Colombia’s Constitutional Court bans chlorpyrifos

The Constitutional Court of Colombia announced in the Official Gazette which published on June 6, 2023, to immediately suspend the commercialization and use of products containing chlorpyrifos in the agricultural and livestock sectors; to immediately prohibit the importation of raw materials and finished products for commercialization purposes of products containing chlorpyrifos; to cancel ICA registration for products containing chlorpyrifos and reject new application to register chlorpyrifos-based product or modify current registration. 

Chlorpyrifos is one of the main pesticides used in agriculture and livestock in the country.

The Constitutional Court of Colombia, through its Judgment T-343 on October 5, 2022, ordered the Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA) to adopt the necessary administrative measures to immediately suspend the commercialization of agrochemical products with the active ingredient chlorpyrifos and eventually eliminate it.

The court ordered that within a maximum period of six months, the necessary administrative measures be adopted to definitively eliminate the use of chlorpyrifos. To comply with these orders, the ICA will have to implement actions that allow a transition towards substituting the pesticide.

Through an analysis of the risks to health derived from the application of the precautionary principle, the court verified the existence of a degree of certainty regarding the threat to health and human life derived from the use of the pesticide.

In the opinion of the court, according to the scientific studies on chlorpyrifos, it remains in the products treated with the molecule and, in addition, it stays in the water and soil for long periods, which means that, even when its use is reserved for certain places, its concentrations are present in the environment. For the court this means people are at permanent risk of chronic or acute exposure, with the implications it has on health.

With the purpose of providing adequate compliance with Judgment T-343 of 2022, the ICA, on January 25, 2023, requested clarification and/or addition, in the sense of requiring expand the term between 12 and 36 months from the notification of the ruling to: (I) budgeting a gradual and effective exhaustion of existing products; (II) avoid the detriment of the phytosanitary status of some agricultural species; (III) proper rational use of the product and avoid increasing the demand for use for the established short time and thus prevent the practice of illegal trade, contraband, falsification among others, (IV) allowing non-minded export practices in order to reduce the negative impact that the stocks can have in the economy for stocks of householders outside the country. Second: that it is clarified that in the same term between 12 and 36 months ICA, together with the Policy Director of the Ministry of Agriculture and within the framework of a public-private program or agenda, participates in the elaboration of a clear diagnosis of the possible substitutes of chemical origin, as well as the implementation of actions that allow a transition towards the effective replacement of the pesticide.″

Subsequently, by Order 417 of 24th March 2023, the Constitutional Court decided to reject the ICA's request for clarification and/or addition to the judgment T-343 of 2022 on the grounds that it was inadmissible.

The Constitutional Court announced on June 6, 2023 that the resolution governs from the date of its publication in the Official Gazette. Against this resolution, no appeal is appropriate, in accordance with the provisions of article 75 of Law 1437 of 2011.

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