Safe Food Matters and friends have won in the glyphosate product renewal case. The Federal Court ruled on February 18, 2025 that the December 2022 renewal of Mad Dog Plus, which is mainly used in forestry and agriculture, was not reasonable because Health Canada’s decision-making was not adequate.
Ecojustice, for the applicants Safe Food Matters, Friends of the Earth Canada, David Suzuki Foundation and Environmental Defence, argued on January 22 that the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) was just rubber-stamping renewals of pesticide products without looking at new science.
Justice Zinn held that renewals, which occur every five years, are more than rubber stamps. They are distinct checkpoints at which the PMRA should look to see if any emerging risk issues require review:
“[Renewals are] streamlined yet still substantive “pulse checks” that use newly available information to reassess the risk level of registered products up for renewal.”
He found that deference to PMRA’s attitude of “trust us, we got it right” is not warranted. Unsubstantiated assurances communicated through standardized language are not enough.
“Where administrative expertise is not demonstrated, deference is not warranted”.
The Court sent the matter back to PMRA to provide scientific justification for the renewal within six months, in the face of new science that contends the risks from glyphosate are not acceptable. The new science was set out in an October 27, 2022 Letter to PMRA sent from the applicants and others.
The judgement can be found here.
Thank you to Ecojustice, our co-applicants, and all who have supported our work.
Please support our work through a donation through Canada Helps or direct e-transfer to SafeFoodMatters@gmail.com, and qualify until February 28, 2025 for a Canadian tax credit for the 2024 tax year. Thanks!
Onward to Safe Food Matters’ main glyphosate registration case, still to be heard. We sued there over the notice of objection to the main 2017 registration decision for glyphosate, and are asking for a review panel of the registration decision.
We have gone all the way to the Federal Court of Appeal and back on this case. See the Background and Filings on the “Merry Go Round” case T-2292-22. (Because it has not followed the FCA’s Guidance, the PMRA has put us on a “merry-go round of judicial reviews and subsequent reconsiderations”, as per the warning of the Supreme Court of Canada in Vavilov).
