EU Farmers Allege Moroccan Produce Contains Banned Pesticide, Demand Stricter Import Controls

Speaking on the occasion of World Breast Cancer Day, the agricultural organization drew attention to the fact that food safety regulations "are not guaranteed in Europe" due to the "lack of control of imports from third countries" including Morocco. COAG-A has demanded criminal sanctions against offenders of such practices, which it considers an "attack on public health", reports Ok Diario.

The organization criticizes the "hypocrisy" of the EU which led last summer to the entry into Spain of a batch of Moroccan olives with a high content of chlorpyrifos. A situation of which it was informed thanks to the RASFF (Rapid Alert System Feed and Food) alert dated September 5. This batch entered Spanish territory after border control on August 18, the results of which revealed the presence of 0.067 mg/kg-ppm of this pesticide, while the maximum residue limit (MRL) is set at 0.01.

This batch of Moroccan olives from Morocco is "just an example of what is happening with the complicity of the authorities," explains the COAG-A general secretary, denouncing the distribution and consumption of this "contaminated and harmful to health" product. Yet, he recalls, the pesticide chlorpyrifos was banned by the EU on December 6, 2019 due to its "dangerousness".

Studies conducted by the Faculties of Pharmacy and Biochemistry and Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), in collaboration with scientists from the National University of Comahue (Argentina), have revealed that exposure to low doses of chlorpyrifos causes breast cancer, insists Lopez, specifying that following various random checks, 199 health alerts concerning chlorpyrifos have been reported by RASFF. Since 2020, the year in which this pesticide was banned in the EU, 827 alerts have been recorded.