Study Finds Hundreds of EU-Banned Pesticide Ingredients Still Registered in Brazil

12 September 2026, São Paulo: An analysis published September 10, 2026 found that of 429 pesticide active ingredients it reviewed as registered in Brazil, 223 lack authorization anywhere in the European Union, and that those unauthorized substances appear in roughly 1,900 commercial products still legally sold to Brazilian farmers. The analysis, by researchers Sonia Corina Hess and Leonardo Melgarejo and circulated through the Latin American research network UCCSNAL (Unión de Científicos Comprometidos con la Sociedad y la Naturaleza de América Latina), was reported by Blog do Pedlowski, a Brazilian outlet run by Marcos Pedlowski, an associate professor at the Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense, that has tracked Brazil’s pesticide regulatory gap for several years. Global Agriculture was not able to independently locate or verify the full underlying dataset behind the specific figures cited.

Melgarejo is an agricultural engineer with a doctorate in production engineering, affiliated with the Fórum Gaúcho de Combate aos Impactos dos Agrotóxicos, a Rio Grande do Sul based research and advocacy group focused on pesticide impacts. The report names several active ingredients it says are widely used in Brazil despite being unauthorized in the EU, including acephate, chlorothalonil, atrazine, S-metolachlor, glufosinate-ammonium and diquat. Chlorothalonil lost its EU approval in 2019 and mancozeb, another fungicide the report flags, lost EU approval in 2021; both remain registered and in active use in Brazilian agriculture. The report also cites government sales data suggesting rising domestic volumes for some of these products in the years following their EU bans, though this publication could not independently confirm the specific tonnage figures cited.

This is not the first time the gap between EU and Brazilian pesticide standards has surfaced. In an earlier, separately sourced account reported by newspaper O Tempo in May 2026, Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Supply acknowledged that roughly 147 active substances used in the country are banned in the EU, and said the divergence could represent what it called vulnerabilities for Brazilian exports. That figure and the 223 cited in the newer analysis come from different sources using different methodologies and should not be read as the same count measured twice, but both point in the same direction: a persistent and officially recognized regulatory gap between Brazil and its largest agricultural export destination bloc. Neither Brazil’s health regulator ANVISA nor its agriculture ministry MAPA had issued a public response specifically addressing the September analysis as of publication.

Brazil registers pesticides through a three-agency system split between MAPA, ANVISA and the environmental agency IBAMA, each reviewing different aspects of a product before it can be sold, a structure Brazilian regulators have long defended as scientifically rigorous even where its conclusions diverge from the EU’s more precautionary, hazard-based approach to approving active substances. The EU, by contrast, can withdraw an active substance’s approval based on hazard classification alone, without needing to demonstrate real-world exposure risk in the field, which is the main structural reason the two systems reach different conclusions about the same chemicals.

Brazil is the world’s largest soybean exporter and a top global supplier of corn, coffee and orange juice, with the EU among its largest destination markets for several of those commodities. A widening or persistently documented gap between the pesticide standards Brazil applies domestically and the standards its main export customers apply to imports is a recurring source of trade friction, reputational risk and potential future compliance cost for Brazilian agribusiness, particularly as European buyers and regulators pay closer attention to the residue and production standards behind imported commodities. For global agribusiness readers, the story is less about any single banned chemical and more about a structural regulatory divergence that shapes market access, residue testing requirements and reputational exposure for one of the world’s largest food and feed exporters.

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