Pesticides: Senate approves law that changes assessment – 11/28/2023 – Environment

The Senate plenary approved this Tuesday (28) the bill that makes authorization for the use of pesticides more flexible, dubbed by environmentalists the Poison PL. The text goes to presidential sanction.

The text concentrates the registration of new products in the Ministry of Agriculture, emptying the responsibilities of Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) and Ibama (Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources).

The PL has placed the ministers of Agriculture, Carlos Fávaro, and the Environment, Marina Silva, on a collision course since the transition. The environmentalist wing even suggested, without success, the presentation of a new bill in the first half of the year. Now the approval of the text takes place on the eve of COP28, the UN climate conference, which begins this Thursday (30) in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, where the topic should have repercussions among environmentalists

To unlock the vote and try to balance interests, the leader of the PT in the Senate, Fabiano Contarato (ES), removed the possibility of temporary registration of defenders — one of the main demands of the ruralist bench.

According to him, the proposal “opens the possibility for the effective granting of registration and commercialization in the country of molecules that have not even been evaluated by the competent Brazilian bodies” and, therefore, must be rejected.

The ruralist group also defended that the term “pesticides” be replaced in the legislation by “pesticide”. Contarato, however, said that the first “can contribute to providing more clarity to packaging regarding the toxicity of these products.”

“Although there is an appeal by the agribusiness sector regarding the inadequacy of this word, due to the pejorative tone that can be unfairly associated with national agribusiness, we understand that the term ‘pesticides’ must be maintained in the new legal framework, even in obedience to the constitutional text, which uses it to name these products in § 4 of article 220 of the Federal Constitution.”

The proposal also allows agricultural pesticides under reanalysis, which currently have their application suspended, to be used even before the end of the process.

The changes are defended by the ruralist group as they reduce what the sector sees as excessive bureaucracy in the current process.

Ibama even prepared a technical note criticizing a series of points in the project that delegate coordination of the reanalysis of products to the Agriculture department. The process is considered sensitive as it can seal pesticides in use on the market.

According to the approved text, in a series of cases, the studies carried out by Ibama and also by Anvisa could end up as complements to Agriculture’s understanding of the processes.

According to Ibama’s note, the project could give “disproportionate power in relation to Ibama and Anvisa in the process of regulating and standardizing pesticides.”

Suely Araújo, public policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory and former president of Ibama, sees a “serious setback” in the new text.

“The approval, based on an agreement between the ruralists and the Executive Branch, consolidates a serious setback and is unlikely to be the subject of a presidential veto”, he says.

“There is nothing that really justifies the approval of this new pesticide law, other than meeting the interests of manufacturers who sought to remove the express prohibition existing in current legislation on the registration of products that cause cancer, hormonal disorders, damage to the environment and others serious problems.”

Araújo also points out that pesticides for export will have a precarious control system.

For Mauricio Guetta, legal advisor at ISA (Instituto Socioambiental), “the project brings unacceptable setbacks, such as the overturning of the current ban on the approval of pesticides that cause cancer and other serious diseases.” “Unfortunately, the attempt at consensus did not correct this problem, putting the health of the Brazilian population at risk”, he assesses.

The NGO Greenpeace calls the approval of the bill a “shame.” “In the week in which the 28th Climate Conference [COP28] begins in Dubai, it is a shame for Brazil to approve PL 1,459/22, which will put even more pesticides in the food of the Brazilian population and which contaminates the environment, prioritizing a toxic and unsustainable model of food production”, he says Greenpeace Brazil spokesperson, Mariana Campos.

“We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change, but the Poison Package and other harmful proposals, such as the time frame, will worsen the crisis we find ourselves in”, he adds.

The PL has been in progress in Congress since 1999, when it was initially presented by the former Minister of Agriculture and former governor of Mato Grosso Blairo Maggi, at the time a senator of the Republic.

The report prepared by Contarato is evaluated by members of the ruralist bench as not ideal, but possible.

The advancement of the proposal was agreed upon during the government transition. At the time, when Congress turned off the lights in 2022, the Agriculture Committee (CRA) even put the proposal on the agenda.

In response, the then transition team agreed with agriculture that the government would not impede the progress of the matter in 2023, but would work to try to build an alternative, consensus text.

In the middle of the year, environmentalists and ruralists reached an agreement on the wording of the matter. The obstacle, at the time, was precisely the removal of the temporary registration, something that Contarato managed to maintain until the final writing of the text.