José Nadan, a 69-year-old professional beekeeper in Morbihan, Brittany, sprayed pesticides on his orchard of cider apple trees after being told the product was organic and safe to handle.
Sales representatives told him it was “so safe you could drink it”.
Nadan later discovered that the product was like Roundup and contained glyphosate. Six years ago, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. France’s agricultural social security system has officially recognised the cancer as an occupational hazard caused by pesticides.
His case sits within a longer history for French farmers. For decades, they sprayed pesticides they had been told were harmless, and many have since fallen ill with cancers and other diseases caused by pesticide exposure.
The EU is preparing to vote on a package that would end regular safety reviews for most pesticides. The present system gives authorisation a limited period of validity and requires manufacturers to prove a product’s safety again for renewal, with reviews every 10 to 15 years.
One of the central changes in the Omnibus X package would abolish those periodic reassessments. Pesticides would remain on the market by default, while regulators or EU member states would need to start a procedure to restrict or ban them.
France and the EU expect a vote on Omnibus X at the end of October.
Victims, doctors and scientists say the change could keep harmful products available for longer. They warn that removing regular reviews could make it harder to take dangerous pesticides off the market when new evidence of harm appears.
Martina Weyver, an ecotoxicologist, has called the reviews a “safety net” needed to account for new scientific data.
Weyver initiated an open letter asking for the vote to be postponed until an independent assessment examines the reform’s possible effects on human health and the environment. It has been signed by 573 specialists in ecology, medicine and public health.
The purpose of a regular review is to ensure that unforeseen problems do not emerge from use of these products.
In June 2026, Florence, Franck and Isabelle travelled to Brussels because their children have suffered serious harm from pesticides.
Isabelle’s daughter has been fighting leukaemia for the last seven years.
In 2024, almost one in 20 children in the EU were exposed to dangerous levels of pesticides, a figure of 380,000 kids.
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