The European Commission has made competitiveness, innovation and resilience the cornerstone of its Vision for Agriculture and Food. The Vision for Agriculture and Food includes a goal to accelerate the approval and authorisation of biocontrol. The Food and Feed Safety Omnibus now provides an opportunity to turn those ambitions into reality.
If Europe wants farmers to benefit from the next generation of crop protection technologies, it must ensure that these acceleration measures apply to all biocontrol.
Omnibus X discussions ongoing
On 6 July, the European Parliament presented its draft report, followed by the first discussion of a new compromise text in the Council of the European Union on 9 July under the Irish Presidency. Both institutions are considering two separate but related issues: the establishment of a clear legal definition of biocontrol and introducing measures to accelerate the approval and authorisation of biocontrol substances and plant protection products (PPPs).
IBMA has previously highlighted the essential need for a standalone biocontrol definition to provide legal clarity for industry and regulators alike. This remains of paramount importance. The current debate on measures for acceleration, asks which substances and PPPs should be accelerated within the spirit of supporting innovation.
Categories of active substances that could be considered to accelerate innovation?
1. Biocontrol:
Biocontrol encompasses microbial products, semiochemicals and naturally derived substances such as plant extracts, minerals and peptides. These technologies are an integral part of Integrated Pest Management (IPM), equipping farmers with an increasingly diverse and innovative toolbox to manage pests and diseases, combat resistance, strengthen crop resilience and maintain productivity. Within the next decade, biocontrol is expected to become the dominant means of crop protection in Europe. Regulation should enable this toolbox to expand, not restrict the range of solutions available to farmers. Any measure supporting innovation must therefore embrace all biocontrol.
2. Substances with low-risk status:
"Low-risk" is a specific regulatory classification. To qualify, a substance must meet a predefined set of hazard-based criteria established under EU legislation. While some biocontrol technologies meet these criteria, others do not, not because they pose a greater risk, but because the criteria were largely developed with conventional chemical products in mind preventing a conclusive assessment and so preventing these products from qualifying as low-risk. This is illustrated by the fact that while all approved low-risk active substances (September 2025) are biocontrol, only 78 of the approved 180 biocontrol active substances are low-risk.
The current low-risk criteria have been in place since 2017, yet they have fallen short of their intended purpose. Many substances remain excluded, including familiar food ingredients such as garlic. Although garlic has long been used safely in food and its extract is used as a plant protection product, it does not qualify as low risk under the current regulatory criteria.
Results from low risk assessments on several biological everyday substances are unable to demonstrate the absence of an effect. The lack of a clear result in a test, triggers the use of the precautionary principle and the substance consequently does not qualify as low risk.
This illustrates how a framework designed years ago can struggle to accommodate the diversity of modern biocontrol technologies. The central aim of Omnibus X is to accelerate market access for biocontrol products, giving farmers access to a broader range of tools to protect their crops. Restricting these faster approval processes to products that qualify as low-risk would undermine that objective, leaving many effective biocontrol solutions outside the accelerated pathway and unnecessarily limiting farmers' choices.
Where co-legislators are looking to reserve acceleration benefits for the most sustainable substances then applying acceleration measures to low-risk status substances alone is not enough. Applying acceleration of approval and authorisation measures to all biocontrol substances and to low-risk status substances would incentivise innovation of a pest and disease control portfolio, containing all types of modern products fit for a sustainable European agriculture.
Follow the money
Investors look for regulatory systems that provide predictable timelines and a clear route to market. When approvals take significantly longer than in competing regions, innovation inevitably follows investment elsewhere. Europe risks becoming a market that adopts biological innovation years after it has been successfully deployed in countries such as Brazil and the United States.
“A regulatory environment that takes significantly longer than comparable jurisdictions to approve new crop protection technologies materially increases development costs, extends the path to revenue, and reduces the attractiveness of investing in innovation. This will and is leading to more companies closing and stranded assets due to lack of funding attractiveness”, states Stephen Pearce of Natural Ventures, a venture capital fund, that invests in agricultural technology including biocontrol in Europe.
Natural Ventures co-founder Maarten ter Keurst adds “Innovators prioritise other markets to prove efficacy and market traction, giving EU farmers access to more efficient technologies only a decade or more after global competitors.”
While farmers in countries such as Brazil and the United States already benefit from highly effective and cost-competitive biocontrol products, many of these same innovations remain out of reach for European farmers. The companies behind them are ready to bring these solutions to Europe. What is missing is a predictable regulatory framework and approval timelines that reflect Europe's stated ambitions on innovation, competitiveness and agricultural resilience.
The Food and Feed Safety Omnibus represents a rare opportunity to modernise legislation that has not kept pace with scientific progress. By adopting a clear definition of biocontrol and accelerating approval and authorisation procedures for all biocontrol as well as low-risk substances, policymakers can strengthen European competitiveness, support innovation, increase farmer choice and ensure that sustainable agricultural technologies reach the field sooner rather than later.
By Jennifer Lewis, Executive Director of IBMA-Global
