02/28/2023
Export bans – a rebound for Swiss farmers too
Dear Readers,
Novartis backs production in Switzerland. Two state-of-the-art RNA production lines were recently opened in Schweizerhalle near Basel. They produce medication for cardiovascular diseases. Federal Councilor Guy Parmelin attended the opening and even the newspaper ‘Blick’ reported on it. The event attracted attention as the production is not based on biotechnology but rather on traditional chemistry. “Synthesis in sparkling silver drums” was how the newspaper Tages-Anzeiger described it. The production is highly complex. While simple chemical molecules take just ten steps to produce, this chemical process takes more than 170 (!) steps. Factory manager Michael Wessels explains: “This active agent is at the limit of what we can actually produce using chemical methods.” Leqvio, a drug offering preventative treatment for cardiovascular diseases, is set to become a massive hit. One more synthetic product from the chemistry laboratory that will save lives.
Synthetic products from the laboratory do not just have a big future in medicine. Innovations based on synthetic chemistry are also opening up big opportunities in the pesticide sector. Broadly speaking, synthetic pesticides could be much more sustainable than natural products. Synthetics also open up future opportunities in terms of the scarcity of resources. Both in medicine and in pesticides, synthetic chemistry is not something to sneer at, there are plenty of upshots to it. Or, to put it another way: it is time to say goodbye to simple ways of thinking. Of course we need chemistry, now and in the future.
It is also remarkable that, despite the uncompromising strength of the Swiss Franc and the uncertain prospects in the energy market, there is investment in production in Switzerland. “Schweizerhalle is strategically important for the production of complex agents,” explained Steffen Lang, Head of Global Production at Novartis, at the factory opening. Novartis is only doing this because the company can export from Switzerland. The same applies to the whole industry. 98 percent of life sciences products are exported. This means this rapid growth sector of the economy is an important cornerstone for Swiss wealth. It generates tax revenue and also contributes to supply reliability for the Swiss population. We now know how important system-relevant industries and essential goods are in times of crisis. It is very simple: companies produce here because they can export. The Swiss market alone would be much too small.
Export bans would scupper these success stories. After all, without exports, there would be no production in Switzerland. You can imagine what would happen if, a couple of years after the market launch in Switzerland, Novartis had to reckon on no longer being able to export the drug Leqvio as it had been decided to withdraw the active agent in Switzerland because an even better drug had been registered: the company would not only consider approval in Switzerland very carefully, it would also think hard about investing in an expensive production plant which is designed with longevity in mind. Long-term research and development investments can only be justified economically in an environment with legal stability, global non-discriminatory market access and strong, enforceable protection of intellectual property rights.
NGOs are calling for export bans if a pesticide is no longer approved in Switzerland. That is nonsensical. The reasons for non-approval or expiry of approval can be very varied. The requirements for pesticides are multifactorial in this country, and equally varied in the target markets. Anyone choosing Switzerland as the sole standard is misjudging the different climatic and agronomic conditions of global agriculture and underestimating the robustness of foreign product approval processes. They are also misjudging the fact that it is perceived as arrogant by the importing countries that the small agrarian country of Switzerland with a self-sufficiency level of nearly 50 percent wants to prescribe to more important agricultural countries which products they can or cannot use.
When farming circles in Switzerland support the demands for export bans, it is supposedly in their own interests since foreign farmers would otherwise be allowed to used products which were no longer available to their Swiss counterparts. But the results can also be negative for the farmers themselves. As the example with Novartis shows, the Swiss market alone is much too small for science-based exporting companies. If the withdrawal of products from the Swiss market could lead to export bans, Swiss approval would become a risk for these companies and they would think twice about seeking approval in Switzerland in the first place. This means export bans will rebound on Swiss farmers. If they support export bans, they will have to be concerned about missing out on innovative new pesticides.
Added to this is the fact that the approval processes in Switzerland are not all that reliable. In fact, the dilution of the range of active ingredients is already a problem for Swiss agriculture, even without export bans. This was a recent headline in the newspaper ‘Schweizer Bauer’: “The cuts will have consequences”. While many previous active ingredients are no longer available, farmers do not have access to new agents for pesticides. According to the report, the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO) is no more efficient than the Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG), which was previously responsible for approval. The approval process has been stagnating for years. Bayer alone has six active ingredients, over 25 products and countless expansion requests pending. Half of them are more than three years old. The oldest of these applications was submitted eleven years ago in January 2012. Applications from Syngenta and BASF are also affected. Both companies have four new active ingredients and numerous products and expansion requests in the congested approval pipeline. The French farmers’ protests demonstrate how important access to pesticides is for agriculture. They need to be able to protect their crops.
‘Schweizer Bauer’ outlines the consequences of constantly removing active ingredients from the market. swiss-food has reported on it too. Focusing on individual agents to combat weeds, pests and fungi is fatal. Resistance can no longer be prevented. One example of the approval backlog is the crop fungicide Asca Xpro from Bayer, which has been stuck in the approval process since January 2015. Switzerland is virtually the only country which has not yet approved the product. According to Bayer, it has additional benefits in terms of effectiveness, range and safety. It is said to increase yield and prevent resistances.
‘Schweizer Bauer’ quotes fruit farmer Ernst Lüthi from Basel Country, who sums up the situation as follows: a farmer who does not submit forms in time loses direct payments or faces other sanctions. The same does not apply to the government. When handling applications for new active ingredients, new products and approval extensions, it does not communicate timescales and sometimes takes several years to reach a decision. The process must be accelerated. It is also important that the Swiss Parliament keeps a close rein on the association's right of appeal in approval processes. This topic is on the agenda for the upcoming spring session.
Farmers, like researching and exporting industries, need reliable framework conditions. This view is shared by Rudolf Minsch, chief economist at economiesuisse: “Innovations do not fall from the sky. Simple approval processes and open access to global experts are important prerequisites for strengthening innovation.” And the innovations keep on coming. Even though the bureaucratic and legal obstacles are still high. A current bone of contention is a hot pepper with a specific genetic characteristic that gives the plant resistance to whitefly. This resistance results in a reduced consumption of pesticides. Syngenta was granted the patent in 2013. The new resistant plant was the result of some ten years of intensive research and development. After an extensive search, Syngenta researchers selected a wild pepper variety which demonstrated resistance to whitefly. Modern technologies were used to identify the genetic characteristic which gives the plant its resistance. This was then localized and introduced to an existing pepper variety.
Accelerated innovation is even more important given the massive challenges faced by agriculture. A research consortium from industry and public research in England has published a database of the genomes of the most common pest insects in Great Britain. The open source database should help in the development of targeted, environmentally-friendly pesticides. As the portal ‘AgroPages’ writes, the database contains the genomes of 19 insect species, including wireworm, cabbage stem weevil and pollen beetle. All the pests in question have a reputation for attacking vital crop plants all over the world, including oilseed, vegetables, grain, fruit, beans, sugar and cotton. By publishing the data, researchers hope to accelerate the development of new pesticides. We hope that, one day, efficient approval processes will allow them to actually benefit the agriculture sector!
The swiss-food editorial team
