Organic movement’s recommendations on EU pesticides regulation (SUR)
IFOAM Organics Europe’s position paper gathering our recommendations on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Regulation (SUR) is out.
As our regular readers know, the European Commission published the SUR proposal on 22 June 2022. The organic movement supports the reform – as Europe needs it to reach the pesticide use and risk targets set in the Farm to Fork Strategy – but we believe the current proposal should improve on several aspects.
We believe, the EU needs to:
- Elaborate a better indicator than the proposed Harmonised-Risk Indicator 1 (HRI-1) to assess pesticides use and risk, given HRI-1 is a volume-based indicator which discriminates against natural substances used in large quantities because generally less harmful;
- Better define plant protection products (PPP) to differentiate between synthetic pesticides and natural substances;
- Authorize natural substances in agricultural sensitive areas (the proposal foresees a ban of all PPPs) to enable food production in a sustainable manner.
The European organic movement counts on the EU institutions to take an ambitious position on the SUR to decrease Europe’s use of synthetic pesticides and shift towards extensive-agricultural systems such as organic farming, while ensuring food production.
A strong reform of the current Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive (SUD) will to protect our farmers and farm workers from health issues and our environment and biodiversity from pollution, all triggered by synthetic pesticides.
For more information on pesticides and IFOAM Organics Europe’s work on this issue, please visit our website , or contact [email protected]. Do note that we prioritise our members’ requests.
IFOAM Organics Europe members can find more information on the member extranet and background materials in the arguments database on the member extranet (main messages, arguments/FAQs, visuals & videos). Contact [email protected] for access rights (issues).
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