Paris (AFP)

The French Health Security Agency (ANSES) announced Monday the withdrawal of 36 products based on glyphosate, a herbicide that France has decided to ban from 2021, which represents half of the references of these products.

The objective of the government is to get rid of most of the uses of glyphosate on January 1, 2021, and all uses on January 1, 2023.

With this in mind, he asked ANSES to proceed, with the support of the INRA Agronomic Research Institute, to withdraw the French marketing authorizations for products containing glyphosate, provided that alternatives exist.

Of the 69 glyphosate-based products available, 36 "will be withdrawn from the market and can not be used at the end of 2020 due to insufficient or no scientific data to rule out Genotoxic risk "(likely to damage DNA and cause genetic mutations, Ed), says ANSES in a statement Monday.

These 36 products, the list of which was not provided immediately, represented in 2018 "nearly three quarters of the tonnages of glyphosate products sold in France", according to the health safety agency.

For identical reasons, ANSES "notified a negative decision for 4 of the 11 new applications for authorization filed since January 2018 and under examination".

The assessment of the applications for authorization submitted by companies wishing to renew or obtain a marketing of glyphosate products "was specifically reinforced in 2017 (...) with more requirements involving the provision of additional data concerning risks to health and the environment, in particular with regard to the genotoxicity of all the components of the products ", according to ANSES.

- "Standardized and robust methods" -

"These new provisions require specific studies conducted according to standardized and robust methods," says ANSES, which continues to review requests for re-authorization of the remaining products.

"Only products based on glyphosate meeting the criteria of efficiency and safety defined at European level (...) and can not be substituted in a satisfactory manner, will ultimately benefit from access to the French market", adds l agency, which will finalize the entire evaluation process by 31 December 2020 ".

The Générations Futures association welcomed Monday these first withdrawal decisions. "They confirm that the safety of glyphosate herbicides is a myth!" Said its director François Veillerette, quoted in a statement.

Glyphosate, this "broad-spectrum" herbicide, was classified as a "probable carcinogen" in March 2015 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization (WHO).

This did not prevent, after two years of heated debate, the member states of the European Union (EU) to renew its authorization in November 2017, for five additional years.

The European Commission, the executive body of the Union, then put forward the green light from its scientific agencies, Efsa (food safety) and Echa (chemicals) that did not classify the substance as carcinogenic .

But scientists and NGOs have denounced a "biased" evaluation because based on reports provided by manufacturers.

The French government then promised that glyphosate would be banned "in its main uses" within three, without waiting for five years decided at European level.

The removal of this cheap herbicide will however increase the costs of farms with a cost that could be between 50 and 150 euros per hectare, according to a parliamentary report published in November.

Sales volumes of glyphosate increased by 12% in France between 2008 and 2018, despite the launch of government plans to reduce pesticides.

© 2019 AFP