Physicians' association deplores "persistent gap between available scientific knowledge and regulatory decisions". Report: Jonathan Matthews and Claire Robinson
A petition signed by over two million people has reignited the debate in France over the so-called "Duplomb law", which was passed by the lower house of the French parliament (the National Assembly) on 8 July.
The record-breaking petition labels the new law a "scientific, ethical, environmental and health aberration". The reason? Among other things, it facilitates the conditional reintroduction of acetamiprid, despite many scientists considering this neonicotinoid insecticide to be not just toxic to biodiversity but harmful to human health, potentially causing developmental neurotoxicity, cancer, and other diseases. France led the way in banning this neonicotinoid in 2018.
The new law – named after the right-wing lawmaker Laurent Duplomb, who proposed it – triggered a wave of concern from when it was first mooted, with some 1,200 French doctors and scientists warning the French government in an open letter about the dangers it represented to public health. They also emphasised that pesticide regulation needed strengthening, not weakening. That's because Duplomb's proposal didn't just make possible the reintroduction of a single highly problematic insecticide. It also sought to create an agricultural advisory board, made up of representatives of agricultural interests including the pesticide industry, with the power to reauthorise banned pesticides, including neonicotinoids.
"You are cancer's allies"
When the Duplomb law passed, it triggered still greater concern. Quite apart from the first citizens' petition to ever surpass the 500,000 signature threshold that can lead to a debate in the National Assembly, there were protests across France, as well as the emergence of new groups worried about the law's consequences, such as Cancer Colère (Cancer Anger). The spokesperson for this collective of current and former cancer patients and caregivers is Fleur Breteau. Fleur first shot to public attention when she shouted, "You are cancer's allies and we will let everyone know!" from a balcony in the National Assembly, overlooking the right-wing and far-right MPs who had just voted to reauthorise the banned pesticide.
Many more established groups have also publicly expressed their opposition to the new law, including the National League Against Cancer, the National Cancer Institute, France's health insurers (Mutuelles) and its wider insurance industry (Federation of Mutual Insurance Companies of France), the Federation of Drinking Water Authorities, the French health agency ANSES' board and staff, the Foundation for Medical Research, and the Scientific Council of France's largest governmental research organisation CNRS, which plays a crucial role in advising government on scientific policy and strategy.
Unprecedented mobilisation by the scientific community
In fact, as part of an unprecedented mobilisation by France's scientific community, 22 medical societies, backed by learned scientific societies and patient groups, also signed onto an op-ed in Le Monde that warned that if the law came into force, it would "mark a major setback for public health".
That prospect has also led France's National Council of the Order of Physicians (CNOM) – the primary body that regulates the medical profession in France – to issue its own hard-hitting statement on pesticides, in which they completely reject Duplomb's argument that farmers must have pesticides like acetamiprid to stay competitive. This, they say, cannot justify "relaxing our vigilance in terms of protecting biodiversity and human health".
The CNOM asserts that "from a medical point of view", there is no doubt that pesticides are "substances that could expose the population to major risks" and that "these warnings cannot be ignored". It also deplores "the persistent gap between available scientific knowledge and regulatory decisions". According to the CNOM, "this gap compromises the effective application of the precautionary principle, required by the constitution".
Doctors condemn regulatory failure
The inadequacy of current pesticide regulation was also something that the 1,200 French doctors and scientists, including experts in toxicology, ecotoxicology and agronomy, warned France's ministers of agriculture, health, and the environment about in their open letter. They pointed out that current risk assessments are "dependent on data from manufacturers"; that scientific literature "is too often marginalised" in approval processes; and that regulatory tests "do not explore all potential risks", such as, for instance, the endocrine disrupting properties of pesticides.
Regulators also fail to assess the risks associated with chronic exposure to pesticide formulations (which are always a mixture of chemicals) as sold and used, or the potential impact of the "cocktail effect" – the mixtures of synthetic chemicals disseminated in the environment and "found in tap water, mineral waters, and our food". And this, they said, needed to change, because "farmers, local residents and citizens no longer want to be used as guinea pigs".
In their statement, the CNOM makes clear that they will continue to actively pursue these issues. It has committed to "launching a structured discussion without delay on the links between health and the environment", involving "practising doctors", "scientific experts, farmers, elected officials and representatives of healthcare users". This initiative aims to "make environmental health a pillar of public health policy and defending health a higher good in all its dimensions," they write.
Growing frustration with political elites
The Duplomb law was adopted on 8 July without any proper debate, thanks to some careful political manoeuvering by its supporters. Fleur Breteau, who founded her group Cancer Colère in response to the Duplomb law, said of the outpouring of anger that followed: "This is what civil society is giving back to a contemptuous government and the 316 lawmakers who supported Duplomb rather than public health, science and the future of farmers. They thought they could censor the democratic process. They wanted to destroy us, but they are bringing us together."
The Paris-based AFP news agency reports that such is the success of the mobilisation that even "representatives of France's culinary world, usually reticent about airing political views, published an open letter calling for the withdrawal of the legislation and a moratorium on pesticide use. 'We are appalled by the blindness of our politicians and their now all-too-obvious ties to the agro-industry,' said the letter, which has collected signatures from nearly 400 people, including Michelin-starred chefs and restaurateurs."
Lobbyists at the heart of government
Those "all-too-obvious ties to the agro-industry" were on open display when – just days after the Duplomb vote – it was revealed that Xavier Jamet, a leading agribusiness lobbyist, had been appointed to serve as chief of staff to the French government's Spokesperson Sophie Primas, amid the protests against the Duplomb law. Only a week before his insertion at the heart of government, Jamet had been serving as the chief lobbyist of the FNSEA (French National Federation of Farmers), which pursues the industrialising of French agriculture so aggressively that it has become known as "France's agribusiness war machine". FNSEA was also the prime driver of the Duplomb law. Indeed, Duplomb himself is a former president of the FNSEA at the Haute-Loire Chamber of Agriculture.
Of course, when it comes to the weakening of pesticide regulation and the political elite being in bed with agribusiness, what is happening in France is as nothing compared to the US, despite the fact that public concern about pesticides fed into the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement that helped get Trump elected for a second term. There the recent appointment as top pesticides officer at the EPA of Kyle Kunkler – a former lobbyist for the American Soybean Association (ASA), who spent much of the last five years promoting GM crops and advocating against pesticide regulation – is just business as usual in an agency and an administration awash with industry appointees. Before Kunkler worked for the ASA, incidentally, he was a lobbyist for the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the biotech industry's main lobby group.
GM crops help drive neonicotinoid use in the US
With the exception of acetamiprid, neonicotinoids have been almost completely banned from farmers' fields in the European Union. But in the US, the use of neonicotinoids has expanded drastically in parallel with the rise in GM corn and soy planting, as Pennsylvania State University researchers have shown. Their 2015 study established that neonicotinoid seed treatments have driven a major surge in US cropland being treated with insecticides. They also point out that studies claiming that GM Bt crops have decreased chemical insecticide use lack credibility because they "do not seem to have considered seed treatments", which more than make up for any reductions.
Neonicotinoids spread and persist in the environment. Even in the relatively small amounts used as seed treatments, they have proven extremely toxic to bees and other important pollinators, which led to the EU drastically limiting their use.
Beacon of hope
Against this depressing backdrop, the scale of the French mobilisation by citizens and scientists, and notably doctors, provides a shining example of widespread resistance to the environmental and human harms stemming from the marriage of convenience between government and agribusiness. Above all, it shows this is an issue on which people are ready to unite and fight.
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