| Ukraine integration Ukraine’s accession to the EU has started to raise many question marks for the agrifood community, from how it will change the face of the EU’s farming subsidies programme to how it will adapt to EU rules and regulations. One major bone of contention is on food safety, but Olha Shevchenko, acting head of Ukraine’s food safety body, told Euractiv in an interview that Ukraine has an effective control system on food safety and pesticides which should not be dragged into political squabbles about grain exports. While the need for rules is “totally understandable”, the top Ukraine official said that, in the end, “SPS [sanitary and phytosanitary measures] cannot be part of politics because it is about human health”. Glyphosate The fate of glyphosate is in limbo after EU countries did not meet the required qualified majority to approve the European Commission’s proposed 10-year extension for the use of the contentious herbicide glyphosate, with the next crucial vote to be held in the first half of November. However, the vote did not come as a surprise as many countries had indicated ahead of the vote that they would abstain. Pesticides Lawmakers from the European Parliament’s agriculture committee greenlit their opinion on the EU’s plan to slash the use and risk of pesticides in half this week. The agriculture committee’s opinion calls for pushing the target date back from 2030 to 2035, scrapping a ban on the use of pesticides in sensitive areas and blocking the use of the EU’s farming subsidies programme (CAP) to fund pesticide reduction ambitions. CAP corner Despite high ambitions to make farming greener, progress in the EU on sustainable agriculture is stalling, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which calls to tie the bloc’s extensive farming subsidies more strongly to measurable outcomes. Learn more. | 
