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Last week, the Dutch company Rabobank published a report on the current situation in the pork market. According to the Rabobank report, the spread of African swine fever (ASF) in combination with high temperatures, particularly in Eastern Europe, makes it impossible to boost pork production. In spite of the fact that pork production has fallen in the last quarter, pork prices and exports have increased, largely due to the significant spread of African swine fever infection in China. However, the infection continues to spread in Europe, Slovakia confirmed the first occurrence of the disease at the end of July, near the border with Hungary. In order to prevent further spread of the disease, according to the Slovak authorities, all pigs could be eliminated within 3 kilometres of the site of the outbreak. Slovakia thus became the tenth European country affected by ASF. The disease is also spreading in Bulgaria, which will have to eliminate around 17,000 pigs on farms. In Romania, 299 cases of African swine fever infection were reported in July.
The Rabobank report is available here.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published an evaluation of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, a substance used for growing, for example, broccoli or oranges. According to the EFSA assessment, chlorpyrifos can be a genotoxic substance and thus interfere with the proper development of children. Because of the genotoxicity of the substance, it is not possible to set safe limits for the use of the substance, therefore EFSA does not recommend extending the license for the use of ethylchlorpyrifos, whose current license expires in January 2020. Corteva, a chlorpyrifos-producing company, disagrees with EFSA's findings. According to Corteva, the results of the EFSA evaluation are inconsistent with the results of studies conducted in the US and Australia showing that chlorpyrifos is a harmless substance.
More information is available here.

The Greens have expressed concern about the activities of the European Commission, which, in their view, did not remove legislative obstacles to the introduction of stricter rules on the use of pesticides harmful to bees. These rules were already drafted by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in 2013, but have not yet been implemented. MEP Bas Eickhout, Vice-Chair of the EP's Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, sent a letter to Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Vytenis Andriukaitis asking the European Commission to indicate what steps are planned to be taken to remove these barriers. In 2013, EFSA presented the criteria for assessing pesticide safety in the so-called Bee Guidance document. Member States' representatives at expert level have since been trying to agree on how strict these criteria should actually be. The European Commission has not yet voted on the document; probably for fear that the document might be rejected by Member States. New guidelines would tighten current EU legislation, as the EU and national authorities would have to take into account the long-term effects of pesticides on pollinator populations. Eickhout asks the Commission to have the issue discussed directly by the EU Council, thus avoiding the approval of criteria at expert level. EFSA is now re-evaluating the Bee Guidance document, the result should be known by March 2021.
More information is available here and here.

The Greens have expressed concern about the activities of the European Commission, which, in their view, did not remove legislative obstacles to the introduction of stricter rules on the use of pesticides harmful to bees. These rules were already drafted by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in 2013, but have not yet been implemented. MEP Bas Eickhout, Vice-Chair of the EP's Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, sent a letter to Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Vytenis Andriukaitis asking the European Commission to indicate what steps are planned to be taken to remove these barriers. In 2013, EFSA presented the criteria for assessing pesticide safety in the so-called Bee Guidance document. Member States' representatives at expert level have since been trying to agree on how strict these criteria should actually be. The European Commission has not yet voted on the document; probably for fear that the document might be rejected by Member States. New guidelines would tighten current EU legislation, as the EU and national authorities would have to take into account the long-term effects of pesticides on pollinator populations. Eickhout asks the Commission to have the issue discussed directly by the EU Council, thus avoiding the approval of criteria at expert level. EFSA is now re-evaluating the Bee Guidance document, the result should be known by March 2021.
More information is available here and here.

The coalition of environmental NGOs has launched a new citizens' initiative calling for a halt to the dramatic decline in bee populations in the EU. This Initiative calls on the European Commission to propose legal acts to phase out synthetic pesticides by 2035, restore biodiversity, and support farmers in the transition in agroecological and organic practice. The new Citizens' Initiative must now collect at least one million signatures in one year, then the Commission would have to deal with the initiative (however, even if the initiative is successful and the requested one million signatures are received, the Commission is not obliged to modify existing legislation). Representatives of the Commission said in response to the launch of the new Citizens' Initiative that as part of the proposal to reform the CAP post 2020, financial support for the beekeeping sector should be strengthened from EUR 36 million to EUR 60 million, as biodiversity is one of the main pillars of the newly proposed CAP.
More information is available here.