COST Action 850

Van: Tillmann Frank e-nema [T.Frank@e-nema.de]
Verzonden: donderdag 19 mei 2005 23:16
Aan: Willem Ravensberg
CC: ehlers; Arne Peters

EU Commission
DG SANCO
Attn. L. Smeets
Health and Consumers
Protection Directorate D - Food
Safety Unit D.3
Rue Froissart 1001 6/72
1049 Brussels
BELGIUM

Raisdorf, May 19, 2005

Dear Madam, dear Sir,

I refer to the Draft Working Proposal for Council and Parliament, Document SANCO/10159PPP Regulation rev.0 06.04.2005.

In the draft EU-regulation for plant protection products containing microorganisms it is now stated: "For the purposes of this regulation, nematodes used in or as plant protection products will be assimilated to micro-organisms."

On behalf of the company e-nema GmbH, Raisdorf, Germany I would like to formally object to this draft regulation asking the authorities to leave nematodes out of the Directive.

e-nema is a company specialized on the production of nematodes for plant protection. 80% of the turn-over is with nematode-based products. Should nematodes be included in the amendments of Directive 91/414, we would be facing severe bureaucratic hurdles making the marketing of these biological control agents economically impossible for our enterprise.

It is hard to understand why these beneficial animals, which have been used in biological plant protection in the EU since 1985 without causing any damage to humans and the environment and which have not been regulated in almost all European countries, should now be regarded as micro-organisms and be regulated following rules developed for bacteria, fungi and viruses. Nematodes are animals. The mechanisms they have developed to parasitize insects or slugs are not comparable to those of micro-organisms. All international organizations group nematodes in the category "macro-organisms" together with beneficial insects and mites (FAO, EPPO, OECD). In the USA the EPA has exempted nematodes from any kind of registration requirements.

In several scientific studies it has been shown that they do not cause any harm to warm-blooded animals and plants and no negative impacts on the environment were recorded. The effects on populations of invertebrate non-target organisms were remote and transient. Nematodes are considered as exceptionally safe biological control organisms. We therefore can not identify any reasons why the access to the market should now be restricted and be dependent on the listing on Annex 1.

In several EU documents the common agriculture policy demands a reduction of the use of synthetic chemical compound. Nematodes contribute to the reduction of chemical pesticides. The inclusion of nematodes in the revised version of Directive 91/414 would result in the opposite effect.

I would like to emphasize that we cannot identify any reason or risk which would justify the regulation of nematodes following rules developed for micro-organism and therefore urgently ask for exclusion of nematodes from the revised version of the above mentioned document.

Yours sincerely