The possibility of exporting cereals to third countries requiring treatment with phosphine, as well as the withdrawal of marketing authorization for plant protection products based on S-metolachlor are confirmed.
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These new conditions had indeed become contrary to the procedures required by certain destination countries, and could have interrupted exports to these countries from April 25.
According to the new conditions applicable in the coming days, fumigation products had to be systematically used without contact with the grains, and to do so be placed in fabric sleeves.
These are recovered on unloading and must be treated according to very rigorous procedures, which require perfectly trained operators, to avoid the risks due to the concentration of dangerous products.
Some destination countries do not authorize the concentration of residues in the sleeves and impose a fumigation treatment on contact with the grains, without any impact on the health safety of the treated grains.
In this context, with regard to European regulations, ANSES on April 21 adapted the marketing authorizations for the products concerned, on the basis of a European provision which expressly provides for this scenario.
The authorization now specifies that the application of the product in direct contact with the grain can be carried out on cereals intended for export to countries outside the European Union which require or accept this particular treatment in order to protect the cereals.
The Government welcomes this decision which will allow, as in other European countries, the continuation of cereal exports under the conditions requested by the destination countries.
In addition, the decision not to renew plant protection products containing S-metolachlor was taken April 21. The products can be used in France until October 2024.
The timetable for this decision as well as the EFSA report make it possible to aim, as the Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty had undertaken, to align the national and European blackout calendars.
France will bring to the European Commission's next Active Substances Management Committee on May 24-25, 2023 the request to rule without delay on the withdrawal of the substance, to ensure that the rules for the use of products based on S-metolachlor are the same for all European farmers and therefore all European products circulating on the internal market.
More generally, the Government announced during the International Agricultural Show held last March a strategic action plan to anticipate the withdrawal of active substances and the development of alternative crop protection techniques.
This plan will concern plant protection products presenting the greatest risks of technical impasses. It is part of the ongoing work on ecological planning and the new national strategy on the use of plant protection products and crop protection, announced by the Prime Minister and which should be finalized in the summer of 2023. ■