Public consultation on the draft Guidance on the Risk Assessment of Plant Protection Products on bees (Apis mellifera, Bombus spp. and solitary bees)

In line with the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) policy on openness and transparency and in order for EFSA to receive comments from the scientific community and stakeholders, the agency has launched a second round of public consultation on the draft Guidance on the Risk Assessment of Plant Protection Products on Bees (including Apis mellifera, Bombus spp. and solitary bees). The Guidance Document is intended to provide guidance to applicants and authorities in the context of the review of Plant Protection Products (PPPs) and their active substances under Regulation (EC) 1107/2009. A first round of public consultation was launched in September to October 2012. The chapters that were already out for public consultation are now under revision taking into consideration the comments received and are thus not the objective of this consultation. In the meantime an approach to address guttation exposure was developed. In parallel the working group updating the aquatic Guidance Document has developed a method on how to integrate the assessment of metabolites. This enabled the working group for the bee risk assessment to make recommendations for harmonised assessment of metabolites also in the risk assessment for bees. In addition the chapter on uncertainty analysis was finalised. In order to give stakeholders the opportunity to comment on these new approaches, a second round of public consultation is launched. The chapters for public consultation are the following: Risk assessment for exposure to water, including guttation, surface water and water in puddles Risk assessment scheme for metabolites Uncertainty analysis Related appendices Interested parties are invited to submit written comments by 18 March 2013. EFSA will assess all comments from interested parties, which are submitted in line with the set criteria. The comments will be further considered by the relevant EFSA Working Group and taken into consideration if found to be relevant. Only comments on the new chapters will be considered in the second round of public consultation. All comments submitted will be published. Comments submitted by individuals in a personal capacity will be presented anonymously. Comments submitted formally on behalf of an organisation will appear with the name of the organisation.