Food and commodity production and trade is a truly global activity. The Crop Protection Industry is currently one of the most interesting and challenging sectors globally, in that scientific advances in our industry tend to be universal and consistent whereas changes in regulation are anything but universal, and often mirror political responses to activist concerns and dogma rather than the realities of science and safety. Advances in science have made us increasingly able to design and select safe efficacious molecules to control weeds, plant disease and insect pests. This has been achieved by shifting the testing paradigm from basically screening molecules to making predictions of toxicological outcome. This has been made possible by the use of existing data and through developing in silico and in vitro approaches that enable hypothesis testing and allow us to construct predictive models that feed into molecular design. Unfortunately, the design of regulatory toxicity studies and the way in which data are used in registration processes globally have not moved in step with scientific advances and understanding. One of the biggest challenges facing the Industry is an increasing regulatory fragmentation, with some regions and countries adopting a more science and exposure led approach, willing to collaborate with Industry to replace the current heavy reliance on animal studies, while others reinforce a hazard based approach where hazard endpoints generated in traditional toxicity studies dominate regulatory thinking and are less able to collaborate with Industry to develop new approaches that may also meet their needs. Advances in science and predictive toxicology and how these are used to generate an understanding that leads to rational chemical design will be illustrated. Examples of the challenges posed by divergent regulation will be discussed, as will the ways in which we are working with academics and regulators to achieve a more uniform global approach.p>
Dr Richard Lewis
Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology
Syngenta
Dr Lewis gained a BSc and MSc in Biochemistry from Cardiff University, followed by a PhD in the Biochemical Toxicology of the Lung (also from Cardiff University) and after post-doctoral work on fibrous minerals and lung toxicity. He joined ICI's Central Toxicology Laboratory in 1988 initially to work on the mode of action of methylene chloride induced lung tumours in the mouse following inhalation exposure. Over the next 30 plus years he has held a variety of positions at ICI, Zeneca and Syngenta including manager of the Inhalation Toxicology Department, Head of in vitro Toxicology, Head of Developmental and Reproductive Toxicology, Head of Long Term Toxicity and between 2007 and 2019 Global Head of Toxicology and Health Science at Syngenta having overall responsibility for the human safety of the Crop Protection and Seeds and Traits businesses. He is currently Principal Advisor on Human Safety at Syngenta (part time) and is the Chair and member of numerous Agrochemical industry toxicology expert groups.