European Food Safety Authority - Glyphosate consultations: over 400 submissions collected

The parallel consultations on glyphosate held by EFSA and ECHA closed on 22 November 2021.

During the two-month consultation, all interested parties had access to the scientific evaluations prepared by the national competent authorities of Hungary, France, the Netherlands and Sweden, known collectively as the Assessment Group on Glyphosate (AGG).

A total of 416 submissions were received through the two consultations from within and outside the EU, the majority of them coming from Argentina.

These submissions – some carrying multiple comments  – are publicly available and can be found on the EFSA and ECHA websites.

The graphs below provide a snapshot of the submissions received.

Next steps in the EU re-evaluation of glyphosate

The comments and observations received through the consultations have been shared with the AGG, who will consider and respond to them.

For the classification process, the AGG will provide its responses to ECHA’s Committee for Risk Assessment (RAC). The RAC will develop its opinion on the classification of glyphosate under the Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP) Regulation. This is expected in May/June 2022.

For EFSA’s assessment, following the AGG’s evaluation of the comments received through the consultation, a clock stop could be applied to request additional information from the Glyphosate Renewal Group (GRG). An updated assessment (RAR) will then be produced by the AGG and will be sent to EFSA to proceed with the peer review.

EFSA will take the outcome of ECHA’s opinion into account in its peer review, which is expected to be finalised in the second half of 2022.

Regular updates on the work can be found on the EFSA and ECHA websites.