INTA's president, Nicolás Bronzovich, attributed the dismissal of researcher Virginia Aparicio to the Board of Directors and listed alleged irregularities in the SPRINT project. From Europe, Violette Geissen called the punishment 'unfair' and maintained that Aparicio followed 'the protocols to the letter'.
INTA's president, Nicolás Bronzovich, offered public explanations for the first time on the dismissal of researcher Virginia Aparicio, local coordinator of the European SPRINT project, which measured agrochemical residues in the environment and in people. In an interview with Agrositio, the official attributed the sanction to the organization's Board of Directors and stated: "I am not happy with the decision, but I am sure we made the best decision for the technological institute I work for".
Aparicio coordinated Argentina's participation in SPRINT between 2020 and 2023, an initiative involving ten European Union countries and to which INTA itself subscribed. The dismissal, which entails her expulsion from the public sector, was issued weeks ago by the Board of Directors following an internal inquiry opened in 2023, when the project was preparing to release its first measurements.
Bronzovich denied that the measure responded to a personal persecution. "She studied at INTA Balcarce, just like me. I knew Aparicio, although she was a few years younger. I have nothing against her and I could even speak well of her", he said, though he reiterated that the decision lay with the Board of Directors, where representatives of rural associations and universities sit.
INTA's president listed the grounds that, according to his account, led to the sanction: failing to provide information when it was requested in 2023, changing the ethics committee originally agreed, sending blood samples directly to a European university instead of first analyzing them in Argentina, and taking 73 samples when the protocol set 72.
He also mentioned alleged irregularities in the handling of confidential information, because the researcher sent the report with the results to Europe even though INTA had prohibited her from doing so. The most serious accusation, as reported by Bichos de Campo, is that Aparicio allegedly used part of the funds transferred from Europe to subcontract her partner, an INTA retiree who was not on the original list of personnel authorized to take part in the project.
INTA's president clarified that in the results published on the official SPRINT project website "in no case was the minimum residue limit defined by the European Union reached". Regarding the blood samples of nearly 70 people who voluntarily agreed to the measurement, he indicated that "the one that reached the highest level is up to a thousand times below the maximum limits admitted by the European Union".
In this way, Bronzovich himself dismissed the notion that Aparicio's reports constituted a campaign to demonize Argentine agriculture, although the researcher maintains that her samples confirm the presence of agrochemicals in the blood of several people and that this should be a cause for concern.
From the Netherlands, Violette Geissen, a professor at Wageningen University and SPRINT's general coordinator, called the punishment "unfair" and defended Aparicio's scientific performance. "Virginia Aparicio is an excellent researcher", she said in statements to the outlet Tierra Viva.
"We made protocols to harmonize the methods and ensure they were carried out in the same way in all the countries. Virginia followed those protocols to the letter", she added. Geissen also recalled that "INTA signed its entry into the consortium knowing what was going to be done and what the objectives were. That contract was not signed by Virginia, it was signed by the head of the organization. Therefore, it is not understood how they now want to leave".
Bronzovich's explanations came hours before Aparicio appeared at a public hearing in the Chamber of Deputies, invited by lawmakers from the Frente de Izquierda. According to La Izquierda Diario, the presentation denounced the seriousness of the measure, described as a "completely unprecedented" event, and it was argued that "this is done to silence, to censor what she has investigated".
The sanction comes in a context of adjustment at INTA, with 1,800 fewer employees since the start of the current government and union complaints over the appointment of officials without a public competitive examination. Aparicio's dismissal became known a few days after the Board of Directors approved the appointment of an accountant who, the day before, had collected a severance payment from another state agency for 110 million pesos.
