'Sound science' key to success of FQPA

By Ray Sotero
Managing Editor
The federal government must use sound science when reviewing food-safety laws or risk disrupting a system that successfully feeds much of the world, the head of the American Farm Bureau Federation testified to Congress last week.

As the nation approaches the third anniversary of passage of the Food Quality Protection Act, the law's implementation by the Environmental Protection Agency is causing "great concern across the country," due largely to the absence of sound science, AFBF President Dean Kleckner told members of a House Agriculture subcommittee.

In testimony before the subcommittee on department operations, oversight, nutrition and forestry, Kleckner said farmers are being told they must "mitigate risk for many critical pesticide tools, some of which have been used safely for over 40 years."

"This could mean the outright cancellation of some uses and dramatically alter use patterns for others," Kleckner said. "How EPA implements...(FQPA) will dramatically affect how many crop uses will be lost or the extent of cost increases to farmers."

The EPA is targeting organophosphate pesticides (OPs), which represent "the single most important class of insecticides used in U.S. agriculture," Kleckner told lawmakers. He explained that OPs are used on about 50 percent of all insecticide-treated acres and represent about 65 percent of the total pounds of insecticides applied in the United States. Of the roughly 350 million acres of farmland in the United States, OPs are used on roughly 10 percent of those acres.

"This is only one class of crop protection (chemicals) at risk under FQPA," Kleckner stated. "Others will follow with uncertain outcomes, which only increases Farm Bureau's anxiety and concern."

Bill Pauli, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation and a Mendocino County winegrape and pear grower, agreed with Kleckner, saying the federation's first priority is implementation of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996.

"We are strongly committed to ensuring that this implementation includes sound science, transparency, balance and workability and we support a bipartisan legislative effort to accomplish this," Pauli said from California. "However, we are convinced that EPA's current implementation plan does not meet these criteria and will severely hamper California's agricultural industry."

The law requires EPA to re-evaluate more than 9,700 pesticide tolerances in the next decade. Decisions are to be based on tolerances that meet a new FQPA "reasonable certainty of no harm" safety standard. That means, Pauli said, that farmers are concerned EPA's interpretation of the law and reliance on overly conservative default assumptions will result in cancellations of important pesticides. That action could jeopardize compounds used in Integrated Pest Management programs, which aim to reduce pesticide use.

"Arbitrary deadlines established by FQPA are forcing EPA to make critical decisions with little or no scientific justification. August 1999 is EPA's first deadline," Pauli said. "Even though the scientific methodologies have not been determined, the EPA has publicly stated it will meet its deadline. Forcing an agency to complete a specific quantity of work with no regard for the quality is unacceptable."

Pauli said the EPA must be given the time to develop science-based, peer-reviewed methodologies that incorporate the best science and all relevant data. He urged the panel to direct EPA to openly communicate its policy and implementation plan because "only Congress has the authority to insist that EPA re-evaluate its current plan and follow the original intent of the law."

FQPA sets forth a number of new requirements that will result in major changes to existing regulatory policies and procedures involving a high degree of complexity, Kleckner said. Practical implementation of these new requirements demands EPA have and use new scientific tools in addition to those that were available when the FQPA was enacted. EPA must have adequate time to properly evaluate and implement these new tools, he added.

"This implementation is happening in the middle of a farm economic crisis when farmers have little or no ability to absorb higher and higher regulatory costs," Kleckner said. "Market prices for some commodities do not reflect the cost of production. EPA's implementation of FQPA could drive costs even higher, making a bad situation even worse."

Kleckner said farmers never would have supported passage of FQPA had they known that EPA would: attempt to remove many critical crop protection tools; slow the registration process for newer pesticides that might serve as alternatives; or consider using the law to group and assess the risk of entire classes of pesticides as one pesticide.

Kleckner insisted that FQPA implementation be guided by sound science. He said EPA is using "unrealistic, default assumptions" when data is absent or incomplete.

"It was our understanding that upon passage of FQPA better data for these new requirements would be obtained before regulatory decisions were made," Kleckner said. "Unfortunately, instead of asking for data from farmers, registrants and others, EPA is using these unrealistic default assumptions.

"When the agency does not have real pesticide use information, it assumes that farmers use pesticides at maximum rates, on all acres, and apply products the maximum number of applications. In some cases, it is also assumed that consumers are exposed daily to the maximum dose of pesticides from a variety of exposures. If we look hard at data that is available, it becomes clear that those types of assumptions have very little resemblance to real-world exposure."

Kleckner said when actual data is substituted for default assumptions, risk is lowered considerably. EPA proved this in its recent example of a risk assessment for the pesticide Guthion. EPA's preliminary assessment for that pesticide showed risk at nearly 5,000 percent above acceptable risk for the general public, and 10,000 percent above acceptable risk for children. Recently, EPA incorporated more realistic data from several sources, including the USDA. The amended result was that risk is now well below acceptable levels for the general population, at 68 percent, and at the safe margin for children at 105 percent.

Permission for use is granted, however, credit must be made to the California Farm Bureau Federation when reprinting this item.