2012, June: Workshop on Environmental Risk Assessment

A workshop was held at Debre Zeit in Ethiopia at 7 June 2012 in order to develop a scientific evaluation system for environmental risks to be used at the registration stage in Ethiopia. It was attended by representatives of the Animal and Plant Health Regulatory Directorate (APHRD), the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Dutch expert on environmental risk assessment.

The selected environmental protection goals of November 2011 were reviewed. National applicable registration criteria and risk classification criteria were discussed. Moreover, during the days before and after the workshop at the APHRD office a start was made to draft the APHRD manual on evaluation of chemical pesticide dossiers. Furthermore it was discussed how the outputs of the workshop can be formalized in regulations and guidance.

The main results of the workshop were:

• Protection goals and their prioritisation as defined in the workshop of November 2011 were agreed by the attendants of the workshop.
• The concept to base the risk assessment of the different protection goals on the registration criteria (safety factors) of the EU and to classify the risk (low risk, possible risk and high risk) was agreed.
• The proposals for registration criteria and risk classification criteria for the different protection goals were agreed.
• An agreement was made to add some toxicity data on ecotoxicology on top of the existing data requirements.