerns EU policy-making. This should generate a far more realistic picture of corporate lobby spending in the EU.

While pesticide corporations, their allied farm lobbies, and right wing politicians to use the public health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to try to shoot holes in the Farm to Fork Strategy, we call on you to sign the European Citizens’ Initiative 'Save Bees And Farmers'.

Will the EU concede to the demands of US negotiators on food standards? While the EU's narrow negotiation mandate makes this seem impossible, the Commission can in fact circumvent the mandate by using other methods that make it much easier to weaken standards – and tilt voting procedures to their own advantage.

More than 100 civil society organisations demand a stop to trade talks with the US that will further endanger EU rules on health and the environment and aggravate the climate crisis. A change of course is needed.

A new investigation reveals how pesticide corporations and trade partners have put immense pressure on the EU to allow residues of certain hazardous pesticides - banned in Europe - to be present in food and feed imports.

After a decade of campaigning, the EU just patched a major flaw in its food safety system. The revision of the General Food Law Regulation will provide public access to most of the confidential toxicity data provided by food companies to obtain EU market authorisation for their products. This could improve scientific scrutiny of EU food safety decisions, if issues around data re-use rights are solved.