{"id":31387,"date":"2022-07-29T00:01:57","date_gmt":"2022-07-29T04:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/?p=31387"},"modified":"2022-07-29T13:00:13","modified_gmt":"2022-07-29T17:00:13","slug":"with-industry-support-a-republican-u-s-senator-introduces-bill-to-codify-easier-access-to-ag-pesticides-as-if-it-wasnt-easy-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/2022\/07\/with-industry-support-a-republican-u-s-senator-introduces-bill-to-codify-easier-access-to-ag-pesticides-as-if-it-wasnt-easy-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"With Industry Support, a Republican U.S. Senator Introduces Bill to Codify Easier Access to Ag Pesticides\u2013As If It Wasn\u2019t Easy Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

(Beyond Pesticides, July 29, 2022) Perhaps attempting to capitalize on the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision<\/a> limiting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s (EPA\u2019s) ability to regulate carbon emissions, Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas (R) has filed a bill in the Senate that seeks to limit the agency\u2019s ability to regulate pesticide use. The so-called EPA Transparency for Agriculture Products Act of 2022<\/a> is touted, on Senator Marshall\u2019s website, as \u201ca comprehensive bill to prevent . . . EPA . . . from overregulating essential pesticides that the ag industry heavily depends upon.\u201d In truth \u2014 and perversely, given that he is a medical doctor \u2014 the bill aims to provide more<\/em> license to use toxic pesticides that harm human health, the environment broadly, and ecosystems already under assault from toxic, synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, habitat destruction, and climate change.<\/p>\r\n

Couched in language about \u201cfeeding the world,\u201d the bill\u2019s central concern seems to be financial impacts or challenges that farms (a good portion of which, let us remember, are giant, well-resourced agribusinesses) may face because of EPA pesticide regulations. Those regulations, of course, are promulgated by the agency to protect people, organisms, ecosystems, and natural resources from harmful impacts and risks from pesticide use (however well or poorly the agency manages to do that for specific pesticides).<\/p>\r\n

The bill purports to<\/a> \u201censure pesticide registrations and rulemaking is (sic) based on proven science.\u201d What it appears to do is throw monkey wrenches into EPA\u2019s processes. How? By giving agro-industrial interests more rein and weight; by inserting economic considerations into EPA\u2019s review processes (NB: this is not part of the agency\u2019s mission or charge); by pulling into review processes \u201cinput\u201d from other federal agencies; by dragging out effective dates of regulatory action; and by setting short deadlines for registration reviews, i.e., telling EPA it cannot employ more than two 60-day extensions for review of a label or labeling change, and then making approval of any such label automatic if EPA fails to take action on it before the final deadline (functionally, the end of 120 days of extension).<\/p>\r\n

Among the bill\u2019s over-reaching features is a requirement<\/a> that the director of the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) conduct an \u201cinteragency review of any proposed interim, interim, or final registration decision regarding nonvoluntary, more restrictive changes to a pesticide label under a registration review.\u201d Another is stringing out the effective date by which an interim or final registration decision (issued as part of a registration review of nonvoluntary, more restrictive changes to a pesticide label, including a revocation or cancellation of a registration) shall take effect to \u201cone year after the date on which the interim decision or final decision, as applicable, and any comments submitted by the Secretary of Agriculture, are published in the Federal Register.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Further, the bill wants to make EPA use industry data as part of its basis for registration review processes: \u201cThe Administrator shall base any decision issued as part of the registration review process on Department of Agriculture agronomic use data, commercially available agronomic use data, and industry agronomic use data<\/em>\u201d [emphasis by Beyond Pesticides].<\/p>\r\n

The bill also seeks<\/a> to constrain judicial purview over cases involving pesticides:<\/p>\r\n