The Chamber of Deputies approved this Wednesday (9) the project that increases the power of the Ministry of Agriculture to register new pesticides and empties the powers of Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) and Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) in the decision involving pesticides.
The basic text was approved by 301 to 150. The deputies rejected suggestions for changes to the project, which returns to the Senate.
The text, presented by the Senate in 2002, is criticized by environmentalists for, in their opinion, allowing the registration of pesticides that are proven to be harmful and carcinogenic. They claim that the project removes constraints contained in the current legislation on the subject.
Supported by the ruralist caucus, the project makes the Ministry of Agriculture responsible for the registration of pesticides and also for analyzing proposals for editing and amending normative acts on the subject. In addition, the folder would authorize and issue the temporary record.
Today, the decision to register pesticides is up to the Ministry of Agriculture, Ibama and Anvisa. The last two would only become bodies that would evaluate or approve the analyses.
The project in progress at the Chamber creates the temporary registration for new products intended for research and experimentation, which must have analysis completed within 30 days.
The text prohibits registration of pesticides and environmental control products that, under the recommended conditions of use, present an unacceptable risk to humans or the environment.
According to the project, when international organizations responsible for health, food or the environment, of which Brazil is a part, warn of risks or advise against the use of pesticides, the Ministry of Agriculture may initiate a procedure for re-analysis of the product.
The Ministry of Agriculture, the Union and states must define criteria, values ​​and apply fines of R$ 2,000 to R$ 2 million, in proportion to the seriousness of the infraction in the case of damage to health or administrative actions.
In the Chamber, the special committee responsible for analyzing the text approved in June 2018 a substitute for deputy Luiz Nishimori (PL-PR), also chosen to report the project in the plenary.
In the opinion, he stated that “numerous problems have been identified that hinder the availability of safe pesticides to farmers for the management or control of pests and diseases, as verified below, without wanting to exhaust all situations”.
Next, he mentions some obstacles, such as the fact that, according to him, the current legislation does not consider the characteristics and difficulties of producing in the tropical region.
In addition, he indicated in the report, the evaluation “of pesticides and the like is outdated in relation to the international scenario, as it uses parameters in disagreement with the recommendations of international treaties and agreements signed by the country, which are later than the current Law 7,802/1989”.
Nishimori also criticizes the fact that Brazil still carries out its analyzes due to the danger of the product. He says that the “pesticide registration system is extremely bureaucratic, in which long lines have been perpetuated at federal review agencies.”
He also contests the use of the term pesticide, which, according to him, is derogatory and is only used in Brazil. “So, to put a shovel in the numerous discussions about terminology, there is a need to adopt an international nomenclature: pesticides”, he says.
For deputy Evair de Melo (PP-ES), “the assertion that this project will put more poison on the table of Brazilians is a lie.”
“Whoever says that has no basis. This is merely a speech of ideological and political position”, he says. “To say that this project attacks environmental legislation is a lie.”
In the plenary, Nishimori accepted an amendment that says that phytosanitary products for own use are exempt from registration as long as there is no commercialization or use of an exotic biological control agent or without occurrence in Brazil, among other conditions.
The process of the project was accelerated. The urgency was approved on Wednesday afternoon, as part of an agreement between the president of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), and the opposition at the end of last year.
Environmentalists criticize the project and see a setback in the expansion of the power of the Ministry of Agriculture in the registration of pesticides. ​Suely Araújo, senior specialist in public policies at the Climate Observatory and former president of Ibama, points out setbacks in the project.
“They disappear with express seals to products that cause cancer. That disappears. They simplify and replace it with something more generic, saying that they will do risk analysis. It worries me a lot. You end up giving a blank check and don’t know exactly what will happen.”
In the plenary, deputy Domingos Sávio (PSDB-MG) called the campaign against the text cowardly in seeking to qualify the favorable deputies as “cancer deputies”.
“Today, it takes up to ten years to analyze the possible approval of a molecule. The project that we want to discuss says that no new product can be approved that is more toxic than what is on the market,” he said.
“The market is becoming cartelized, in the hands of a few, the price of the pesticide going up there, sacrificing the producer, including that of family farming.”
In a note, the Environmentalist Parliamentary Front recalled that a project is being processed in the Chamber that seeks to gradually and progressively reduce the use of pesticides in agricultural production.
“Society needs health protection measures, and that the legislation and regulation of pesticides ensure greater protection for biomes, ecosystems, nature’s goods, the lives of people and animals”, he indicates.
“Apart from that, the measures that need the most urgency, at this moment, must aim to contain the social and economic impacts that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused.”
Deputy Rodrigo Agostinho (PSB-SP) also regretted the approval. “We cannot put more and more poison on the Brazilian table. The current government has registered 1,500 molecules in these three years, 1,500 molecules of pesticides, many of them banned in several countries,” he said.
“We have to work from another perspective to encourage organic production, cleaner production, sustainable and healthy production.”
In his opinion, the text is unconstitutional by changing the powers of states and municipalities by bill, instead of by PEC (proposed amendment to the Constitution), and by creating attributions for bodies.
