In the agribusiness frenzy, the Bolsonaro government approves 3 pesticides every 2 days.

Nadine Nascimento, Brazil of Fact - In the first two months of Bolsonaro's government, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (Mapa) authorized 86 new products made with pesticides, an average of 1,6 per day.

All the ingredients in the new products were already being sold in Brazil. The novelty is that they are now authorized for use in new crops, for manufacture by new companies, or for combination with other chemicals. With this, Brazil now has 2.152 products made with pesticides in circulation.

Among them is glyphosate, already banned in France for its carcinogenic potential. Monsanto, the product's manufacturer and now owned by Bayer, was ordered in the US to pay $39 million to DeWayne Johnson, a gardener diagnosed with cancer after using the substance at the school where he worked. The latest approvals were published in the February 21st edition of the Official Gazette of the Union. There are 29 products, of which 13 were classified as extremely toxic – the highest possible level of toxicity.

From 2010 to 2016, the number of releases was always below 20 per year. In the last two years, the number rose to 47 (2017) and 60 (2018), a record broken in just 60 days, with 86 new releases.

"Metaphorically, we are opening the gates of hell. In scientific terms, it represents a greater vulnerability of human and environmental health in Brazil, due to this stratospheric increase in the authorization of new products," comments Larissa Mies Bombardi, geographer, professor at USP and author of the Geographic Atlas of Pesticide Use in Brazil and Connections with the European Union.

Among the pesticides with new registrations approved this week is Mancozeb, used in crops such as rice, bananas, beans, corn, and tomatoes. Also included is Pyriproxyfen, indicated for coffee, watermelon, soybeans, and melons. Both are in class I, meaning they are considered extremely toxic and their use is indicated for products that are part of the diet of all Brazilians.

According to the Permanent Campaign Against Pesticides and For Life, in a statement published on its website, "the approval of the 86 pesticides is a concrete fact that immediately repays all the support given by agribusiness [to Jair Bolsonaro] during the elections."

Contacted for comment, the Ministry of Agriculture stated in a note that the products were "analyzed and registered, including the issuance of a registration certificate, back in 2018." It also acknowledges that "in recent years, measures to reduce bureaucracy have been adopted within the three federal agencies involved (Mapa, Ibama, and Anvisa), which have enabled a significant increase in the number of registered pesticides and related products."

Pacote do Veneno
The record number of registrations occurred even before the approval of Bill 6299/2002, known as the "Poison Package," which aims to deregulate the release of pesticides in the country. Approved in 2018 by a special committee led by the current Minister of Agriculture, Tereza Cristina, the bill awaits a vote in plenary session.

The bill stipulates, for example, that analyses for new products and authorization of registrations will be the sole responsibility of MAPA (Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply), which currently shares this function with Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) and Ibama (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources). It would also create temporary registration and authorization for products already registered in other countries. Furthermore, products with "acceptable risk" would be permitted, and only products with "unacceptable risk" could be banned.

"The 'Poison Bill' is a major setback to our 1989 Pesticides Law, which certainly deserves to be modernized. But modernization should come in the sense of, for example, prohibiting pesticides that are banned in other countries, prohibiting aerial spraying, which has been banned in the European Union since 2009, and eliminating tax incentives for pesticides," Bombardi argues.

For the Permanent Campaign Against Pesticides and For Life, "pesticides in Brazil already represent a serious public health problem, and the introduction of more products into the market will further aggravate the dangers to which the population is subjected (...) the only beneficiaries of the releases are the companies holding the registrations, such as Monsanto, Cropchem, Syngenta and Sumitomo, and the politicians elected in the name of agribusiness interests. The health of the Brazilian population is, as always, relegated to second place."