France's pesticide victims are watching Brussels closely. As one of Europe's biggest agricultural producers, France is also one of its largest consumers of pesticides, and French farmers sprayed products for decades that they were told were harmless - many have since developed cancers and other diseases from exposure. Now the EU is preparing to vote on a package that would end regular safety reviews of most pesticides, and the people whose health paid the price of the old system are speaking out.

Farmers who were told the products were harmless

For most of his life, José Nadan worked as a professional beekeeper in Morbihan, a coastal area of Brittany. His work grew harder in the 1980s, when the varroa mite reached France - a parasite that weakens bees by suppressing their immune system and spreading viruses that can collapse colonies. Nadan also kept an orchard of cider apple trees, treated with a pesticide he was told was organic and harmless.

He later learned it was a product like Roundup and contained glyphosate, now known to be harmful to human health. Six years ago he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and France's agricultural social security system officially recognised it as an occupational hazard caused by pesticides.

Nadan now helps other agricultural workers as a member of a collective supporting pesticide victims, and recently attended the funeral of a crop technician who developed rapidly progressing Parkinson's and died before his illness could be officially recognised as pesticide-caused.

Edmond Leduc, a retired doctor living near the Belgian border in northern France, has lived next to crop fields treated with pesticides for 44 years. He was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2018 and with prostate cancer in August of this year, two conditions linked to pesticides.

Denis Benoit, a 65-year-old former farmer from western France who applied pesticides including D6, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2019. He said he regretted working with those substances, but jobs were scarce at the time and they were told the products were only toxic in large doses.

What Omnibus X would change

The European Commission has proposed a legislative package called Omnibus X that would amend ten existing EU laws covering pesticides, biocides, food residues, animal feed and official controls. A key amendment aims to scrap the periodic re-evaluation of pesticides. The EU says the move would involve 'no compromise on food safety or environmental protection', but critics of the package disagree.

The package also touches other parts of the current regime:

• •Unlike the US risk-based model based on exposure levels, the EU uses a hazard-based model, focusing on a chemical's inherent toxicological properties before approval.
• •Under the current system a pesticide's approval expires on a set date; without that, products would stay on the market by default, and the burden would fall on regulators such as the EFSA or member states.
• •The package would increase the maximum grace period for farmers to substitute banned pesticides from 18 months to three years, and loosen conditions for exceptional use of banned pesticides including endocrine disruptors.

The chlorpyrifos precedent

The current review system has already caught one widely used chemical. The insecticide chlorpyrifos was approved for EU use in 2006 and became one of Europe's most commonly used pesticides, with residues found in fruit, vegetables, dairy products and drinking water.

In 2019 the European Food Safety Authority reviewed the evidence and decided that no safe exposure level could be set and that the chemical did not meet EU health requirements. Even in small doses chlorpyrifos affects the neurological, reproductive, metabolic and immune systems, and it has been linked to neurodevelopmental disorders in children, including autism. The regulatory process spanned over seven years; once the ruling passed in January 2020, Member States had three months to dispose of products containing it.

Scientists and campaigners push back

Ecotoxicologist Martina Vijver argues that new scientific findings must be taken into account regularly, because consequences cannot all be foreseen.

And if reassessments are scrapped, she asks who would raise the alarm: "But who triggers the process? Doctors? Scientists? Or the guy who walks his dog and sees all the birds have died?"

On September 17, Vijver wrote an open letter urging the European Parliament to pause the vote until an independent investigation into health and environmental impacts, gathering 573 other signatories. "I've never done something like this before," she admits, explaining that as scientists they are really worried.

Opposition is not limited to researchers. Last weekend 8,000 demonstrators marched outside a factory in northern France owned by Syngenta, the world's largest pesticide seller.

Among them was Fleur Breteau, founder of the Cancer Colère collective, who led last year's nationwide movement to block the reintroduction of the pesticide acetamiprid. Acetamiprid reintroduction was banned last summer, but France passed an agricultural law in August this year that would partially reverse the decision. Breteau carried a placard reading 'Morgan, dead age 36, breast cancer', and told French daily Le Monde on October 3 that Morgan, her partner on agricultural issues, died in June.

The NGO Générations Futures organised a weekend of protests and canvassing across France about the EU package; campaign manager Andy Battentier said the aim is to inform people about the Omnibus, spark debate and get people talking. He also warned that a third of the European Parliament is made up of right-wing and far-right MEPs who favour scrapping standards.

The NGO's first-ever 'presidential debate' on pesticides takes place in Cambrai, northern France, this Saturday, with leftist representatives of presidential candidates for the 2027 election saying they will attend.

The vote on Omnibus X is expected to take place at the end of October.