Lula sanctions pesticide bill with 14 vetoes
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has sanctioned the bill on the control, inspection, and supervision of pesticides in Brazil with 14 vetoes.
Under consideration since 1999, the piece of legislation lays down rules for the control, inspection, and supervision of these products, which have the potential to harm human and animal health as well as the environment, but are widely used in agriculture to protect and boost production.
According to the president’s office, the decision to veto the provisions aimed to “guarantee adequate integration between production needs, health protection, and environmental balance.”
Brazil is the largest consumer of pesticides in the world. From 2019 to 2022, 2,181 new registrations were approved—an average of 545 per year. In 2023, the country approved 505 new pesticide registrations.
Vetoes
Among the provisions vetoed was the one removing the environment authority Ibama and the drug watchdog Anvisa from their supervisory roles, transferring these responsibilities to the Ministry of Agriculture. The original text was said to assign the two agencies “a merely complementary role” to that of the ministry, which would end up dealing with these issues exclusively.
Other vetoes followed the same path, as the excerpts rejected represented “the extinction of the current tripartite regulatory model—health, environment, agriculture—for the registration and control of pesticides adopted in Brazil in 1989.”
Criticism
While under discussion in the Senate, the piece came under fire from various organizations, to the point of being dubbed “poison bill” by the research foundation Fiocruz.
At the time, Fiocruz released documents that described some of the bill’s provisions as a step backwards—among them the threat to the historic role of the Ministries of Health and the Environment and their power over registration; the permission for Brazil to export unregistered pesticides whose use is banned in the country; and risk standards that could make room for carcinogenic substances.
Following the presidential veto, the Permanent Campaign Against Pesticides and for Life—a network of NGOs that denounce the effects of pesticides and agribusiness—released a note classifying the vetoes as “an important act,” warning, however, that the move is still “insufficient to solve the countless problems caused by the new law.”
The organizations further pointed out that the new regulatory framework for pesticides faced strong opposition from various sectors of society, among them the National Cancer Institute (INCA), the National Human Rights Council (CNDH), and Ibama, as well as Anvisa, the Labor Prosecution Service, the Federal Prosecution Service, the Brazilian Association of Collective Health (Abrasco), the Brazilian Association of Agroecology (ABA), and the UN.
