PARIS (Reuters) – France will proceed with a ban on major crop uses of weedkiller S-metolachlor owing to concerns over water pollution, with farmers able to use the product for another 18 months, the agriculture ministry said on Friday.
The decision follows a ruling in February by health and safety agency ANSES that main applications of the weedkiller, originally produced by Swiss chemicals company Syngenta, should be banned.
The regulator’s move had been welcomed by anti-pesticide associations but upset farming groups and the government because it could leave France, the European Union’s biggest crop producer, at a disadvantage compared with other countries.
The ability to use crop chemicals containing S-metolachlor for another 18 months will give France to time to seek an EU-wide ban on the substance, which is being reviewed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the agriculture ministry said in a statement.
France will request an EU-wide withdrawal of S-metolachlor-based products at a May 24-25 meeting of an EU committee on active substances, the ministry added.
ANSES, which confirmed the ban on key S-metolachlor products in updated notices on its website, had said in February that it was taking into account that the European Chemical Agency had said S-metolachlor was suspected of causing cancer.
The withdrawal of the weedkiller will most notably effect maize (corn) and sunflower crops.
Syngenta France had said in February that it was surprised by the position taken by ANSES and that there was no proven health risk linked to products containing S-metolachlor.
(Reporting by Gus Trompiz and Tassilo Hummel; Editing by Jason Neely and David Goodman)
