Regulatory Toxicology of Active Substances in Plant Protection Products

Susanne Hougaard Bennekou has been a Chief Advisor at the Danish Patient Safety Authority since last year. She has worked in the Division of Risk Assessment and Nutrition at the National Food Institute of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) as a Senior Advisor in toxicology since 2019. Previously she was a Senior Advisor in the Pesticide Division of the Danish EPA. She was the Vice-Chair of the EFSA PPR Panel and since 2018 she has been a Vice-Chair of the EFSA Scientific Committee.

Agathi Charistou is a Regulatory Toxicologist in the Laboratory of Toxicological Control of Pesticides at the Benaki Phytopathological Institute in Greece with long experience in the evaluation of mammalian toxicology studies and non-dietary exposure assessment to both plant protection products and biocides.

Tamara Coja is a Biologist and has been working as a Senior Regulatory Toxicologist at the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES) in Vienna. Since 2007 she has been involved in toxicological evaluation of pesticides. Her special regulatory interest is in toxicity of metabolites in residues of plant and animal origin and in groundwater. Since 2018 she is a member of the EFSA PPR Panel and joined working groups. She is also a member of the BfR Committee for Pesticides and their Residues.

Federica Crivellente (PhD) is a Toxicologist working as Senior Scientific Officer in EFSA in the Pesticide Peer Review Unit – Mammalian Toxicology Team since 2012. She graduated in Biology in 1995 and she gained a PhD in Forensic Toxicology in 1999 at the University of Verona (Italy) and a Specialisation in Biochemistry and Clinical Chemistry at the University of Brescia (Italy) in 2002. After having worked in preclinical development in the pharmaceutical industry for more than 10 years, she joined EFSA and her main activities are related to the peer review of the risk assessment of the active substances to be used as plant protection products, and cumulative risk assessment of pesticide residues.

Domenico Deserio is a Policy Officer in the Directorate General for Health and Food Safety of the European Commission (DG SANTE). He is responsible for policies related to micro-organisms used as active substances in plant protection products. Within the EU Biopesticide Working Group which he co-chairs, he has produced four amending Regulations concerning placing on the market of microbiological active substances and plant protection products, and other related policies such as Commission Communications listing relevant test methods and guidance documents, and “Explanatory Notes” to the data requirements on micro-organisms. He holds a Master of Biotechnology from the University of Bari (Italy), and completed his thesis on food microbiology. Moreover, he achieved an advanced postgraduate Master by Research of Agricultural Science at the University of Adelaide (Australia), carrying out his research on plant genomics and plant pathology.

Steven J. Enoch is a Reader in Computational Toxicology at the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences of the Faculty of Science at the Liverpool John Moores University and has over 15 years’ worth of experience in the field of predictive toxicology. He is an expert in the use of chemical and metabolism information to predict toxicological hazard without the use of animals, especially in the development and application of computational profiling schemes for chemical category formation and read-across.

Monika Kemény is a Certified Toxicologist and has been a Regulatory Toxicologist at BASF, Germany, since 2006. Before joining BASF she has worked for the DFG Senate Commission on Food Safety (SKLM) since 2002.

Chris Lythgo has a background in agricultural chemistry, soil science and microbial biotransformations. He is working at EFSA, in the PLANTS Unit assessing the environmental exposure consequent from the intended uses of plant protection products and since 2005 he has been a Team Leader of one of the risk assessment teams involved in the Pesticides Peer Review activities of EFSA. He is involved in the peer review of the Draft Assessment Reports prepared by the Competent Authorities of the EU Member States. Chris has worked in the field of regulatory risk assessment of pesticides for over 28 years.

Alberto Mantovani retired on March 2023 as a Research Director of the Italian National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità, ISS), with research in toxicology and risk assessment as the two main fields of his expertise. Since 1993 he contributed to the development of the international framework of toxicological risk assessment within OECD (since 2000), EFSA (since 2003 in the areas of feeds, pesticides and emerging risks) and ECHA (since 2010) activities. He is currently a member of the Italian National Food Safety Committee (CNSA) and of the Technical Advisory Group on One Health of WHO-Europe.

Olivier Sanvido is a Biologist and an European Registered Toxicologist (ERT). He is the Deputy Head of Section “Chemicals and Occupational Health” at the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) in Switzerland and in charge of the regulatory approval of plant protection products, in particular the assessment of operator and worker safety. He was a Research Scientist at Agroscope in Switzerland where he was a specialist on environmental risk assessment and monitoring of genetically modified (GM) plants. He has over 25 years of professional experience including 4 years in regulatory affairs and quality assurance in the medical device and pharmaceutical industry.

Douglas C. Wolf graduated in 1981 from the University of Missouri with a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree (D.V.M.) and, after 6 years in clinical veterinary practice, attended Purdue University where, in 1991, he completed a residency in pathology and Ph.D. in Veterinary Pathology. Douglas was a staff scientist for 6 years at the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology (CIIT) where he studied chemical carcinogenesis. From 1997 until 2013 Douglas held various research and leadership positions with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he continued research in chemical carcinogenesis and molecular pathology. In 2013 he joined Syngenta Crop Protection and is currently a Senior Syngenta Fellow where he leads international efforts to advance the science of risk assessment focusing on crop protection chemicals. Douglas has authored or coauthored over 155 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports and is a Fellow of the International Academy of Toxicologic Pathologists and the Academy of Toxicological Sciences.