GRG Newsletter- 4th Edition
Welcome to the Fourth Edition of The Glyphosate Renewal Group (GRG) Newsletter
In this edition, we invite you to learn about glyphosate and food safety – we look into crops and honey and answer whether we can find traces of glyphosate in urine.
Keeping you informed on the EU regulatory process, we provide an update about the recent regulatory milestone, the conclusion of the public consultations on the draft Renewal Assessment Report (dRAR) for glyphosate.
We also invite you to read about the policy dialogue with Euractiv that took place on the 4th of November: Can Glyphosate play a role in achieving greater biodiversity?
Finally, we share new website updates.
Do not hesitate to get in touch with us: we listen, we engage. Visit our website to learn more.
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IN THIS FOURTH ISSUE
Regulatory’nting period on the draft Renewal Assessment Report has ended
Food safety
Residues in food
Glyphosate residues in honey – is it a concern for consumer health?
Traces of glyphosate in urine
GRG News
A Policy Dialogue – Can Glyphosate play a role in achieving greater Biodiversity?
The Dutch website is now live!
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The commenting period on the draft Renewal Assessment Report has ended
On 22 November 2021, the EFSA and ECHA 60-day public consultations on the draft Renewal Assessment Report (dRAR) for glyphosate were closed.
During the consultations, all interested parties were invited to submit comments on the assessment report produced by the Assessment Group on Glyphosate (AGG).
A total of 416 submissions were received through the two consultations.
You can access the submissions and statistics via EFSA and ECHA websites.
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Food Safety
Residues in food
It is not uncommon that crops contain very small amounts (traces) of elements used or present in the environment in which they are grown. Thanks to continuous advances in technology, experts can detect certain substances in units as small as one billionth of a gram.
Regulatory authorities apply strict rules towards pesticide residues in food. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) sets daily exposure limits at least 100 times below levels shown to have no negative health effect in safety studies.
Levels sometimes found in food are incredibly small and far from any level of concern.
In fact, you could eat the unrealistic number of 450 boxes of breakfast cereals every 24 hours for the rest of your life, and you would still be at a level of glyphosate exposure considered safe by EFSA.
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Glyphosate residues in honey – is it a concern for consumer health?
In the EU, glyphosate is mainly applied to control weeds during pre-planting or pre-emergence and not applied during the flowering of crops when bees pollinate, nor is it typically used to control flowering weeds. Furthermore, due to its mode of action, glyphosate should be applied by targeted spraying only on the weeds that need to be controlled.
These practices offer opportunities for continuously reducing the applied amounts, only applying it in parts of the field or orchard where it is needed to control problematic weeds or undesired vegetation.
As a result of these good agricultural practices, the exposure of honey bees to residues of glyphosate is usually limited, and significant residues of glyphosate are rarely found in nectar and pollen as well as in honey.
To monitor these residues, MRLs* are defined for glyphosate residues in honey (as it is the case for each active ingredient and each type of food) to ensure that it is applied correctly, ensuring safety for human health and the environment.
* The Maximum Residue Level (MRL) is the highest level of pesticide residue that is legally tolerated in or on food or feed.
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Traces of glyphosate in urine
Urine is a primary way to eliminate water-soluble chemicals or their metabolites from the human body. Glyphosate is water-soluble, and our kidneys filter any glyphosate present in the bloodstream prior to elimination via urine. Humans eliminate glyphosate from their bodies rapidly, with little remaining after a few days.
Glyphosate and other pesticides can be present in foods at low levels called residues. Regulatory authorities establish the maximum allowable amount of each pesticide by setting maximum residue levels (MRLs), the highest level of pesticide residue that can legally be present in or on individual crops or foods.
The German non-governmental organization BUND (Association for Environment and Nature Protection- German branch of Friends of the Earth) conducted a study titled “Determination of Glyphosate residues in human urine samples from 18 European countries”.
The results found that the majority (56.1%) of the samples did not contain detectable levels of glyphosate. The highest level of the ones that did contain traces, translated to an intake that is over 1,000 times lower than what the EU considers an acceptable daily intake (0.3 mg/kg body weight per day), and more than 3,000 times lower than the equivalent value from the World Health Organization (1.0 mg/kg body weight/day).
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GRG News
A Policy Dialogue – Can Glyphosate play a role in achieving greater Biodiversity?
An online policy dialogue organized by EURACTIV and supported by the GRG took place on 4 November 2021.
The event brought together a panel of experienced professionals to discuss how biodiversity was addressed in the Scientific Report on the Assessment of the Renewal, glyphosate’s role in sustainable agriculture, and whether and how it can contribute to greater biodiversity.
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Website News
The Dutch website is now live!
We are happy to announce that the GRG website is now available in Dutch, in addition to English, French, German,
Polish, Italian and Spanish.
We are proud to share our commitment to maximum transparency in multiple European languages.
Check out the new version: Nederlands
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The Glyphosate Renewal Group wishes you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!