Adding to the wealth of current studies, the EU Commission has announced that it will launch a new study on Risk Mitigation Measures (RMM) for anticoagulant rodenticides.
The project will be carried out by a consortium consisting of VETAGRO SUP (Marcy l”Etoile, France, as lead contractor with Pr Philippe Berny as principal investigator), the University of Reading, UK (sub-contractor 1 under the supervision of Dr Colin Prescott) and the German Federal Vertebrate Research Centre – Julius Ká¼hn Institute (Má¼nster, Germany as sub-contractor 2 with Dr Jens Jacob and Dr Alexandra Esther as principal researchers).
These teams include the three most prominent European academic researchers in the field of anticoagulant expertise, both with respect to resistance detection, monitoring and management as well as non-target poisoning.
The objectives of the project are:
- to provide an updated status concerning the use of anticoagulant rodenticides in the EU and beyond;
- to clearly identify the number of products authorised by Member States for the different active substances;
- to compile a list of all existing RMMs applied by Member States when authorising anticoagulant rodenticides as provided for in the Annex I inclusions of these active substances;
- to critically review the effectiveness and impacts of these different RMMs;
- to discuss other RMMs than those applied by Member States that could be of benefit for the safer and efficacious use of anticoagulants rodenticides. The contractors will use available data from Competent Authorities in the EU as listed by the European Commission, as well as the US Environmental Protection Agency and Health Canada among others;
- to identify and propose the most suitable RMMs for these rodenticide products to be considered at the renewal of product authorisations.
The timetable announced by the EU Commission is May 2013 for the initial report, a compilation document in September 2013, a discussion document for December 2013 with the final report due in June 2014.
As a stakeholder in this project through its membership of the EU Commission’s Product Authorisation and Mutual Recognition Facilitation Group (PA&MRFG), the Confederation of European Pest Management Associations (CEPA) has designated a working group comprising of Bertrand Montmoreau, Alain van Lidth de Jeude, Daniel Lucien, Serge Simon and Richard Moseley in order to closely follow this project and formulate opinions and recommendations as needed.