Northern Zone Steering Committee – An Update
Northern Zone Steering Committee – An Update
At the 2021 Dublin Plant Protection Symposium, Mariann Leps, advisor at the Agriculture and Food Board in Estonia, presented an “Update from the Northern Zone”. The Northern Zone (NZ) steering committee (NZSC) is chaired for one year on a rotating basis. The chair in 2021 has been Estonia, and Sweden will be chairing the committee in 2022.
Mariann remarked on the importance of submitting a complete dossier to the assigned zRMS, since sections like co-formulant information, appropriate bee studies, soil organism studies, and others are often found to be missing. She also gave some additional pointers and reminders on dossier submission in the NZ, such as the need for national requirements to be met, all FOCUS scenarios relevant to the NZ to be submitted and only data relevant to the NZ to be submitted. Mariann also offered advice for Article 43 applications (product renewals) in the NZ.
The presentation continued with some topics that were discussed in the last NZSC meeting: the Interim Bee Approach, under which acute studies and risk assessments (RA) for honeybees, larvae and bumblebees are now required; the list of co-formulants not accepted for inclusion in PPP (application of Regulation 2021/283); confidentiality decisions according to the new wording of Article 63, and the need for a project to test the PERSAM model for predicting soil environmental concentrations.
Mariann ended her discussion by talking about the annual update of the NZ guidance document to be used in the context of zonal evaluations. The latest version (v.10) applies from November 2021 onwards. It contains changes in zonal evaluation, mutual recognition, withdrawal of authorizations and some changes in the requirements for toxicology, environmental fate and ecotoxicology data.
Kerona Scientific can assist with applications to the Northern Zone. Contact our expert team at info@kerona.ie
If you would like a copy of the presentation, you can purchase the slides from the PPP Symposium here: https://kerona.es/product/dublin-plant-protection-symposium-2021-speakers-presentations/