Rocio Vilches

Rocío Vilches has been the Area Coordinator for the Plant Protection Products at the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food since July 2025. Licensed in Pharmacy, she passed the tests to become civil servant (National Corps of State Pharmacists) and her first position was as Inspector of Medicinal Products and Illicit Drug Trafficking Control. She then moved to the Ministry of Health, to the Plant Protection Products Unit, where she worked for six years as a toxicologist specialist in the evaluation of the effects on human health of the plant protection products. Following this, she led the team responsible of the non-dietary exposure assessment for eight years. In 2023, she was appointed Head of Unit of Plant Protection Products until 2025, when she promoted to her current position at the Ministry of Agriculture. Therefore, her experience working with plant protection products is already 17 years, working from the perspective of different approaches such as protecting human health and agricultural production, working with both product and active substance,  acting as a risk assessor and as a risk manager. She currently attends different meetings related with the plant protection products, as SCoPAFF (phytopharmaceuticals-legislation section), PAI group, interzonal/southern zone Steering Committee, Biopesticides Working Group, etc.