The Environmental Protection Authority’s position on the herbicide glyphosate and glyphosate-containing substances was set out in a press statement yesterday, coinciding with a legal challenge in the High Court from the Environmental Law Initiative.
The judicial review hearing – which was expected to last two days – was to consider the EPA’s 2024 refusal to reassess glyphosate and glyphosate-based substances.
Today the EPA has announced it is seeking feedback on an application to import or manufacture Tower, a new herbicide used to control certain broadleaf and grass weeds in wheat and barley crops.
Adama New Zealand Limited has applied to introduce the new herbicide, which contains the active ingredients:
- chlorotoluron at 250 g/L
- pendimethalin at 300 g/L
- diflufenican at 40 g/L.
Chlorotoluron is a new active ingredient to Aotearoa New Zealand. It has been approved in Europe. Pendimethalin and diflufenican have previously been assessed and substances containing these active ingredients are already approved for use in New Zealand.
Adama says the product offers a new mode of action and should reduce the risk of resistance developing when used as part of an integrated weed management programme.
Almost 100,000 hectares of New Zealand land is used for wheat and barley production. Annual crop sales total around $300 million for both crops combined.
The EPA has carried out a human health and environmental risk assessment and is now inviting submissions on this application.
If approved, Tower could only be used by professionals in commercial settings using ground-based application. It would be applied after sowing and before wheat and barley plants emerge.
Dr Lauren Fleury, EPA Hazardous Substances Applications Manager, says the EPA is making strong progress to boost efficiency in assessing applications, with eight applications for new active ingredients currently in progress.
“We understand the importance of timely access to new products. Since 1 July 2024, we have reduced the queue of hazardous substance release applications by 21 percent, and we are on track to complete the highest number of decisions in five years.”
Submissions close on 30 July 2025.
Find out more about Tower and have your say
In the media statement it released yesterday, the EPA said that in September 2023 the Environmental Law Initiative requested it decide whether there were grounds to reassess the herbicide glyphosate and glyphosate-containing substances.
ELI’s request was on the basis there was significant new information about the negative effects of the substance.
A decision-making committee of the EPA considered ELI’s request and the information provided. In July 2024 the EPA determined that there was no significant new information about glyphosate and declined to find grounds to reassess the substance. The EPA’s decision is in line with the findings of comparable regulators internationally.
In October 2024, ELI filed a claim in judicial review in the High Court challenging the EPA’s decision on five different grounds. The EPA is defending all five grounds as it does not consider that there is substantial new information on glyphosate or that it erred in law in its decision.
“The EPA considers the current controls applying to glyphosate appropriately mitigate risks with its use. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the weed killer Round Up and is one of the most widely used herbicides in Aotearoa New Zealand and the world,” said Dr Chris Hill, General Manager Hazardous Substances and New Organisms. “The EPA welcomes judicial scrutiny of its process and decisions.”
Glyphosate rules and regulation | EPA
EPA finds no grounds to reassess glyphosate | EPA
In a report by RNZ, Environmental Law Initiative senior legal advisor Tess Upperton said the EPA had reviewed some aspects over the years, such as looking at carcinogenicity of glyphosate in 2015, but there had never been a full risk assessment, which is the usual protocol when a new product is first approved for use.
“That’s largely because it was first approved in the 1970s. We have asked the EPA for a record of that original risk assessment. They don’t have a copy of that. They don’t know what it is.”
Since then, RoundUp and the more than 90 other glyphosate based formulas sold in New Zealand had been “grandfathered through successive regimes,” she said, even though some of the glyphosate-based formulas have been found to have additional ingredients that amplify glyphosates toxicity.
ELI was not calling for an immediate ban on glyphosate, and any possible controls coming out of a reassessment would be up to the EPA and based on scientific conclusions, Upperton said.
New Zealand is one of the most permissive regulators of glyphosate globally, including allowing glyphosate use in settings where it’s banned elsewhere – such as a pre-harvest desiccant on crops, a practice prohibited in the European Union, she said.
Several European countries have banned the domestic sale of glyphosate, restricting its use to regulated agricultural and commercial settings, while in the United States, the manufacturer of the leading glyphosate-based herbicide, Bayer, pulled RoundUp from the residential market itself in an effort to pre-empt further litigation, which has seen the company pay billions of dollars to settle cases over potential links to cancer, with another 67,000 cases pending.
Last year, the European Union approved glyphosate use for another decade after member states deadlocked for a second time on the issue, but a number of European countries, including France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Germany have partial bans in place. Multiple challenges to the decision are before the European Court of Justice.
The human health impacts of glyphosate are disputed. In 2015, the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer found glyphosate was a probable carcinogen and found strong evidence for genotoxicity, or the ability to damage DNA.
Sources: Environmental Protection Authority and RNZ
