The American Soybean Association (ASA) and other ag industry groups urged United States Trade Representative Michael Froman to reiterate concerns in the coming weeks with pending European Union (EU) legislation regarding crop protection products, which could have a significant impact on U.S. agriculture exports.  The EU is in the process of implementing the legislation now.

“We are concerned that they may do so in a manner that is scientifically questionable, unduly trade-restrictive and inconsistent with the EU’s commitments in the World Trade Organization (WTO),” the groups state in a letter to Froman.

The groups state the proposed regulations, which govern the registration of pesticides in the EU, establishes several hazard-based “cut-off” criteria that essentially exclude certain categories of products from consideration for normal authorization. The EU would not perform a risk assessment of these products, but declare them ineligible for authorization, or reauthorization, based on their intrinsic properties, without taking into account important risk factors such as level of exposure.

“It is likely that a number of widely used substances will not be re-approved due to these cut-off criteria when their current registration expires,” the letter states.

The groups emphasize that if the EU chooses to reset maximum residue levels and import tolerances for non-approved substances automatically to the default level, it would be doing so based solely on hazard identification, not risk assessment, and would therefore be in violation of WTO rules governing such regulatory decisions.

Click here to read the entire letter.