Every morning, Marie Dupin slips into the skin of a personality, an event, a place or a fact at the heart of the news.
The National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES) is little known to the general public. However, it plays an important role in the everyday life of consumers. It is ANSES that issues marketing authorizations for pesticides, biocides and veterinary medicinal products. It is she who gives the green light, for example, or not, to products used by farmers such as the very famous glyphosate.
>> ANSES’s scientific council wants to strengthen the credibility of the health security agency
It was she, for example, who had bisphenol A banned in baby bottles, she who made it possible for the carcinogenic nature of titanium dioxide to be recognized by the European Union, she who warned of the risks associated with the consumption deli meats or raw milk for young children.
Showdown between ANSES and the government
Last feat of arms a few days ago, ANSES published a report on the pollution of tap water with a pesticide yet prohibited. She asked for the prohibition of another phytosanitary product, S-Metalochlor, responsible for massive pollution of groundwater. Decision contested by the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau during the congress of the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FNSEA), the main French agricultural union.
>> Pesticides: the Minister of Agriculture assumes his desire to reverse the ban on a herbicide, in the name of “food sovereignty”
Marc Fesneau also proclaims everywhere that ANSES has banned a crucial product for treating cereals, aluminum phosphide, thus endangering the entire industry. In fact, the health agency has reauthorized treatments based on aluminum phosphide, a product which in contact with humidity turns into a deadly gas, phosphine, which eliminates pests. Simply, from now on, professionals will no longer be authorized to put cereals in direct contact with this product.
ANSES had nothing to prohibit, since the manufacturer did not submit an application for authorization for this use. In a letter, consulted by franceinfo, the industrialist himself attests that by putting the cereals directly in contact with the phosphine pesticide residues are “at or above the maximum limits” sanitary conditions set by the European Union.
Clearly, there are too many risks for consumers. ANSES’s role is to protect them. It is a question of morality, but also of law. Faced with the collapse of biodiversity, which no one disputes, a report published recently called for strengthening the independence of ANSES and that of its experts vis-à-vis politics. Obviously, on the side of the Ministry of Agriculture, the message has not passed.
