Information about our

Crop Protection Safety Standards

Various vegetables are arranged on a table.

Bayer’s safety standards are the evaluation criteria we apply to ensure that our crop protection products can be used without risks to human health or unacceptable risks to the environment when following label instructions. Our internal crop protection safety standards reflect the guidelines and standards of international organizations like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), as well as those of regulatory authorities around the world, to ensure a globally consistent baseline for product safety. These safety standards continuously evolve based on the latest scientific knowledge.

By applying globally consistent safety standards, we ensure that our crop protection products can be used safely in different geographies.

We believe that transparency on crop protection safety standards will help foster an informed and open dialogue on the safety of pesticides. With these standards, we hope to contribute to the necessary science and risk-based regulatory systems that provide farmers with the safe products they rely on to fulfill the many social, environmental and economic sustainability needs of society.

To define our safety standards, we follow a three-pillared, risk-based approach using data and modelling:

Data collection – to determine the hazard of the product, safety thresholds as well as operator, consumer and environmental exposure scenarios
Risk assessment – to evaluate the exposure by considering local agronomic standards and use scenarios and compare the exposure estimate to the safety thresholds
Risk management – defining measures that enable safe use of the product in practice

Beyond this, we continue to drive efforts on the safe and sustainable use of pesticides by increasing our support and training for farmers to support compliance with label requirements and best management practices. Further information is available on our Product Stewardship web site which includes our Product Stewardship Policy for Crop Protection Products and Seeds.