At the start of February, the Brazilian Government formalized the dismissal of Carlos Ramos Venâncio (General Coordinator of the Department of Plant Health and Agricultural Inputs at the Agriculture Defense Secretariat of the Ministry of Agriculture, MAPA).
Bruno Cavalheiro Breitenbach, who was substitute coordinator, took his place.
Venâncio was in charge of the registration of agrochemicals at MAPA, which is responsible for the registration and authorization of pesticides in the country. In addition to the ministry, the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) and the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) also recently underwent changes to their managements.
In December 2019, the then director of Anvisa, Renato Porto, resigned from his position days before the end of his term, citing personal reasons. Currently, the person responsible for the evaluation of the pesticides is the agency’s current director, Fernando Mendes, who will be in the role until March.
In January, Ibama replaced server Marisa Zerbetto with agronomist and environmental health specialist Juliana Carvalho Rodrigues. At the time, the Ministry of the Environment claimed that it was a decision made by Ibama’s presidency.
According to industry experts, the changes support the policy adopted by the Bolsonaro government to streamline and modernize the registration of agrochemicals in Brazil. “In recent years, several bureaucratic measures have been adopted to make the pesticide registration queue move faster in Brazil. The goal is to approve new less toxic and more environmentally-friendly compounds to replace old products, in addition to releasing generic products. According to the law, no current product can be registered that has greater toxicity than those already on the market,” the ministry explained.
Source: Agropages
Image source: “Brasil” by ruifo is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
