France Reauthorizes Banned Herbicide Triallate for 120 Days in Winter Barley, Triggering Legal Challenge
30 September 2026, Paris: France’s agriculture ministry has granted cereal farmers a 120-day emergency exemption to use the herbicide triallate, sold under the brand Avadex Factor, even though the substance has been banned in the country since 2023 over water contamination concerns. The exemption took effect around September 23, 2026 and runs through January 21, 2027, covering weed control in winter barley. It was announced in the final days of September by the ministry led by Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard.
Triallate is a soil-applied herbicide made by the US company Gowan and used mainly against wild oats and other grass weeds in cereals. France’s national food safety agency, Anses, has twice rejected requests to authorize triallate under this same emergency procedure, in 2018 and again in 2023, citing an unacceptable risk that its breakdown product, diisopropylamine, could exceed drinking water safety thresholds, along with concerns about potential DNA damage and toxicity to aquatic organisms and non-target insects. Triallate remains authorized at the European Union level as an active substance until March 2027, and it is that EU-level authorization the ministry used as the legal basis for granting a national exemption for what EU rules describe as “limited and controlled use.”
The ministry justified the move by citing what it called an absolute necessity for barley cultivation facing immediate danger from weeds, after the grower association AGPB (Association Générale des Producteurs de Blé) requested the exemption, arguing that resistance to other herbicide modes of action has left few effective options for grass weed control in winter barley. Genevard had signaled support for the idea as early as May 26, 2026, pointing to herbicide resistance and a lack of alternatives.
The decision drew an immediate response from environmental groups. Générations Futures and France Nature Environnement said they would file an emergency legal challenge to overturn the exemption, calling it irresponsible and arguing that the derogation procedure is being used to bring back products that independent safety reviews have already found too risky to approve through the normal route.
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This is not the only pesticide reversal France has made in 2026. In September, the government separately allowed limited use of the neonicotinoid acetamiprid after years of restriction, though that decision involved a different molecule and a different legal pathway. Together, the two cases point to a French government under pressure to widen crop protection options for grain growers even as its own safety agency continues to flag risks tied to some of the same products.
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