Why Europe needs to rethink its pesticide classifications [Promoted content]

Growers in Europe are facing trying times. Climate change and increased pesticide resistance mean native pests are having a greater impact than ever before, while new populations of invasive pests are finding their way into fields.

Juan Estupinan is the CEO and President of Vestron.

To add to the challenge, increasing insect resistance to existing products, bans on products that have been deemed unsafe – whether for humans or the environment – and ambitions to reduce pesticide use, mean farmers don’t just have fewer crop protection products to work with; they need to use less of them, too.

While most European farmers would agree on the importance of reducing agriculture’s environmental impacts, the reality is they need to do this whilst boosting crop production to meet growing food demands. Achieving this depends on growers having access to more pest control options, and urgently.

This is the time novel peptide-based products that have effectiveness against pests and low environmental impacts need to get into growers’ hands, helping to shape a more sustainable future in Europe’s fields and greenhouses.

Peptides making a mark

The need for sustainability and efficacy in pest control drives our research at Vestaron. We produce biopesticides based on cystine-rich peptides, modified from the venom of spiders and other venomous animals that have evolved to kill insects.

The origins are novel, but the reality is practical, as these short amino acid chains can replace traditional chemical insecticides on a one-for-one basis. Replicated field trials have demonstrated that the products deliver comparable or better levels of effectiveness against targeted pests while having negligible impact on natural enemies and pollinators.

In the United States, our first commercially available insecticide, SPEAR®, was approved      through the Emerging Technology branch of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2018 and has now been used on nearly three-quarters of a million acres of crops. In March 2024, we received approval of a second bioinsectide, BASIN™, in the US and Mexico, with more products in the pipeline. This is a pace of commercializing innovations that’s never been seen before, in any class of molecules used in pest control.

To get SPEAR approved in Europe, however, the situation is more complicated.

As it stands, there is no legal definition of biopesticides within EU legislation. In recent years, the Commission and Member State regulatory authorities have considered ways to shorten approval timelines for certain pesticides based on microorganisms, plant extracts, and other nature-derived products.

In contrast, more recent innovations such as peptide products, also derived from nature, are only starting to gain the attention of stakeholders. EU regulators and policy makers need to ensure their actions in support of biopesticides remain open to peptide-based products and to other future innovations.

Currently, despite peptide-based products being considered to be low-risk by other scientific and regulatory groups around the world, and with efficacy equivalent to traditional synthetic chemical pesticides, it is not yet clear if they will be afforded the same preferential treatment as other biologicals in the EU.

While the original intentions of this policy are good, the results are somewhat limited in practice. If you do not fall within the very limited definition of a biological control, you are by default, a chemical pesticide – the very category of products that the EU is seeking to limit. As such, peptide products remain in limbo, having all the qualities and characteristics of a low-risk biological control agent, but not yet clearly categorised as such.

Speeding up approvals for nature-based solutions

Biocontrols can offer a variety of beneficial pest control options to augment or even replace chemical pesticides. Growers need more of these tools in their toolbox than just the traditional microbials and plant extracts that are covered by that initial narrow approach.

To help farmers in Europe, we need to see a restructuring of the categories defining pest control products, as well as a new process to speed up authorisations for nature-based solutions. This requires putting synthetic crop protection products to one side and considering biological products on their own terms.

In the United States, Vestaron’s products are handled differently because the science behind them is novel and unique. They have the option for an expedited path to approval alongside traditional biologicals, while still being held to rigorous health and environmental standards like synthetic pesticides.

A crucial part of a more streamlined regulatory system in the US has been getting people with relevant scientific experience of biological agents involved in the approval process of new crop protection products. Regulatory risk assessment for biologicals requires a different set of studies than typical toxicology testing, necessitating a specific technical capacity.  Europe needs to catch up in that respect.

Change is coming — if slowly

The fact that regulatory approaches were changed to accommodate a limited subset of biological products indicates that the EU is willing to engage on this issue, and work towards much-needed changes for biological product classification and approvals. Indeed, in March the European Commission presented ideas to simplify the regulatory framework around biotechnology in the EU, streamlining approval processes and enabling products to get to market more quickly. Applying these objectives to biologicals and other nature-based pesticides could be hugely beneficial to Europe’s farmers.

We know there is a strong need, as well as a strong desire, to get new biopesticides to European growers.  To help accomplish this in the current environment, Vestaron’s strategy is twofold: engage with policymakers in Europe to find a way to test and grant permanent approval for the use of peptide-based biopesticides, while supporting EU growers who seek to secure emergency use authorisation for our products in situations where the existing options aren’t working.

Right now, that means supporting Mediterranean tomato growers in their fight to control the tomato leafminer (Tuta absoluta) with our product SPEAR® LEP, while working towards similar emergency use authorizations against other problem species. Ultimately, though, Europe’s farmers need permanent solutions, and we’re hoping that peptides can be the catalyst to open the door for them to receive access to other technological innovations more easily and quickly than they do now. Many of the continent’s fruit and vegetable producers tell us that they can’t wait much longer.