ANSES’s credibility threatened. According to a recent report revealed on Tuesday by the newspaper Le Monde, the expert reports produced by the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (Anses) are the subject of growing dispute which risks damage the credibility of the institution. The authors of the report call on the agency to fundamentally reform its procedures.
The report, published without advertising on March 10 on the agency’s website, was commissioned by the scientific council of ANSES. This council, made up of around thirty scientists who are mostly independent of the agency, appointed a working group from among its members to analyze the situation and formulate recommendations.
At the end of the work, the scientific council, “anxious to limit the risks of questioning the expertise”, formulates four groups of recommendations: improve the procedures, better clarify the decision-making process, intensify the interactions with the parties stakeholders and strengthen the separation of risk assessment and risk management within ANSES.
The expertise of recent years “contested or even violently attacked”
In recent years, “the expert opinions produced by ANSES (and in some cases the experts who contributed to them) have been disputed, even violently attacked, directly or through the media”, note the authors of the report. Their analysis focused on three past case studies: glyphosate, neonicotinoids and SDHI fungicides.
“This situation could, if not managed carefully, threaten the credibility of the agency, in particular for the management of pesticide files and for the scheduled transfer of the evaluation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), another very sensitive file. relating in particular to regulated products”, adds the working group, which says it has identified “three major tensions affecting scientific expertise”.
The first reveals “a gap” between the latest advances in science and the results of the expertise carried out by ANSES. The second refers to the urgency of rendering certain opinions, which “may lead to work being carried out that does not fully comply with the rules (…) of collective expertise”.
Finally, the third tension relates to the very framework of the missions devolved to ANSES, responsible not only for assessing the risks associated with certain products, but also for organizing the management of these risks. Hence “a lack of readability (…) and transparency as to the translation of opinions into management measures”, considers the working group.
