French court bans two Dow pesticides

The summary ruling by an administrative court in Nice overturned a decision by France’s health and environment agency ANSES, granting a permit for two brands of pesticides.

Both Closer and Transform contain the insecticide sulfoxaflor, which the EU’s health regulator approved in 2015. They were designed for agricultural use, to kill off aphids and other insects that attack plants.

French environmental group Generations Futures believe that sulfoxaflor, is essentially a type of neonicotinoid – a pesticide that has been mostly banned in the EU since 2013, because it acts as nerve agent on bees.

A study published in the journal Science in October revealed that 75 percent of the world’s honey contained traces of neonicotinoids.

According to Dow, its active ingredient is not a neonicotinoid. They claimed during court proceedings that the chemical was “more respectful to biodiversity”, which angered environmental protection groups.

ANSES says that even if sulfoxaflor functioned in a similar way to neonicotinoids, it remains present in soils and plants for a much shorter time.

In his ruling, judge Didier Sabroux erred on the side of caution “while uncertainties remain”, warning that farmers might ignore instructions to use the chemical agent only sparingly.

Dow’s licence for the two pesticides was suspended on Friday pending a court hearing to consider detailed arguments from the parties.

The neonicotinoid family of substances that are being phased out in France to halt the decline in bee populations. Sulfoxaflor was used on straw cereals like wheat as well as fruit and vegetable crops, after being authorised by ANSES. It is however prohibited for crops that attract pollinating insects and for all crops during flowering periods.

Dow AgroSciences SAS, a French subsidiary of the American multinational, said it would appeal the ruling before France’s top administrative court.

“We find this ruling extremely surprising,” Benoit Dattin, communications manager at Dow AgroSciences, said. But Generations Futures welcomed Friday’s outcome and called for a ban on all neonicotinoid products.

Dow Chemical, which in September completed a merger with US giant DuPont to become DowDuPont, said sulfoxaflor is used in more than 40 countries including the United States, Canada and South Africa.

But large numbers of bees are dying from so-called “colony collapse disorder”, blamed mysteriously on mites, pesticides, virus, fungus, or some combination of these.

Monsanto, meanwhile, has been pushing to renew the licence for glyphosate, a widely used weedkiller made popular by Roundup.