IDEXX laboratories
IDEXX Laboratories, Inc.
ID: 218730633640-86
Lobbying Activity
Response to European Water Resilience Strategy
3 Mar 2025
IDEXX welcomes the Water Resilience Initiative as a key step in protecting public health. Safe water prevents disease, reduces healthcare costs, and strengthens communities. However, stronger pollution prevention, better monitoring, and a clear focus on microbiological safety are needed. Investing in prevention is far more cost-effective than addressing contamination and disease outbreaks after they occur. Make water quality a public health priority by ensuring regular monitoring of bacteria, viruses, and antimicrobial resistance in all water sources, including drinking water, surface water, and wastewater. Prevent pollution at the source through strict enforcement of water laws, stronger tracking of contamination, and a polluter-pays approach to hold industries accountable. Invest in research and innovation to improve water treatment technologies, real-time monitoring, and fast detection of pathogens. Prepare for climate-driven water risks by ensuring safe water access during droughts, floods, and extreme weather events through improved infrastructure and emergency response planning. Strengthen EU governance by creating a permanent water coordination group to align policies on health, environment, and industry, ensuring a unified approach to water safety. In conclusion: Prevention is cheaper than crisis response. Strong monitoring, innovation, and governance will protect public health, reduce costs, and build resilient communities. Europe must act now to secure safe, clean water for all. We also call for the following immediate actions to Strengthen microbiological parameters in EU water policies: 1. Urgent revision of the Bathing Water Directive and push for its inclusion in the 2025 Action Plan. The Commission must take immediate action where it is empowered, particularly under Article 15 of BWD to modernize microbiological safety standards 2. Strengthen the UWWTD by defining clear microbiological risk assessments and monitoring via art 18 and DA and IA of the Commission. Clarify and put into evidence microbiological parameters list in wastewater treatment through Commission Delegated or Implementing Acts. 3. Expand monitoring in water reuse regulations beyond E. coli, Total Coliforms, Enterococci and Legionella Pneumophila especially if the use is beyond agriculture (other industrial purposes). 4. Push for the revision of the Sludge Directive, integrating microbiological safety as a priority. Adopt a risk assessment of microcontaminants and contaminants of emerging concern in a One Health perspective as foreseen in other Directives.
Read full response8 Feb 2024
IDEXX Feedback on supplementing Regulation (EU) 2020/741 of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to technical specifications of the key elements of risk management. IDEXX welcomes Commissions proposal on supplementing regulation to lay down technical specifications of the key elements of risk management as required by article 5(3) of Regulation (EU) No 2020/741that should facilitate the elaboration of risk management plans for re-used water. We would provide some suggestions that would help providing a comprehensive risk management in water reuse in agriculture and allowing the responsible national authorities and help create a harmonized framework that ensures human and animal health protection on one side, and combatting the effect of the climate crisis, such as drought, on the other. IDEXX supports the identification of potential hazards and hazardous events in the Annex to the Draft Regulation, covering the possible dangers to public health and the environment in a comprehensive way, also including pollutants that are not yet regulated (point 5 of the abovementioned section) in point 3 of Annex II to Regulation (EU) 2020/741 on minimum requirements for water reuse. Regarding the microbiological parameters included for risk assessments. These should be identified in the text rather than just saying pathogens, bacteria, or viruses. This is too vague and results in unnecessarily time-consuming efforts and lack of harmonisations within and across countries for those doing the risk assessments. It may be that the risk assessor could reference another standard, but this is a further tier of complexity. We would suggest including a table or an annex which lists those pathogens or indicators which the risk assessor need to be concerned with (somatic coliphage, Campylobacter, Rotavirus, Cryptosporidium, Total coliphages, Clostridium perfringens spores etc.). It may also be useful to list methods which are appropriate/approved for detection of those pathogens. We think this would improve clarity and accessibility to the risk assessor. Core parameters set out in table II, III and IV of REGULATION (EU) 2020/741 (such as E. coli, Legionella, Intestinal enterococci) are fundamental especially to agricultural use of reclaimed water and should be included in routine monitoring. The reason being is that routine monitoring is a process to validate the effectiveness of water treatment. Treatment plant operators need to understand the levels of pathogens in the water coming into the plant and exiting the plant prior to use in agriculture through regular monitoring of the levels at both stages. This validation ensures that the treatment process is effective on an ongoing basis and allows treatment operators to make corrections when the treatment is not functioning as expected.
Read full responseMeeting with Margrete Auken (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur) and SGI Europe
21 Mar 2023 · Recast of the UWWTD
Response to Bathing water quality – review of EU rules
29 Mar 2021
IDEXX Position Paper on DIRECTIVE 2006/7/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL
IDEXX supports WHO recommendations* and international experts to revise the Bathing Water Directive to protect bathing water quality, encourage innovation, safeguard the public and prepare for future challenges.
Protect bathing water quality by ensuring testing methods are up to date and appropriate for bathing water use
A. Remove ISO 9308-1 as a recommended method for testing for E. coli in bathing water
The current version of ISO 9308-1 is defined as only suitable for waters with low bacterial counts, which excludes a broad range of bathing water. *
B. Include ISO 9308-2 as an approved method for testing for E. coli in bathing water*
The ISO 9308-2 method has been validated for monitoring E. coli in European marine and freshwater bathing sites and adopted by multiple Member States successfully as an alternative bathing water method.
C. Remove ISO 7899-2 as a recommended method for testing enterococci in coastal waters
ISO 7899-2 “is best suited to drinking-water, water from swimming pools or other disinfected/clean water sources”. *
D. Encourage the use of alternative methods for culture enumeration which generate results in 24 hours or less
A short time-to-result better protects public health.
Encourage innovation and respect European Union principles by updating measurement units and alternative method recognition procedures
A. Replace CFU per volume with Number per volume
Using “number per volume” offers a coherent policy approach and harmonizes an essential requirement with the approach adopted for the same measurement in the Directive (EU) 2020/2184
“Number per volume” is consistent with currently authorized BWD reference methods giving results in different units, Colony Forming Units or Most Probable Number.
B. Clarify the alternative method procedure
A clear and transparent procedure would ensure Member States are adequately evaluating method options and updating the Commission on their data and decisions so they can efficiently implement the best methods for their needs.
C. Specify a mechanism for mutual recognition of alternative methods by Member States
Alternative methods are generally adopted by Member States so they can obtain results and make decisions more quickly, an objective endorsed by the WHO to protect human health.
The lack of a mechanism for mutual recognition across Member States, although the Commission holds the required data, results in very expensive and time-consuming repeated national, sometimes regional assessments.
Reciprocity and reducing administrative costs of regulation are recognized Commission policy principles.
Safeguard the public with more robust, frequent, and inclusive monitoring requirements
A. The classification system for each category should be on a 95-percentile value*
Inconsistency is confusing and difficult to explain to the public.
B. The annual minimum number of samples for an EU bathing water site should be increased to 20 per season*
Additional measurements will reduce the risk of adverse health effects experienced by bathers in poor-quality bathing water and the economic costs to local community businesses of compliant bathing water being misclassified as poor.
C. Consider monitoring beach sand quality and making this monitoring information available to the public
Bathing water quality should be representative of the whole bathing area, including beach sand quality.
Prepare for the future by considering emerging threats to bathing water quality
A. Investigate the impact of climate change on the BWD
B. Evaluate the potential value of monitoring emerging bathing water contaminants
See detailed comments with references submitted in PDF.
* WHO recommendations on scientific, analytical, and epidemiological developments relevant to the parameters for bathing water quality in the Bathing Water Directive (2006/7/EC) 2018
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